Excellent video Doc! One of my friends lost one kidney to stones and only has about thirty percent function of the other kidney after surgery to remove stones. A video about what causes the development of stones would be interesting. Thanks and hope that all is well!
I love the simple shapes of the crystals that can give you a strong confidence of the underlying disease. If I needed CE. I would definitely take your class. Maybe I will anyway. I always appreciate that your videos always explain well and never feel like an advertisement for payed content.
Great video Doc. Some people go on about Oxalates in certain types of food and, in the extreme, some people warn against eating these foods for a better health outcome. My question: Are Oxalates in fruits and vegetable a "thing", should we avoid high oxalate foods or are these warnings from people largely to be ignored. Would really appreciate your comments on this 'cause I believe many people out there are divided/confused about such healthcare advice on oxalates. Thanks
For those susceptable to oxylate stone formation, avoiding some of the higher oxylate foods can be helpful, as well as maintaining a high level of hydration at all times. "A quart when you wake, a quart when you sleep, and no spinach at all" covers a good degree of this quickly.
Thanks. I’ll have to admit that I need to look into this a bit more, but I have not seen real clinical issues with oxalate stones from fruits and vegetables.
@@Medcram Even just a quick browse through the wiki article on oxalate might be interesting, there's even a cited case (with extreme circumstances) where oxalate overconsumption was fatal. In my opinion though, advice on oxalate stone prevention is often very muddled. It's often mentioned in the same breath as advice on prevention of other calcium stones (calcium phosphate, for instance) and while many sources will advise the patient to avoid oxalate-rich foods, often times the lists of foods are deficient in discussion of the relative risk in different foods. For instance, you may find materials advising avoidance of tomato sauce (17 mg/half-cup) and spinach (755mg/ half-cup [cooked]). Both of these may be listed in the same 'very high oxalate' category, but when one is over 44 times the dosage of the other, again, this seems like very poor communication to me. Practically all plant foods seem to fall into some level of oxalate category (I have heard it suggested that high oxalate content is a plant survival adaptation as it can kill herbivorous insects) and I think it's a disservice that the advice often given implies that the patient needs to avoid consumption of fruit and vegetables in favor of (largely oxalate-free) meat and milk products, rather than giving information on relative oxalate concentrations, and, in a more realistic way, advising complete avoidance of the worst offenders, moderation of moderately-containing foods, and stringent hydration efforts. I would note for the Original Poster that while I can't immediately cite it, it seems likely to me that there are both congenital and environmental pressures involved. It's possible that there is a hereditary component to oxalate resistance, and exercising or advising general avoidance may cause a harm in oxalate tolerant persons through unnecessarily lessened nutritional and dietary diversity. Environmentally, hotter areas are referred to as 'the kidney stone belt' for a reason, dilute urine is much less lithogenic than concentrated urine. Consistent hydration matters a great deal.
Thanks Dr S. I suffered with small crystals and found managing my oxalate intake and not taking vitamin C supplements helped. I can take rosehips for vitamin C but not the usual supplement. Taking a tumeric supplement along with good hydration seems to work as well for me. 🇨🇦🙏
Interesting video! I did not know about proteus bacteria. (...and now I learned about Klebsiella and Pseudomonas, too.) My understanding is that low stomach acid makes one can prone to calcium oxalate crystals and uric acid crystals. Let's start with calcium oxalates. With low stomach acid, oxalates are readily absorbed into the body and then are altered to calcium oxalates, which are excreted in urine. If the calcium combines with oxalates in the intestines, then the calcium oxalates are not absorbed. So one trick to prevent oxalate absorption is to drink a nut milk (high in calcium) when one consumes high oxalate foods. The other trick is to consume an acid (such as from eating citrus food or taking betaine HCL supplement) when consuming foods high in oxalates. (And of course, the best trick is to avoid drinking antifreeze! LOL!) Regarding uric acid crystals, my understanding is that low stomach acid leads to incomplete digestion of protein. The poor digestion creates purines which then get absorbed and converted to uric acid. The best trick that I know to prevent uric acid is to avoid meat, eat cherries, and increase stomach acid. So if my understandings are correct, what are the best ways to increase stomach acid? Is carbonated water ok?
Purines come from the degradation of DNA. I don’t believe that’s related to stomach acid content. The simply comes from the genetic material of the cells.
Very interesting, I have questions, in 2012 I passed kidney stones and the next winter got them again, however this time the stones were captured and sent to an independent lab for analysis of unknown substance, the report came back saying that "glycerides from corn" were the main contents. It was recommended to stop consuming corn products, well it was educational finding all the names for corn products and they were eliminated from ingestion, no more stones have passed since. Question is, why?
Could you please give us some idea of which vegetables would cause these crystals to form. Are they legumes, for instance or citrus , grains and so on?. I eat meat but cannot eat some vegetables of the carrot / parsley /cabbage family unfortunately. Lack of diamine oxidase enzyme , suspected.
@@mavisemberson8737 it’s not that simple. You can’t ask for specific medical advice. This video was about how to form a hypothesis based on what you see under the microscope. Not what you should do. None of those things are unhealthy in and of themselves. ( in my opinion ( and no I’m not a nurse))
@@Medcram wow! Cool Doc! I had been NPO the night before for a blood draw that day and i could only give a less than full urine sample. My metabolic panel showed abnormally high BILIRUBIN TOTAL and my EKG showed a Right bundle branch block but i had my arms elevated during the EKG. Thanks again.
