KidneyPal supports kidney stones in two ways: as your main kidney status, or as something you also have alongside chronic kidney disease.
If Stones Are Your Main Concern
Choose Kidney Stones in Settings → Kidney Status (or during onboarding, which then asks what type of stones you get). The app then treats you as someone preventing stones, not as a CKD patient:
- Potassium generally isn’t restricted, so it doesn’t count against your Kidney Score — unless you enter your own potassium maximum in Daily Limits, which the app then respects.
- Your default fluid number is a goal of 3,000 ml to work toward, rather than a limit to stay under.
- With Pro, oxalate tracking turns on by itself with a default limit of 50 mg per day, and calcium tracking turns on with a daily goal of 1,000 mg.
- On your diary dashboard, oxalate and calcium appear first among your extra nutrients. Only the order changes.
Under the status list you can also answer “What type of stones do you get?” — Calcium oxalate, Uric acid, or Not sure / other. If you don’t know, pick Not sure; you can change it any time.
- Calcium oxalate or Not sure: oxalate tracking stays on by default.
- Uric acid: oxalate tracking is off by default, because oxalate isn’t the main dietary factor for uric-acid stones. Calcium tracking stays on.
The calcium guidance shown there is: aim for 1000–1200 mg of calcium per day from food, spread across your meals, unless your care team advises otherwise. The tracker marks the goal as reached at 1,000 mg and never marks a day “over” on calcium by default. You can change or remove the goal in Settings → Optional Nutrients.
Picking a stone type doesn’t reset anything — your custom limits stay as they are.
If You Have CKD and Also Get Stones
Keep your CKD stage as your kidney status. Then go to Settings → Health Conditions and turn on I also get kidney stones (or tick it during setup), and choose the type.
What this does:
- With Pro, turns on oxalate tracking (unless your stones are uric acid) and calcium tracking — both as tracking only, with no limit set for you, so they never change the colour of your day.
- Puts oxalate and calcium first among your extra nutrients on the diary dashboard. Only the order changes.
- Shows ”+ kidney stones” next to your condition in the doctor report.
What it deliberately does not do:
- It doesn’t change any of your kidney limits — sodium, potassium, phosphorus, protein, and fluid stay exactly as they were.
- It doesn’t change your Kidney Score.
- It doesn’t set a calcium number or a higher fluid goal for you. With CKD, the right amount of calcium depends on your stage and on any supplements or phosphate binders you take, and the right amount of fluid is individual. The app shows this instead: ask your kidney care team for a dietary calcium goal that accounts for calcium in supplements and binders, and follow the fluid goal or limit your kidney care team has given you.
If your care team gives you a calcium or oxalate number, enter it in Settings → Optional Nutrients.
Your Switches Always Win
The automatic on/off described above only applies while you haven’t touched a switch. Once you turn oxalate or calcium on or off yourself in Optional Nutrients, the app keeps your choice, whatever your status or stone type.
Oxalate and Your Kidney Score
Oxalate is tracking-only. It never affects the Kidney Score, which is built around sodium, potassium, phosphorus, and protein. Oxalate values are estimates — use them to spot high-oxalate foods and patterns rather than as exact amounts. See Nutrient Limits for more.
