Diet for oxalates in urine

A diet for oxalates in urine is the main method of treating symptoms that have caused an increased content of the above substances in the excreta.

Oxalates in urine are oxalic acid salts found in tests. They are ammonium or calcium compounds. Increased excretion of oxalates by the body occurs in a disease called oxaluria.

The causes of oxaluria can be primary and secondary.

Primary causes include hereditary factors. Namely, the disease oxalosis, which has a genetic nature. It manifests itself in the disruption of oxalic acid metabolism in the body. The disease provokes symptoms of urolithiasis, and can later develop into renal failure.

Secondary oxaluria is acquired in nature and is caused by several factors:

• Consuming large amounts of synthetic vitamin C.
• Increased content of foods rich in oxalic acid and vitamin C in the diet.
• Existing chronic diseases that increase the amount of oxalates in the urine: diabetes mellitus, pyelonephritis, inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease.
• An increase in the content of oxalates in urine can be observed with a deficiency of vitamin B6 in the body.
• Operations performed on the intestines can also provoke an increase in the excretion of oxalates in the urine.

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Diet for oxalates in the kidneys

In order for oxalate stones to dissolve, you need to adhere to the following dietary conditions:

1. The diet for oxalates in urine should contain plenty of fluids. Therefore, the patient needs to drink at least two and a half to three liters of liquid per day. Two liters of this should be pure still water.
2. Limit the amount of food consumed at one time. Meals should be fractional, 5 times a day.
3. At the very beginning of the transition to dietary nutrition, you should try to eat once a day.
4. When eating a single meal, you need to drink freshly prepared juices, which help remove oxalates from the patient's kidneys. The amount of juice per day should be at least one and a half glasses. Freshly squeezed juice is taken immediately after preparation, 20-30 minutes before meals.
5. After limiting the amount of food consumed and introducing freshly prepared juices, you need to take a decoction of chickpea flour for several days. An infusion of radish seeds or leaves is also suitable. The proportions for preparing a decoction and infusion are: one tablespoon of dry mass per one glass of water.
6. It is necessary to drink diuretic infusions so that the removal of oxalate stones from the kidneys is successful. All diuretic teas are taken one tablespoon and brewed with one glass of boiling water. Then the infusion is left for half an hour in a thermos and taken warm, half a glass 30 minutes before meals three times a day.

Here are some diuretic infusions that are recommended for patients:

• take corn silk, mint leaves and goldenrod in equal proportions;
• useful mixture – dill seeds, knotweed grass, strawberry leaves;
• collection - horsetail herb, dill seeds, strawberry leaves.

7. Dairy products should be consumed only in the first half of the day.
8. The caloric content of the daily diet should be no more than 2800 - 3000 calories.

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What is the diet for oxalates?

If the patient has an elevated oxalate content in the urine, changing the diet in this case is an effective measure to restore health. In secondary oxaluria, diet is one of the main methods of treatment.

To answer the question: “What is the diet for oxalates in urine?”, we need to focus on the principles of therapeutic nutrition when this disease appears.

• Products containing oxalic acid and promoting its formation in the body are completely excluded from the patient’s diet.
• It is necessary to introduce into the patient’s diet foods that promote the intensive removal of excess oxalic acid from the body.
• Vegetable and fruit juices help remove oxalic acid from the body. Therefore, it is recommended to take them during the day, as well as late in the evening. This measure prevents the crystallization of salts in the patient's urine.
• It is necessary to saturate the patient's body with B vitamins. Patients especially need vitamin B6. Foods that contain a large amount of this vitamin should be included in the patient's daily menu.
• If you have oxalates in your urine, you should limit your daily salt intake to ten grams. It is best to choose low-salt options from ready-made products.
• The diet for oxalates in urine is followed for two to three weeks. Then you need to take a break for three to four weeks, during which you need to use diet No. 5, which limits carbohydrate consumption to 300 grams per day. After this, you need to resume the recommended diet for oxalates in urine and alternate it with breaks until the patient's condition improves.

Oxalate Diet Menu

Specialists have developed diet menu options for oxalates in urine. Therefore, patients do not need to "rack their brains" and invent their own diet recipes. An approximate diet for three days looks like this:

Day one

• Breakfast – freshly made apple juice; a small amount of unsweetened oatmeal with dried fruit and a piece of butter.
• Second breakfast: fatty cottage cheese, a glass of kefir.
• Lunch: vegetable soup with cereals; dried fruit compote with a piece of toasted bread.
• Afternoon snack – fruit salad.
• Dinner: boiled meat with noodles; cabbage salad; fruit jelly.

Day two

• Breakfast – freshly squeezed carrot and apple juice; buckwheat milk porridge.
• Second breakfast – dried fruit compote with wheat bread croutons.
• Lunch – freshly squeezed cucumber juice; steamed lean meat cutlet; carrot and cabbage salad.
• Afternoon snack: a glass of weak green tea without sugar, a sandwich of toasted bread with butter and unsalted cheese.
• Dinner: vinaigrette without beets with sour cream; a piece of boiled fish; fruit compote.

Day three

• Breakfast – freshly squeezed fruit juice; millet porridge with grated carrot salad.
• Second breakfast - a glass of jelly and a small piece of apple pie.
• Lunch: boiled chicken; stewed vegetables; weak tea without sugar.
• Afternoon snack: lazy dumplings with sour cream.
• Dinner: baked fish; boiled potatoes; fresh cucumber and cabbage salad.

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Oxalate Diet Recipes

1. Freshly prepared vegetable juice.

Ingredients: one carrot, one non-acidic juicy apple.

Preparation:

• wash carrots and apples, cut into pieces
• put through a juicer
• drink the resulting amount of juice three times a day 20-30 minutes before meals.

2. Collections used to remove oxalates from the kidneys.

• Collection No. 1 – 300 grams of dried pear tree leaves, 100 grams of dried blackcurrant leaves. Finely chop the leaves, take one tablespoon of the mixture and brew with one glass of boiling water. Infuse for half an hour and take three times a day, half a glass half an hour before meals. The dry collection should be stored in a glass jar.
• Collection No. 2 – 200 grams of dried apples, 100 grams of dried apple leaves, 200 grams of dried pear leaves. Finely chop the apples and leaves, pour into a thermos and brew one hundred grams of the collection with half a liter of boiling water. The infusion can be drunk the next day between meals.

3. Fruit salad.

Ingredients:

• for a summer salad take one sweet apple, one pear, two apricots;
• For a winter salad you can take one banana, one sweet apple; a handful of dried apricots.

Preparation:

• wash the fruit, peel the banana and cut into small pieces;
• place the chopped fruit in a salad bowl and pour in fermented baked milk or yogurt;
• If the salad does not seem sweet, you can heat a tablespoon of honey to 40 degrees, pour it into the salad and mix well.

4. Vegetable stew.

Ingredients: four potatoes, one carrot, one onion, a quarter of a medium head of cabbage, bay leaf, one tablespoon of vegetable oil, salt.

Preparation:

• wash the potatoes, peel them and cut them into cubes;
• pour the chopped potatoes into boiling water and let them cook for 10 minutes;
• wash the carrots and grate them;
• peel and finely chop the onion;
• after the potatoes have boiled for ten minutes, you need to salt them, stir them and add carrots and onions;
• let the stew simmer for five minutes;
• finely chop the cabbage and add to the stew;
• add bay leaf and cook the vegetable stew for another five minutes;
• one minute before the end of cooking, add vegetable oil, mix thoroughly and remove from heat.

The recipes for the diet for oxalates in urine are easy to prepare, so the new diet will not cause difficulties.

The diet for oxalates in urine is not so strict that it should be followed for a limited period of time. This diet is recommended by specialists for long-term or permanent use. Health is an important resource and a guarantee of a full life for every person. Therefore, it is worth making some efforts to restore and maintain good health and vigor.

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What can you eat if you have oxalates?

First of all, attention is given to foods that help remove oxalic acid from the body:

1. Pear.
2. Quince.
3. Sweet apples.

These fruits can be eaten fresh or made into decoctions or compotes without adding sugar. You can also make decoctions from the peel of these fruits and from the leaves of the pear tree. Such drinks are good at removing excess oxalic acid from the body.

With intensive removal of oxalic acid, you need to take care of alkalizing the body. For this purpose, you need to eat the following dried fruits daily:

1. Dried apricots.
2. Prunes.

The patient is recommended to consume over two liters of liquid per day. It is best to drink the following drinks:

1. Fruit and dried fruit decoctions, fruit drinks and compotes.
2. Freshly prepared juices from vegetables and fruits.
3. Rowan juice in small quantities, birch juice.
4. Infusions of herbs and medicinal plants - peppermint, corn silk, dill, knotweed, horsetail, strawberry leaves, black currant leaves, grape leaves.
5. Mineral water Essentuki No. 4 and No. 20, Smirnovskaya, Naftusya, Slavyanskaya, Berezovskaya.

There are food products, the amount of which in the daily diet of the patient should be significantly limited. You should not completely refuse to eat them, but you can only allow them to be eaten if you really want to eat "something so tasty."

• Daily salt intake is limited to 2 grams.
• The daily intake of carbohydrates is limited.
• Sugar and honey should be consumed in moderation. Limit – 25 grams (one tablespoon) per day.
• Boiled fish, meat and poultry; or steamed dishes from them - you can eat 150-200 grams every other day.
• During the period of exacerbation, the consumption of dairy products is limited. Then, during the recovery period, you can eat the following products: milk; cottage cheese; cream; fresh yogurt; fermented baked milk; kefir; cheeses of all types, but preferably low-salt. Sour cream can be used as a seasoning for salads and other dishes.
• Eggs, one yolk per day.
• Onion and garlic.
• Milk soups.
• Eggplants.

There are foods and dishes that make up the patient’s basic diet:

• Potatoes in any form except fried.
• Vegetables – white cabbage and cauliflower, green peas, carrots, peeled cucumbers, rutabaga, pumpkin.
• Vegetable soups.
• Fruits in unlimited quantities - apricots, peaches, bananas, cherries, dogwood and those specified above.
• Melons – watermelons, melons.
• Porridges – oatmeal, buckwheat, rice, pearl barley, semolina, millet.
• Pasta and flour dishes - vermicelli, macaroni, pies made from grade 2 flour. Pasta is best eaten not as a separate dish, but added in small quantities to soups.
• Bread - wheat from second-grade flour (dried), gray, rye.
• Fish – cod (boiled or baked) and pressed caviar.
• Vegetable and animal fats. Pork fat should be consumed in the amount of 30 grams per day.
• Fish oil - one tablespoon per day.
• Walnuts, pine nuts, hazelnuts.
• You can prepare dishes using spices and bay leaves.

From all of the above, we can conclude that the patient's diet is quite rich. Therefore, having answered the question: "What can you eat with oxalates in the urine?", you do not need to go on a strict diet.

What should you not eat if you have oxalates?

If a patient has been found to have elevated levels of oxalates in the urine, it is necessary to exclude foods containing oxalic acid and its salts from the diet. The list of what you can't eat with oxalates is not so long that you will feel a strong limitation in your favorite dishes.

If oxalate levels in urine are high, the following foods should be excluded:

• Greens – sorrel, spinach, parsley, celery, lettuce, leeks, nettles.
• Vegetables – beets, radishes, horseradish, Brussels sprouts and red cabbage, broccoli, bell peppers, asparagus.
• Rhubarb and horseradish.
• Fruits and berries – gooseberries, strawberries, plums, figs, cranberries, raisins, blueberries.
• Chocolate, cocoa and all dishes that contain cocoa products.

Gelatin can promote the synthesis of oxalic acid by the patient's body. This food component contains the substance glycocol, which promotes this synthesis. Therefore, the following foods and dishes should be excluded from the diet:

• Jelly, candies containing gelatin, marmalade.
• Aspic, khash, jellied meat, jellied tongue.
• Other products that contain gelatin. To find out, you need to carefully read the product composition indicated on the packaging.

The patient should avoid eating foods that contain large amounts of vitamin C. The following should be excluded from the patient's menu:

• Citrus fruits – oranges, lemons, grapefruits and others.
• Juices made from citrus fruits.
• Rose hip.
• Black and red currants.
• Sour apples.

It is also necessary to exclude the following foods:

• Meat broths, decoctions and soups prepared with their help.
• Strong tea, coffee in any form, chicory drinks.
• Alcohol, including beer.
• Kvass and sweet carbonated drinks.
• Canned fish, smoked fish, herring.
• Sausage, ham, ham, brisket, pates.
• Veal, as well as offal – liver, kidneys, brains, bones, cartilage.
• Lamb, beef and culinary fats.
• Sour foods and dishes – sauerkraut and so on.
• Tomatoes; products and dishes that contain tomatoes – borscht, ketchup, tomato paste, tomato juice.
• Legumes – beans, lentils, peas, soybeans, green beans.
• Fried potatoes and other dishes that involved the process of frying food.
• Pickles and marinades, other canned products.
• Hot condiments and snacks, including pepper, mustard, vinegar, etc.
• Flour products made from rich and puff pastry, cookies.
• Sweets – candies, ice cream, jam.
• Mushrooms and dishes prepared from them.
• Peanut.
• Low-fat dairy products - milk, sour cream, kefir, cottage cheese. It is necessary to stop at products with normal fat content.