The downside of iced tea: kidney stones

August 8, 2012

The kidneys are responsible for keeping us healthy by maintaining our blood in a state of balance. Their job is to make sure the fluid, sodium, potassium, and other nutrients carried in the blood are at the levels needed for optimal functioning; the kidneys also remove the waste products that result from everyday metabolic processes that would otherwise accumulate and poison us. These unwanted products are filtered out of the body into urine, which is then stored in the bladder until it is emptied.

Sometimes, a solid piece of material will form out of the waste products in urine; these are known as kidney stones. Very small stones may pass right through the system without notice, but larger stones may become stuck in the ureter, bladder, or urethra, (altogether known as the urinary tract), causing a blockage in the flow of urine and resulting in a significant amount of pain.

There are four kinds of kidney stones: calcium, struvite, uric acid, and cystine. The most common of these four is formed from calcium oxalate; if you have a history of this kind of kidney stone, then your doctor would have told you to avoid foods with high levels of oxalate, such as spinach, rhubarb, beets, and nuts, among others. With less oxalate in the diet,  the less chance that the body will accumulate enough oxalate to form more stones.

You would also have been told to consume plenty of fluids; the more the better. Typically, the recommendation is about 12 cups (96oz) of fluids daily. Taking in high volumes of fluids help to ensure that the urine is very dilute. Stones are less able to form in more dilute environments.

What your doctor may or may not have told you is that tea has a moderate amount of oxalate as well. Generally, people do not drink enough hot tea in a day to pose a real concern over oxalate intake, but iced tea is another story. During the hot summer months, many people choose to stay hydrated by drinking iced tea because it is low in calories, and for many, tastes better than water. High iced tea consumption is well documented to trigger the production of those painful kidney stones..

The summer can be a real challenge for the kidney-stone prone! Especially during a summer as hot as the one we’re having now, it is even more challenging just to stay hydrated, let alone to consume adequate fluid for stone prevention. But sadly, iced tea is not the way to go. Water is best, but as another alternative, you may want to consider lemonade (artificial sweetener may be wise because of all the added sugar). Lemonade made from fresh lemons (not powder) contains citrate, which actually inhibits the formation of kidney stones. Don’t confuse citrate with citric acid (Vitamin C)…high levels of Vitamin C, such as around 2000mg daily as would be found in some mega-dose supplements, are converted into oxalate!

If you have kidney stones, it is important to know exactly which kind you have. The treatment for any one of them is going to be different from the others, including both dietary interventions and medicines that may be used. Decreasing oxalate intake, for example, if you’ve got a uric acid stone isn’t going to help.

If you’d like to know more about the other kinds of kidney stones, leave me a comment. I’ll be happy to help!

 

By Renu Arora March 22, 2026
What is energy healing — really? Get an exclusive first look at Chapter 1 of Renu Arora's upcoming book and discover the spiritual foundation of lasting healing.
Tired mother sitting on edge of child's bed at night
By Renu Arora March 6, 2026
Is your child waking up every night and nothing works? Learn how healing a child through their parent found the emotional root cause—and solved it in one session.
By Renu Arora February 2, 2026
How a single moment of childhood guilt created a lifelong pattern — and how we healed it
By Renu Arora August 26, 2025
The Move That Broke Me (Literally) For the past several weeks (months!) I have been in the process of moving houses. OMG! The longer you live in one place, the more “stuff” piles up. I quickly discovered that purging under a deadline is exhausting! My advice? Do yourself a huge favor: let go of anything you haven’t used in years. Clearing clutter isn’t just good for your home, you'll feel emotionally lighter, too. Decluttering aside, after a big day of moving furniture and all the other heavy or bulky things that required a truck, every muscle in my body was sore. My back, legs, arms—even my wrist—were screaming in pain. Climbing one flight of stairs felt like scaling the CN Tower. I felt completely wrecked. At an emotional low, everything I tried took me 3-4 times as long as normal. Moving through life at half speed, I was really not myself. This was 3 weeks ago. I expected at least a few days of soreness, but weeks later the pain persisted. I hate popping pills, but I was taking BOTH Tylenol and ibuprofen every morning just to get through the day. Yikes! The Line Between Physical Healing and Spiritual Healing You might be wondering: If I’m an energy healer, why didn’t I just “fix” myself? Here’s the truth: physical injuries need physical time to heal. Muscles, ligaments, bones—they don't heal in an instant. The physical body is relatively fragile, and needs care to keep it in working order. That said, it is truly remarkable in its ability to heal. I’ve always said that if broken bones are able to knit themselves together in 6 weeks, there is really nothing in the body that should take over 3 months to heal. But when pain lingers beyond the normal healing window, it’s often tied to something deeper: an emotional or spiritual block. So, if healing doesn’t happen in that time, one should then look to a spiritual cause either preventing healing from taking place, or more often, preventing the pain from going away, even through the body itself may already be healed sufficiently to be pain free. When my pain stayed intense after two weeks, I knew there was more to it than just overworked muscles. The Subconscious Connection: Feeling “Old” Working with the subconscious means everything is symbolic. In my case, the pain and fatigue I was feeling was accompanied by a single thought: “I feel old.” That thought immediately made me think of my mother, who recently turned 93! She had just broken her calf while traveling—right in the middle of my move! While I took out time to help prepare her house so she could recover at home, with everything else going on, I felt guilty that I wasn’t doing more. Like I'm a bad daughter for prioritizing my own life ahead of my mother's. And my own pain was only exacerbating my inability to do anything about it. Healing With ART (Accelerated Release Technique) Once I recognized the feelings at the root of my issue, I used my own Accelerated Release Technique (ART) to release the guilt and shame that I had been carrying. While there was a little more to it, after about an hour of ART, the mental fatigue disappeared completely and my physical pain drastically improved. Thank heavens! While my wrist is still tender, that's on me. There has still been lifting and schlepping stuff from my old home to my new one, and this past weekend was spent setting up my son’s new space for his next few years at university in Waterloo (hence more lifting and schlepping!) so I likely have a physical injury that hasn't been given a chance to heal. The rest of me, however, feels like my old - young - self! I can run up stairs, bend, and move freely once again without pain. Yay! Why This Matters for You Pain does not have to be part of aging. The subconscious mind holds powerful keys to healing emotional pain, physical discomfort, and spiritual blocks. Once you release the hidden beliefs and emotions weighing you down, your body and mind can return to their natural state: healthy, whole, and free. I believe it is everyone’s divine right to be healthy, happy, whole, and abundant. And with knowledge of ART, you can take your healing in your own hands. Ready to Assert YOUR Divine Right to Live Your Best Life? Registration for my next ART Masterclass is now open! Pay your $250 deposit to enroll by September 1st, 2025 (midnight EST) and get the two prerequisite courses FREE: How Heal From Your Past ($199 + HST) Connecting to Your Subconscious Without Hypnosis ($19.95 + HST) Spaces are limited—secure your spot today! Join with a friend and you’ll BOTH receive $150 off the Masterclass. 👉 👉👉 Click here to register for the Masterclass 👈👈👈 Have questions? Send me a message — I’d love to hear from you! I hope to see you in class!
By Renu Arora June 25, 2025
Discover how the Accelerated Release Technique (ART) uncovered a past life trauma behind a client’s workplace exhaustion — and how rewriting that story brought emotional freedom.
By Renu Arora May 22, 2025
Even if you don't know it
By Renu Arora April 11, 2025
More important than exercise or nutrition in managing weight is the emotional connection. This is just one example of the myriad causes for excess weight.
By Renu Arora March 23, 2025
This is a story that recently took place in a class with one of my students. We had been discussing one of the most important things to take care of at the start of a session: reducing interference. When we start a healing session, we always connect with our guidance team (i.e. Spirit Guides) to make sure that they are "on board" with what we want to work on. There are a few reasons they may try to stop us. Sometimes they are merely reflecting back to us a belief system, of where we were unaware, that needed addressing. And at other times, they could literally have their own trauma being triggered, and that needs to be healed before we can move forward. Either way, without the cooperation of our guidance team, trying to solve issues can take far longer than it should because we are so vulnerable to their potential sabotage. More recently, I have added to the Accelerated Release Technique a requirement to check on the client's Inner Child as well for the very same reasons. I was demonstrating "how to start a session" using this one student as a volunteer and, not surprisingly, as this always seems to happen when I am hoping to demonstrate a new concept, we immediately got to see interference in action: my student's Inner Child decided to be a hindrance. We began the session with a particular problem in mind, but her Inner Child was having none of it! When asking if we would be allowed to receive "concise and timely answers" during the session, we received a definitive "no." Put another way, her inner child was literally telling us that she was going to put forward answers that would take us on a meandering route to our solution. Assuming that this Inner Child just needed some healing so that she would then acquiesce and step aside so we could continue to address our intended issue, I continued along that vein, finding out what the Inner Child needed. It was only a matter of a few minutes when the word "allergies" popped up and I was led to start shifting that energy type. And then it hit me. My student has mentioned in the past that she has a gluten sensitivity and that that was something she was keen to work on eventually eliminating with ART. OMG! Her Inner Child basically wanted to be able to eat a cookie! (And bread, and pie, and cake...and all the yummy foods she had felt she was missing out on.) She literally hijacked the session because that was what she wanted us to work on - and because she had the power to do so. That revelation came as class was ending, so apparently my student's homework is to work on her gluten sensitivity, or else her Inner Child will never give her any peace... And as her teacher, I can't wait to hear how it goes! Do you feel like your Inner Child might be running the show in your life? If you'd like to take back your own power, book a Discovery Call with me and I can help get you back on track. Or consider learning the Accelerated Release Technique and you can do it yourself. Click here for more details on the process.
By Renu Arora March 7, 2025
Wondering if you're crazy? You're not. You don't have a medical problem, you've got a spiritual one. And the answer to heal lies in your mind itself.
By Renu Arora January 23, 2025
So she could finally get a good night's sleep
More Posts