Re: Kidney Stones and some curiosities and inconsistencies

> I really havce been enjoying your site since I found it a couple weeks ago.
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> I just passed a very painful kidney stone and I'm curious about coffie. A book I have, Prescription for Nutritional healing, recommended coffie as a preventative for Kidney Stones, and two gentlemen at work said the same thing. However, my nurse girlfriend and her fellow students said they get tested on the fact that coffie is a cause of kidney stones. What gives with the discrepancy.
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> Thanks,
> Fred
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> P.S. regarding the web site, and not that I'm snoody, but a simple spell checker would cure your site of it's large number of missspelled words and bad grammar. Folk tend to discredit the value of the information if the grammar and spelling is incorrect. Perhaps some of your readers are editors and could help.





Fred,

Coffee is made from the coffee bean. Depending on the type of bean, where it is grown and the ground water chemistry, the amount of oxalate in the bean and in the coffee eventually made from it can vary. Oxalate is a main ingredient in the kidney stones for many people. Excess intake of high oxalate foods can increase the risk for stones and offset the extra fluid from the beverage. Other high oxalate foods include chocolate, tea, green leafy vegetables and nuts. Of course, if your urinary oxalate level is normal, then there would be little benefit in restricting these foods.

Other than water, the best nutritional advice for stone formers is to moderate their intake of protein and salt, avoid large amounts of the high oxalate foods listed above, and increase their citrate intake. Citrus fruits have high citrate levels. Lemonade made from real lemon juice is also recommended due to its high citrate level.

Interestingly, we do not recommend restricting calcium intake in most stone formers due to recent studies suggesting that very low calcium intake patients actually get more stones than those on a high calcium diet. It seems that too little calcium in the diet causes an increase in oxalate absorption. The result is a net increase in stone risk if your diet is too deficient in calcium; just the opposite of what common sense would seem to suggest.

Stephen W. Leslie, MD

Assistant Clinical Professor
Dept. of Urology
Medical College of Ohio

Founder and Medical Director
Lorain kidney stone Research Center
Lorain, Ohio

Author: "The kidney stones Handbook", a patient's guide to kidney stones. [www.kidneystonesbook.net] Tweet