Why Kidney Stones Keep Coming Back (And What Doctors Miss)
Most doctors blame diet, completely missing the link between repeat stones, unseen parathyroid issues, and the metabolic chaos caused by excess sugar.
Topics: sugar, kidney, stones, health, blood, parathyroid, root, https
Key takeaways from this episode
- :00 Introduction to Kidney Stones & Parathyroid Connection
- :05 The Kidney's Filtration Role
- :45 The Problem with Excess Sugar in the Diet
- :30 Sugar Content in US vs. European Foods
- :10 Hidden Sugars in "Healthy" Products
Pull quotes
Excess sugar becomes a sticky, caramelly substance that literally clumps your minerals together. Your 'calcium stone' is just a symptom of a body drowning in glucose that it can no longer manage effectively.
Kidney stones are often just crystallized worry. It's the physical manifestation of a mind stuck in rumination—your inability to 'go with the flow' of life solidifies inside the organ responsible for water and change.
If you have recurring stones, there's a good chance your parathyroid is misfiring. Your body is intelligently dumping calcium into the kidneys to prevent a seizure or heart attack. The stone is the evidence, not the crime.
Transcript
Dr. Nicole (00:00)
What's up everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Integrative View Radio. We are diving into kidney stones. Ironically enough, we are going to be talking about parathyroid function as well, which is really just the opener because a lot of people don't realize that there is a direct connection with parathyroid function and the possible onset of kidney stones.
There's a lot of other variables when it comes to kidney stones that we're going to be talking about from a root cross perspective. But for those of you that are here because you've had kidney stones or you are here because you've had pi pyrothyroid dysfunction, you're going to be able to learn a lot about what these look like integratively, because they do directly affect each other.
throughout our years of of working with people, we have seen quite a quite a few people that have either had kidney stones and came to us afterward because they kept reoccurring, or they even had the passing of kidney stones as they started working with us. And so really what it comes down to is your kidneys are a filtration system.
And I don't think a lot of people realize what the kidneys actually do. Your kidneys filter your blood. And anything that needs to be excreted, that would doesn't belong the blood, is far into the blood, is harmful inside of the blood, the kidneys are gonna grab it and they're going to eliminate it out through your urine.
One of the big fucking problems right now in the world, and I would say especially in the US, is that there is a very particular compound that is massively abundant inside of most people's blood because of diet and lifestyle, which is fucking sugar, also known as glucose. And so, you know, we live in Italy now, and yeah, of course there's sugar here. There's sugar everywhere in the world. But
Coming here and having a little milk in your cappuccino or having a pastry or having a dessert, you you realize like, holy crap, they use maybe a fraction of the sugar that they use in the US. They don't use sugar in making bread here. just it it's it's radically, radically different with how sugar is used.
And the ab the abundance of of the use. So, you know, going I actually never put sugar in any coffee drinks, matcha drinks that I ever had. And then when I came here, I would have a coffee and I was like, hmm, it tastes a lot different. But in the US, I was yeah, in the US, I was using a lot of almond milk and coconut milk and cashew milk and whatever fucking milk. And there's a
Dr. Nick (03:00)
Tastes bitter.
Dr. Nicole (03:11)
Shit ton of sugar in all of those different health products. So the moral of the story is that there is a lot of glucose and excess sugar that is floating around in the bloodstream of most people. And the longer that that goes on, it's like the boy who cried wolf, the pancreas who regulates blood sugar is kind of like, I don't even know what's going on anymore, but there is just so much sugar.
All the time that like I can't keep making insulin because I don't even know what's going on. So it's a misfiring, and then people become insulin resistant, and then it's more and more and more and more sugar, more sugar in the blood, more sugar in the blood. So let's just think about like basic cooking in kitchen. What happens when you heat up sugar? Or what happens when a little bit of liquid gets mixed in with sugar?
It becomes a sticky caramelly type of substance. So if you have different functionalities of your kidney, and your kidney is now filtering sugar, sugar, sugar, but now the sugar is sticking and clumping your red blood cells, maybe. Maybe it's clumping up different minerals that.
Or is a very normal part of your kidney processing. It gets rid of extra calcium, it gets rid of extra magnesium, extra phosphorus, it gets rid of minerals that you don't need that would be too intense for your body and make your brain and harcko hay wire. So now all this sugar is clumping up things. And now you have what on an ultrasound or a CT scan is called stones.
And this is why they tell you you know, stones could be phosphorus, stones could be calcium, stones could be all these different like compounds that that make it up. And I'm not saying that kidney stones only happen in people that have glucose issues, but this is one of the reasons why it's more problematic now. Because if you only have mineral issues, aka the primary
Organ that regulates your calcium is your parathyroid glands on the corners of your thyroid. If you have parathyroid dysfunction and your parathyroid is not regulating your calcium levels, and you have a shit ton of calcium floating around in your blood, which again, as I said, would cause an electrical misfiring of your heart and your brain. Obviously, that's hugely problematic because you could have a fucking seizure or you could have a heart attack. So
Your body is like, get it out, get it out, get it out, get it out, and it's gonna get it out through the kidneys. The more this happens, the longer it goes on, inevitably there is going to be a collection of calcium that is now in the kidneys.
So it was a lot I threw at you.
Dr. Nick (06:32)
I was just th you paused and I was like God. I was like God sh she probably just overwhelmed him. How am I not gonna continue this overwhelming process? Well, use this moment to, you know, write down any notes.
Dr. Nicole (06:34)
Where does she want me to go now?
Dr. Nick (06:54)
And then get ready. Get ready. Get ready to continue to maybe take some no maybe this will be one that people have to listen to like two or three times. I'm gonna try to make this simple. So kidney stones, as you were talking about, and I was taking notes, I was trying to play off of your verbiage so people be able to connect better. But it's like it's the clumping up that forms the stones. And on the mental side, you know, we
Dr. Nicole (06:54)
There's more, I I just figured I'd pause.
Ha ha.
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nick (07:23)
We've talked in previous podcasts is that the mind is really dictating the expression of the body. The body is just a feedback mechanism. So first off, your body's not broken at all. It never does anything unintelligent. So to if you've been taught that, just fucking forget it. It's a stupid belief. It comes from somebody that's learned from somebody else that was fucking ignorant. So
Dr. Nicole (07:37)
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Dr. Nick (07:52)
If the
mind is clumping up or creating stones, and this is associated with the kidney, and we'll get into the connection to the parathyroid as well, is that you know the kidney is a big thing of processing on the emotional side, fear and worry. So a kidney stone connected to fear and worry is actually not being like it's not on a clinical side.
It's not somebody that usually had one big instance of fear. That that isn't usually what's creating kidney stones. Kidney stones is the person that's in a constant rumination of usually worry more than fear, if you really break it down. You know, Chinese medicine just overall clumps it in the fear. But it's actually worry is what I find clinically working with people. And it's crystallized worry. It's like
Dr. Nicole (08:28)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nick (08:49)
You worry so much that you crystallize it. Think about that. And your kidneys is supposed to be the organ system that helps you with the flow of life. Water is the water is the element of change. There's there's Dr. Gerald Polak, I think is his name, wrote a book called The Fourth Phase of Water.
Dr. Nicole (08:55)
Mm-hmm.
You're paralyzed.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nick (09:19)
Most people think water goes through feet three phases a solid, a liquid, and a gas. But this fourth phase of water is a gelatinous crystalline matrix. So what's happening is that this worry is actually stopping the transformation of water. Blood is mainly water. Everything's mainly water in your body, over 70%.
And it's actually stopping your body's ability to change because your mind can't change. It's stuck in this rumination of worry that crystallizes physically within the kidney, because that's where that energy is stored, and we call it a kidney stone.
Dr. Nicole (10:04)
And it's essentially
like mimics being stuck and paralyzed in your life.
Dr. Nick (10:09)
Yep. That's I think from what I've worked with people the the biggest elephant in the room. And then there's the connection with a parathyroid. And the parathyroid, that is because that's over your voice box. And that's all about judgment. And it's the judgment on yourself, or it's the judgment of others, and those judgments, hard judgments, get so hard.
so ruminated over and over that it creates a stone.
So those people have the connection to the breakdown, which I think clinically started within the parathyroid, because it was a vocal judgment, and then that judgment ruminated so long that it got st the kidneys stronger than the parathyroid, so it got quote unquote delegated to the kidney, and then the kidney's intelligent to wrap it up and harden as a stone t to not create more damage.
Dr. Nicole (11:07)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nick (11:18)
The third one, I'm not going to get into too deep today because I don't want to overwhelm you, but that's more a connection with security and association with territory. So that territory is its home, its relationships, its money, and there's usually a loss of it, which is connected with grief, and that grief is blocked. The person gets stuck in that loss.
Dr. Nicole (11:47)
Yeah.
Dr. Nick (11:49)
And sometimes that loss is goes back up and can be connected to worry. So then people are stuck in this worry because they had this loss and they thought it was a bad thing. You know, it you know, mine gets a little complex. I was trying to keep it simple for everybody. So th the two biggest ones
Dr. Nicole (12:01)
Mm-hmm.
It's so interesting. I'm like, I'm having
such an aha moment with the whole what you said with the judgments. It's, you know, the it's the people that their judgments are so hard and intense because it's just like, no, this is the way the world works, or this is the right way to be, that's the wrong way to be.
Which obviously results in judging other people's actions and beliefs and everything else because you think everything is so black and white. And and I'm just thinking of a very particular person who have parathyroid issues and kidney issues.
Dr. Nick (12:47)
Well and it
c it could be judgments, but it can also be like a judgment is an expectation. So it's not necessarily right or wrong, but it's just an expectation of, you know, how you're supposed to be, how somebody's supposed to act. Yep.
Dr. Nicole (12:58)
Yeah, it's like a rigidity, which is literally so interesting because we're talking
about these rigid, hard.
Stones that are affecting the kidney.
Dr. Nick (13:07)
Yep.
And that rigidity, that hardness, you know, it's the it's the people that I have to be strong. You know, it's I hold it all in, yeah, this happened, you know, I c it's not I can deal with it. I'm not gonna act like I'm weak. I'm not gonna show emotion because, you know, I'm okay and I can't. Like that's that's not like how it works.
Dr. Nicole (13:31)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Nick (13:38)
your
body will continue to break down and show you these things, until, you know, we have enough conscious awareness to to make a change.
Dr. Nicole (13:47)
Yeah, 100%. The so there's a whole other aspect that I didn't even go into, because this is showing you how many possible root causes can be associated with kidney dysfunction and kidney stones. We've talked about parathyroid, we've talked about, you know, minerals being out of balance and then creating these blockages in the kidneys because the kidneys are doing their job to get it out. And we're talking about this epidemic of high glucose insulin resistance being a factor.
In creating clumping and blockages in the kidneys. But there's a whole other side of this when it comes to infections and it comes to toxins that are in the kidneys that are so harmful to the kidney tissue that your body intuitively is walling them off inside of a calcium barrier, which then again on a CT scan and ultrasound looks like a stone.
Let's talk about infections first. One, actually, one of our our colleagues, Dr. Motley, we saw he was talking about this. strep is something that I think a lot of people don't realize the aftermath that can happen. I know personally for me, I had a lot of strep as a kid. I think a lot of people that are in their 40s, that was a thing. not many of us got our tonsils out. Nowadays they're taking tonsils out left and right.
But strep ear infections, strep throat, which most ear infections are actually strep as well, are still a major issue in kids. The thing is, is that if you've had enough strep infections and then your tonsils were compromised, which are a lymphatic organ, that means that lymph, or I'm sorry, strep more than likely got picked up by your lymphatic system and traveled. And one of the things that they see in adulthood is that.
Strep can be in the kidneys. This is amongst many other infections because your kidneys are also the part of your urinary system. Your urinary system borders your reproductive system. So there are many women, I would say especially, that have had different vaginal infections, they've had bacterial vaginosis, they've had yeast issues, which then
Also started to affect the urinary tract because there's shared tissue, shared lymph nodes. And then that can work its way up into the kidneys, and it could be a silent infection in the kidneys. And again, your body is super smart, it's very intelligent. It's like, ooh, bad guy. We don't want that bad guy reproducing. We don't want that bacteria reproducing. We don't want that mold taking over, that fungus taking over. So let's wall it off. And the way that the body walls it off is with.
Calcium. And so the same exact concept, toxins. So I talked about the epidemic of sugar in the blood. One of the tests that we do regularly with all of our clients is we do urine-based heavy metal testing. And we also use DNA testing to look at all other types of chemicals from pesticide residues, the different industrial chemicals that are used in personal products, lotions, creams, sunblocks, et cetera. We look at
all of the gamut of different toxins. And what we find is that lately, I would say within the past two years, most of the urine samples coming back for our clients are high in arsenic. Like a very, very large percentage are high in arsenic. And another large percentage is high in lead and mercury. Arsenic is is the most common. So if you have arsenic,
in your kidneys or your urine or system in general, your body's like, this is bad, this is harmful, this is going to create problems. So again, same idea. It's going to send in a fleet and it's going to wall it off.
So there's a lot of reasons why people, one, have kidney dysfunction and two have kidney stones. There's a lot of people walking around with small kidney stones or small kidney blockages, and they are just having back pain. I always ask people when they say, I have back pain. Okay, do you have back pain on your spine? Do you have back pain on the sides of your spine? Is it your very low back? Is it kind of middle of your back?
And a lot of people are like, you know, no, it's my only my left side of my back. It's, you know, kind of like not mid back, it's not low back, it's like in that middle place. We go run their testing and they have issues with their left kidney. So there's a there's a lot of considerations because you don't have to have kidney stones to have kidney dysfunction. Because all of the variables that I talked about today, I would say the top two is.
Heavy metals and toxins being present in a lot of people's bodies because of sadly the drinking water to the food and the personal products having so many chemicals in it. And the issue with so much sugar and glucose being in most of the foods that people are eating on a regular basis, even if it's just their Starbucks, dumped donuts, coffee.
It should be good.
Dr. Nick (19:27)
No, it's pretty simple. Is that
Your body's just so intelligent, it's so amazing. And it's always trying to do its best to perform optimally, to give you the best. And so these stones, which are, you know, pretty much crystallization of different minerals, and those minerals become, you know, clumps, stones, hardened, because as we mentioned, you know.
There's a lack of flow of life, so there's no transfer, so it becomes gelatinous, stuck, like that fourth phase of water. But that's not all it is. It's intelligently winding, you know, simply put, which it probably isn't really true, is it's creating this capsule, like a biofilm, I think you said, around around these toxins. Well a biof yes, and I mean
Dr. Nicole (20:03)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yep. I didn't say biofilm, but that is what it is. Correct.
Dr. Nick (20:31)
Simply put, yeah, it's creating this capsule. But, you know, that's kind of like how we learn about an atom, you know, its phases of learning. It's really just like this interwoven mixture of, you know, th this gelatinous structure with the toxins. And what's fun is that those toxins, if we get deeper into it, that's the same toxic charge that we have within the mind. Because everything in the body is a charge, you know.
Dr. Nicole (20:38)
Don't w let's not talk about Adams right now.
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nick (21:00)
Calcium in the body has a charge. And so, you know, that's that charge is used in neurotransmitters to help function, process, carry information. my God, we can't process information. Holy shit, we have stuck stuck information. it's just it's so beautiful how the body is. So, you know, I know this sometimes we talk about topics that are like doom and gloom and very heavy.
Dr. Nicole (21:16)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nick (21:29)
But like I really want to like emphasize that your body's amazing. And it it's giving you the signals and the information, which sometimes really sucks and sometimes is very painful. I get it. But it's it's information to use to actually have a better quality life. And and that's that's the North Star. That's the you know, we can we can use it to say like, holy shit, like nobody's ever checked in parathyroid.
Dr. Nicole (21:35)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nick (21:59)
Yeah, my parathyoid's dysfunctional. That's probably the main causation of, you know, my form of kidney stones. Holy shit, yeah, I'm very rigid in my life. Like, I have a lot of judgment, I have a lot of expectations for others and myself. Like it's a everything's just
Dr. Nicole (21:59)
Mm-hmm.
I just think people, it's
like having a doctor that gives a shit, having a doctor that's also interested in div like their own personal growth inside of the expertise that they're trying to deliver as well. And also someone who also is striving to they want health for a better life. Like if your doctor doesn't is is just focused on, you know, the health of the the physical body, but doesn't understand that.
you know, the reason why someone wants better physical health is to actually live their life, then they're always going to silo out and look at problems, problems and dysfunction and say, it's probably genetics and family history and this and that. But if somebody's going to sit with you and say, I want to help you with your health so that you can overcome this and live your fucking life. So I'm going to take an interest in all of the things that could be contributing to this and really figure out your root causes.
So we don't waste any more fucking time, no more money, so that you can actually get your life back. Like that's a different intention. And obviously that's gonna yield different outcomes.
Dr. Nick (23:27)
Emotional side, it's not that we're selfless. The selfishness is we're constantly learning to better ourselves. It's you know, that's that's the fun part of you know, you you want a doctor that's trying to grow their self-awareness. So the better they can be, the better they can give. It it's if you if your doctor is only giving
If your doctor's only giving, because there's some very intelligent doctors out there that are helping a lot of people, but then they get an autoimmune condition, they get these things. And it's that they're imbalanced. So that also means that they weren't actually giving all that they could to their clients. And that's the balance between selfless and self-ish. It's it's just being authentically a better version of you every day, so you can give a better version of you.
Dr. Nicole (24:09)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. No, I a hundred percent. I I think at the end of the day, sometimes, you know, we ask the question a lot to people is, you know, why do you want your health back? And that can sound like a bizarre question, but you know, is it just because you want less symptoms or is it because you have a a vision beyond the vision? You know, do you have a like what is this gonna give you? What is this gonna allow you to do? What roadblocks is this gonna remove for you? And what are you gonna do with it?
Because if you don't have that vision beyond the vision, then it's really hard to achieve that goal. And this is why a lot of people stay stuck in their health. and, you know, this is one of the reasons why we also do an application process when we work with people, because if you come to us and say, you know, I just I just don't want to feel like this, and you don't have anything else to say, then we're probably not the best fit for you because we're gonna constantly push you out of your comfort zone and you're just gonna not be happy about it. So the mental and emotional work.
bridged with the the physical biochemical work, we think is the sweet spot for people to fully get their lives back, get their health back to get their lives back. And then being able to help them utilize this newfound version of themselves. So you know that's that's what gets us lit up and excited. So, you know, for the black sheep here, you get it.
Dr. Nick (25:39)
Thanks for being on the journey.
Dr. Nicole (25:40)
Alright guys, we're gonna close on that. Yeah, we're gonna close on that one. We'll see you on the next one.
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About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
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