Kickas.org Forums Treatments, Drugs and Alternatives NSD and diet-related; Anyone have oxalic acid issues?

Yes, I find myself going back to dairy as well since I don't have anything else. I try to stick with the hard cheeses, maybe greek yogurt every now and then.

I know sugar is a big deal for me so try not to do that at all, even fruit.

For my smoothies, it's usually a leafy green (spinach, collard, kale), a fat (coconut oil, red palm fruit oil, avocado) fiber (chia seeds, seasame seeds) and a liquid (water, almond milk, hazel nut milk, coconut milk) and some sort of flavoring (cacoa powder, lemon).

Most of that list is all very high oxalate. Again though not sure how else I can be sure unless I just cut the foods and try and see. Broccoli is supposedly okay but I get gas everytime I eat it, same with Asparagus which is what led me to believe I have FODMAP issues. I've always had issues with the almond flour and coconut flours that everyone here seems to love so much too.

Like you, I've had adrenal tests come up very low for me hence why I eat more LSD and eat a bit of grains such as rice here and there because I need it. Going purely NSD and I start to fall apart fast. So weak, tired, etc. Your coconut curry sounds awesome, cept no peppers since nightshades came back so high on my food sensitivities list.

It is so interesting how are different bodies react.

For me personally dairy is like suicide! Last night we went out to dinner at a fabulous restaurant for my once a month piece of steak, and well, it was served on this plate laying ontop of this creamy romesco sauce. I barely let any romesco sauce touch my tongue, okay, just a little bit (so good!) and a few hours later I had hiccup convulsions, and nonstop burping. I then was up almost all night burping romesco sauce! At most a few tablespoons were eaten.

I feel back to normal now, today, thankgoodness. But it was hellacious with just that tiny bit of dairy, after not having any dairy in my body for a year.

Also grains make my body crazy too, so I am 100% grain free, yet I can eat greens like nobody's business. And I can also live on fruit for days on end. Very interesting! We definitely each know our own bodies better than anyone else though!

xo

Oh, that's right about peppers being a nightshade, I forgot about that.

Here's a link to information about homeopathic oxalic acid:

http://www.homeopathyandmore.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=413

The way they find out what symptoms a homeopathic remedy will cure is that they give a willing subjects an overdose of the item. You don't have to have all the symptoms in order to need the remedy. Some of the symptoms are very interesting.

Yeah, if you want to try cutting it out for a while you could make your smoothies from coconut milk, lemon, and chlorella. Are all three of those oils okay, I forget the total list. Cacao powder is murder for me. I think vanilla is okay. Some people don't like vanilla, though.

I may try eating some hard cheese again, in small amounts for the calcium and protein. I am thin, but when I was eating dairy I gained a lot of weight around my middle and my upper arms. I also lost the outer third of my eyebrows, which indicates thyroid issues, I don't know what the dairy had to do with that. My eyebrows came back, believe it or not, in two and 1/2 months.

Do you get abdominal pain? I have a very sharp pain in my stomach right now, don't know why.

Yea, it's very frustrating not knowing which foods are best for each of us. Everyone can be very different in how they react to different foods. Most of us are just left guessing and experimenting to try to figure things out, as our doctors usually don't have a clue! But the impression I have is that functional medicine doctors are starting to get a handle on these issues, and might be one of our best resources.

Oxalic acid is a toxin for everybody. However, if your gut is in good condition (not leaky) and you have the right bacteria in your bowels that will degrade oxalic acid before your body can absorb it, then most people can enjoy a moderate oxalic diet without any obvious problems. Some people have genetic issues that make them more susceptible to building up oxalates in their bodies. There are quite a few people that have discovered they have serious oxalate issues without ever having kidney stones.

Unfortunately, there isn't normally a quick reaction to excess oxalates in the diet. Not like reacting to food allergies or sensitivities. You can eat a high oxalic diet for many years without realizing you are creating a problem until the levels become so high that they start causing serious health issues. If the diet introduces oxalates into the body faster than the body can excrete the toxin, then the body ends up removing the toxin from the blood stream (where it is the most dangerous) and stores it in tissues all around the body.

Then it can take months and often years of eating a low-ox diet and often taking certain supplements to allow your body to release the stored-up oxalates. And when oxalates are released from various parts of the body (which happens irregularly), people experience increased symptoms. These "dumping" episodes can happen over and over again for a long period of time, with gradually improving health happening in between, as the level of oxalates in the body finally drops lower and lower.

Some foods are extremely high in oxalic acid, such as spinach, swiss chard, beets, almonds, plantains and more. One study fed one group of rats a diet where spinach was the main source of calcium, and another group a different calcium-rich green that was much lower in oxalic acid. The spinach-fed rats suffered extremely poor health and could rarely even produce babies. The other group grew just fine. So it's probably worth eating high-ox foods just occasionally, but NOT in daily large salads, smoothies, and juices. There are lower-ox foods (including some greens) that can be used more safely on a daily basis.

PS: It's Andrea's coconut milk curry:)

My goodness, you people are writing comments faster than I can read them tonight!

Just wanted to let you know that you can't test for oxalate problems the same way you do for food sensitivities. (Boo!!) It takes a very long time for the body to gradually release the toxin, as your body can only safely excrete it so fast. Releasing the toxin from body tissues into the blood stream often produces nasty symptoms, so you often feel worse before you start to feel better. This releasing often happens in irregular spurts, with no way to know when, how often, or how bad the detoxing symptoms will be. If you start detoxing too fast, you can often slow it down and reduce the symptoms by slightly increasing your oxalic intake again or using certain supplements.

The best way to "know" if you really have oxalate issues (and it tests for quite a few other issues, too) is to take an "organic acids test" from Great Plains Laboratory. It is a urine test that costs about $300.

Oh, I know! I make coconut curry many times per week too. Love them! So filling and satisyfing!!

But any ounce of real milk now makes my body convulse, apparently, at least it did last night. Real lovely!

I have a co-worker to who got super into juicing this year, and recently her hubby bought her a take-out burrito, which she ate, and then convulsive threw up all night. I had no idea just exactly how she felt until last night! Whew. She suspected it was all the sour cream & cheese, at least that is what her body told her it was.

And it was a standard burrito she used to eat all the time, last year, before she cleaned up her diet, started juicing to get rid of her constant migraines. Good news is her migraines are gone by avoiding dairy, and she like me is now addicted to veggies.

xoxo

This is kind of good news. B6 helps lower plasma oxalic acid levels.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6818036

A follow up to that is this article on antivitamins and vitamin antagonists.

http://www.rawfoodexplained.com/vitamins/antivitamins-and-vitamin-antagonists.html

See how cortisone (from stress) is antivitamin B6 and stress in general is an antagonist of the B's and C.
So you could say that stress to the adrenals (not getting enough carbohydrates, along with the other common stressors) can reduce B6 and in turn cause oxalic acid levels to rise.

Yup, that's one of the supplements often used for those with oxalate issues.

There used to be a yahoo forum for Vitamin K2 run by Catherine Tamaro. She thought that a deficiency of Vitamin K2 was responsible for excessive formation of calcium oxalate crystals in autistic children.

http://www.gutresearch.com/VitaminK.pdf

What causes the Vitamin K2 deficiency? I remember finding a syndrome that involved the thyroid and vitamin K2 deficiency, but I can't remember the name of it. It's von Willebrand (disease?) but I think it has more to do with Vitamin K than Vitamin K2.

She mentions Lyme spirochetes and I thought that was interesting. I wonder if a pathogen could be the predisposing factor to leaky gut.