Low sugar/carb diet or low oxalate diet?

So this past week I was just beginning the implementation of a new, "healthy" diet. It would help with my hypoglycemia, adrenal fatigue, insulin resistance, and hopefully - hair loss. The diet is based off things I've read here and elsewhere and has four main rules: no sugar, no starch/gluten/yeast, no processed foods, no dairy. Some of the main foods I eat include spinach, carrots, celery, plain oatmeal, brown rice, and beans. I considered all these foods to be extremely healthy.

So yesterday, I suddenly read about JDP's "low oxalate diet." Interested, I research it a little bit and to my dismay, 90% of my foods are high or medium oxalate. Besides beef and eggs, there's not much low sugar/carb things on the list. Food such as sugary fruits and fruit juices, white rice, honey, and dairy won't help with my hypoglycemia (also I have a mild milk allergy).

So not knowing much about this low oxalate diet, is it worth looking into, or is my present diet going to be good enough to stick with? Just how effective is this low oxalate diet?

I'm a little short on time but, yes, oxalates are "extremely" important in my diet. My avatar is a picture of oxalates ... which is basically calcification bound to heavy metals, calcium, etc.. Oxalates and gluten are the number one and two major causes of my hair loss ... not sure which is more important. Gluten is an oxalate and I don't mean high in oxalates.

Oxalates bind to damaged tissues and also to organs such as thyroid, brain, etc.. Low oxalate diet is much more effective than Iodine/selenium in reversing hypothyroid IME. click thyroid http://www.lowoxalate.info/research.html

Low oxalate diet is used in the autism community with great success and is where most information is coming from. Parents who went on low oxalate diet had their own various health problems clear up even though they've never had any symptoms of having problems with oxalates. Oxalates cause autoimmune conditions to keep going through necrosis (exploding cell death). Oxalates mess with biotin dependent enzymes as well which is said to not be fully reversed with biotin supplementation unless going on a low oxalate diet. Messes with Vitamin K ... increases calcification as well as other vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Oxalates build-up in everybody as they age.

Oxalobacter formigenes is the bacteria that normally keeps oxalates in check but with antibiotic use and/or some other problem that hasn't been identified yet the bacteria becomes depleted and no longer exists in some people. Probiotics will also help keep oxalates in-check but not nearly as well as Oxalobacter formigenes. VSL #3 would be best probiotic in this case. If you have this bacteria you don't have a problem with oxalates or much of a problem and won't notice a difference when going low oxalate. If you don't have this bacteria you probably do have a problem regarding oxalates IMO.

You body will also create oxalates as well if deficient in some vitamins and minerals such as B6 or magnesium, etc.. Low oxalate diet is the best heavy metal chelation protocol IME. Low oxalate diet is one of the hardest diets you can imagine IME. When going low oxalate diet you'll experience what people have termed dumping which can last up to 4 years. That's basically the oxalates and heavy metals and calcification leaving your body making you feel ill ... lasts about 1 - 3 days IME. You'll also develop a ravenous appetite and crave high oxalate foods. Low oxalate diet is the hardest diet because of this IME.

Most of the information that is out there is only in relation to kidney stones unfortunately but there is a yahoo group which has a wealth of information is the leading site regarding oxalates. You have to join the site. The search menu also sucks but can click on Files for some great info. http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/Trying_Low_Oxalates/

leaky gut = a combinatation of gluten and oxalates http://www.lowoxalate.info/papers/mechanisms.html

Best thing I could say is if still having issues after going off gluten or you seem to develop more food sensitivities or sensitivites that keep changing once going off gluten, then you may have problems with oxalates. http://www.celiac.com/gluten-free/topic/41885-candida-diet/

The only reason why more people don't know about oxalates is the stigma that it's only associated with kidney stones or that those who are affected by oxalates get kidney stones ... I've never had a kidney stone or any symptom that would suggest an oxalate problem.

I'm not sure how to describe this but low oxalate diet is a diet for better looks, beauty, etc. as well.

I have a theory that oxalates and nanobacteria are the same thing.

hope this helps

By the way, if going off gluten beware of oatmeal.

Also, regarding hypoglycemia, beware of MSG/free glutamic acid. Avoid it like the plague. http://www.msgtruth.com/hypoglyc.htm It's in 95% of all processed foods. Soups get the MSG in your bloodstream more than food. Fast food and restaurants add the most MSG to food. MSG consumption doubles every 10 years.

does anyone have a link where one can see which foods are high in oxalates??

http://www.branwen.com/rowan/oxalate.htm

There is a more comprehensive list at the yahoo forum but the above gives an idea.

Is a low oxalate diet only necessary for people in pain with things such as kidney stones? Plus, is it okay to have a low carb diet? Carbs fill me more than anything else, what do you eat to replace them?

I noticed I put in a wrong link referencing celiac.com. This is the link http://www.celiac.com/gluten-free/topic/38564-oxalates-and-nightshades/

tooyoung - If you read the jdp710 post above, it will answer your first question.

As far as diet, determining what your metabolic type would be useful (your ancestral diet). Typically, if you originate from a cold climate, ancestral wise, then you'll want to avoid non-vegetable carbohydrates. On the other hand, if your ancestry originates from a warm climate you can eat carbohydrates (at least the non-refined sort).

If you're not sure, a check of blood chemistry is going to answer what you can eat and what you cannot eat. Consult this page (scroll down to acid alkaline balance explained section) http://www.immortalhair.org/physiology.htm

Or to simply this process, you can try simple trial and error. Observe your scalp condition a full week or two after eating foods recommended for protein type, mixed type or carbohydrate type.

Since we all all unique, one man's poison maybe another one's food.

thx jdp for the links!

Cs, thought I'd let you know you've coded the "www.bloodph.com" link on your physiology page wrong.

Your physiology page says Candida can be caused by steroids, do simple asthma inhalers count towards this?

You mentioned cold climates are often more suited to non-vegetable carbs, could you give me a few examples please?

tooyoung - Thanks for letting me know (just fixed it).

I hope I said that cold climates are not suited for non-vegetable carbohydrates.

If your triglycerides read above 100 when you eat more than a few fruits per week, it means your blood chemistry is not suited for consumption of non-vegetable carbohydrate.

Oh yeah, sorry I'm being completely retarded today. As I really cant afford those triglyceride tests shall I just stick to eating veg, meat, fish and some fruits?

JDP-

Ive been trying to understand how low oxalates remove the heavy metals. I understand that they bind to heavy metals, but how would consuming less oxalates result in more metals removed?

1....,

Here's some info regarding heavy metals and other information that I copied from the low oxalate diet yahoo forum

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We know that oxalate itself is a chelating agent and it also binds, in
highly insoluble form, both lead and mercury. These ions are still
attracted more to thiols, but where they end up may have more to do with
what captured them first, so we have wondered if these metals got
incorporated into crystals that were mainly calcium oxalate, and thus
"hidden" from the thiol chelators, but when the crystal broke apart, the
more soluble heavy metal may have been now accessible.

This could mean that when the diet is heavy with oxalate when someone has a
leaky gut, that it changes where the metals will go. According to a
review of the literature I did years ago, most of the mercury gets tied up
in the lysosome of cells still bound to metallothionein. That means it
isn't on the cell surface or in the cytosol still impairing enzyme
activity, but most of it is just royally stuck, with its main effect being
impairing the recycling of sulfur in the lysosome. A lot more of this needs
to be researched in the laboratory in animal studies.


Yeast Overgrowth

It is likely the tie to yeast infections involves a problem in the immune system and its ability to recognize yeast overgrowth and respond. Oxalate is known to impair carboxylase enzymes producing symptoms equivalent to biotin or biotinidase deficiency. The literature on those conditions is clear that when carbxylases are impaired, it is easy to get runaway problems with yeast. Perhaps this explains why some people on the low oxalate diet would lose this inhibition, resulting in a loss of their tendency towards chronic candidiasis. If this reduction of yeast doesn't seem to be working in the first months of LOD when "dumping cycles" may come more frequently, then it certainly might make sense to increase the level of biotin in the diet (with a supplement that furnishes biotin in mgs rather than mcgs) to see if that also helps keep back yeast by enhancing carboxylase activity. For a more thorough explanation of biotin-dependent enzymes and processes that we now realize may suffer inhibition by oxalate see page.309-310 in the Defeat Autism Now! manual and search the archives for biotin at Trying_Low_Oxalates.



he association of hyperoxaluria with pain in tissues all over the body has
been explored in research by Dr. Clive Solomons, a connective tissue
researcher working together with the Vulvar Pain Foundation (VP
Foundation). That collaboration over many years learned that any tissue
which has been injured may be a site where oxalate may cause additional
damage and pain and destruction of tissues. Those observations make sense
in light of scientific studies that find oxalates add much additional
oxidative stress to tissues and that their presence may further activate
inflammatory cascades. An injury to a tissue is an invitation to
crystallization because this sort of crystal begins by calcium binding and
then oxalate binding to a type of phospholipid (phosphatidyl serine) that
is ordinarily on the inside of membranes and not accessible. That type of
phospholipid may be exposed on the outside of membranes when there has been
tissue injury, and that begins the process of adding more and more calcium
oxalate to that crystal.

You will find that most doctors know about calcium oxalates because of
kidney stones, but the levels of oxalate in the urine or diet do not
perfectly predict the risks for such stones. Curiously, men are about
twice as likely as women to form stones and there are also racial
differences and only some people with higher oxalates form these stones.

A compilation of advice for using the Low Oxalate Diet


Oxalate is a highly reactive molecule that is abundant in many plant foods, but in human cells, when it is present in high amounts, it can lead to oxidative damage, depletion of glutathione, the igniting of the immune system's inflammatory cascade, and the formation of crystals which seem to be associated with pain and prolonged injury. Ordinarily, not much oxalate is absorbed from the diet, but the level of absorption has to do with the condition of the gut. There is a lot of medical literature showing that when the gut is inflamed, when there is poor fat digestion (steatorrhea), when there is a leaky gut, or when there is prolonged diarrhea or constipation, excess oxalate from foods that are eaten can be absorbed from the GI tract and become a risk to other cells in the body.

We quickly learned that people who had been eating a very high oxalate diet before getting on the low oxalate diet may experience a temporary worsening of symptoms that we think represents oxalates leaving cells where they were sequestered before and having biological effects. This process of oxalate release has been described in genetic hyperoxalurias where the source of the oxalate was metabolic rather than from the diet, but the process is likely to be the same. On the far side of these periods that we've started to call "dumping", improvements were noted to occur in the genetic hyperoxalurias.

This document will summarize the best advice we have accumulated so far regarding what helps in the management of this diet.



As you plan to begin the diet:

Before starting the diet, it is a very good idea to start looking at lists of low oxalate foods and compare that to the diet that the child has been eating. Use that to assess whether the child has been eating a normal diet or a very high oxalate diet.

The VP Foundation has printed a book called The Low Oxalate Cookbook, Version 2 which can be bought from the web at the following address:

http://www.vulvarpainfoundation.org/vpfcookbook.htm

This book is extremely helpful, as its food charts are more complete than other lists you will find on the internet or in books. This cookbook lists oxalates in mg per serving and per weight. It may take weeks to get this shipped to you, so ordering this book is something you might want to do early. Wellness Pharmacy also may have copies and may be able to ship faster and charge it to a credit card: http://www.wellnesshealth.com/. They also sell the probiotic VSL#3.

If someone has been eating a very high oxalate diet, especially for a long time (months to years), his symptoms at the beginning of the diet may be surprisingly negative. It may be best in such a person to cut out the extremely high oxalate foods first for at least a week before starting to eliminate the medium oxalate foods. This way you can work your way gradually into a completely low oxalate diet.

Be sure as you plan what you will buy and serve, that your food choices are going to be providing adequate nutrition. Many grains are high oxalate, so that when they are removed from the diet, it may be more difficult to keep the calorie count high enough.

The following is a very general guideline for calories in children, but please get specific information from your doctor.

Ages 2-6: 1,600 calories per day
Ages 6-12: 2,200 calories per day
Teen girls: 2,200 calories per day
Teen boys: 2,800 calories per day

The amount of oxalates for an adult on a low oxalate diet should be between 40-60 mg a day on a 2000 calorie diet. Please keep the proportions of oxalate to calories similar to this; ie., 33-50 calories for each milligram of oxalate.

Listmates have noticed that it seems very important with the low oxalate diet to supply the gut with flora that can degrade oxalates that begin to be released, especially because one of the routes oxalates will take as they leave the body is through the intestine. If there are oxalate-eating microbes present in the colon, then this process will be easier. We have found the best probiotic currently on the market has been VSL#3, which was developed for ulcerative colitis and pouchitis and can be purchased on the internet. Since it may take some time to get your order delivered, ordering this as soon as possible will make it easier to start the diet. Some parents have made yogurts from coconut or goat milk adding VSL#3 to the culture. Soon, we hope the prescription probiotic for the anaerobe oxalobacter formigenes will be available which is now in development and should work even better.

It also is important before beginning the diet to have on hand calcium citrate, magnesium citrate, and the antioxidants Vitamin A & E. Vitamin C is not used as an antioxidant on this diet because a large proportion of vitamin C appears to be converted into oxalate over a period of about one to two weeks or longer. The Vulvar Pain Foundation, with much experience in tracking oxalates in patients, recommends keeping Vitamin C intake at or below 150 mg/day.

Many find it useful to have ready some pH testing strips so they can see if the diet is changing urinary or salivary pH. Some have noticed big swings in pH during the regressive periods, and there are ways to address this by choosing foods that help move the pH up or down. These websites might help:

http://www.ctds.info/acidic-foods.html
http://www.care2.com/channels/solutions/food/1371
http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/acid.html
http://altmedicine.about.com/od/popularhealthdiets/a/alkalinediet.htm

Occasionally, the regressive periods can be so severe that it can effect work or school. For this reason, if you have been high oxalate for a long time, it may be a good idea to begin the diet a few days before a break (during what we call the "honeymoon" or the first few days of improvement. This way the onset of negative symptoms, if there is one, will hit during the time off.

Supplements and other things that help during the diet:

Arginine: Important for replenishing nitrous oxide that helps to reduce oxidative damage from oxalates

Taurine: important for making bile acid taurocholate which limits absorption of oxalate; take if stool turns yellow

Vitamin A: Important for helping to close the leaky gut and important as antioxidant

Vitamin E: Important as an antioxidant

Lipoic Acid (ALA): Works for some, not for others; important antioxidant and can prevent some endogenous production of oxalate

NAC (N-acetyl cysteine): Important for restoring glutathione that gets depleted by oxalate; sometimes there are negative reactions

Lipoceutical glutathione: Helps restore glutathione; helps reduce metabolism of glycolate to oxalate; helps behavior on diet (meltdowns) for some children. This is available at Wellness Pharmacy: http://www.wellnesshealth.com/

Lemon juice: Helps with digestion when given before eating and may help balance pH issues when acidity is a problem

Antihistamine: Oxalate may cause histamine release so this counters that . Do not use an antihistamine formula that includes a decongestant.

Thiamine and magnesium: Important for keeping meat from being metabolized towards oxalate; helps in mitochondrion

Pantothenic acid or CoEnzyme A: Important to keep from making oxalate by glycolate cycle in microbes and us.

Vitamin B6: Important for preventing metabolism of food to oxalate

Citrate (calcium or magnesium): May prevent crystalization of oxalate and may help break down crystals already formed

Calcium: Important to take before meals to bind to oxalate and prevent its absorption: timing critical to this effect!

Magnesium: Can be depleted by oxalate and may help with constipation and may bind oxalate

Lipase or ox bile: May help if steatorrhea is leading to excess absorption of oxalate

Epsom salts baths: Can be calming; occasionally may cause rashes but this may not be a bad thing, as it may be helping get rid of oxalate in the skin

Bicarbonate: sodium bicarbonate or Alka Seltzer Gold can help with behaviors

Zinc: May be depleted by oxalate; response and need for zinc seems to change rapidly on diet; play with dose

You may want to cut back on:

Vitamin C: It can be metabolized to oxalate. The effect may be delayed by as much as two weeks.

Fish oils: If there is poor fat digestion, this may cause more absorption of oxalate. Try it with and without to see which is better. The vitamin D in some fish oils may be a problem for some children.

Vitamin D: Vitamin D may cause enhanced absorption of unbound calcium in the gut, and this can lead to more free oxalate being absorbed from food. For this reason, calcium taken at the beginning of meals for the purpose of binding oxalate should not include added vitamin D. Calcium taken away from meals may contain Vitamin D.

Iron: Some have seen improvements in iron status on diet; may be needed at the beginning

Nystatin: This may possibly keep the gut leaky through effects on the membrane that lies at the at the tight junction. Try eliminating it and see if that works better.

PEG compounds like glycolax or miralax: These may be converted with the help of microbes into oxalate. Especially discontinue if you see symptoms.

Other supplements or medicines: Needs for supplements tend to change on this diet. Many find that they are able to eliminate parts of their supplement program gradually, including anti-yeast strategies. Others find their gut heals so well that they do not any longer require gastrointestinal medications. Work this out with the help of your child's doctor.

Do not be surprised if:

1. You have a temporary worsening or onset of urinary issues like penis pain, redness, urinary frequency or urinary urgency.

2. Strange rashes appear you have not seen before; check website photos for comparisons with other listmates using diet This can include livedo reticularis, which is an inflammation of blood vessels that makes them show up vividly in the skin, looking a little like a roadmap.

3. Oxalate crystals can cause gum problems, and in rare cases can lead to reabsorption of the roots of teeth, which starts to make the teeth become loose. If symptoms of this type begin, you may need more antioxidant protection.

4. Onset of worse symptoms....These may be caused by oxalates circulating that were in cells. This will pass, but it can be a really difficult time. Read listmate reports for encouragement through this period but supplements may help and probiotics help as well. Do work closely with your doctor until this time passes if it gets severe.

5. You see an onset of diarrhea including sometimes very sandy stools and stools with black specs. (This may be oxalate, but we don't yet have stool testing to confirm that.)

6. Rarely, infections you had a long time ago may reappear. It may be that in the past during infections, oxalate crystals formed around the bacteria, and the bacteria was later liberated when the crystals broke down under the influence of the diet. This will need to be studied, but this mechanism has been noted when oxalate crystals have formed around e. coli.

7. Negatives are generally positives in that these symptoms shouldn't show up in someone unless they have had an oxalate problem, and these bad periods seem to be followed by resolution of issues that were problems before.

8. Your may find you are willing to eat foods you have avoided before and that you will stop craving high oxalate foods.

9. You may develop a ravenous hunger during "dumping" stages, but you may find you will end up satisfied with less food after being on the diet for some time.

10. If you are doing this diet in a child, you may find your child who has not grown for a long time suddenly has a growth spurt. This is consistent with medical literature which found that those with hyperoxaluria from a defective liver that makes too much oxalate would experience growth problems but these would largely resolve after liver transplant,

11. Your 24 hour oxalate test may still measure within the normal range if you have problems in your sulfur or sulfate chemistry. These issues may make it where oxalate has trouble collecting in kidney tubule cells so that it can leave through secretion into the urine. This issue is being studied. Also, you may just have periodic hyperoxaluria, meaning the oxalate is only high at certain times of day. The VP Pain Project found many people benefited from a low oxalate diet who only had this periodic hyperoxaluria, but who tested within normal ranges on a 24 hour test.

Useful substitutions:

Most flour substitutes for gluten are high oxalate. Try coconut flour or pumpkin seed flours. These do not work for everyone. Many have had success with rice flour. If SCD before, try introducing just a little rice flour in some other food and gradually work up to cooking with it and using regular rice. Many do stay SCD while LOD, and there is a lot of help for doing this from other parents, but it does narrow the food choices and makes getting enough calories a challenge.

Most milk substitutes are high oxalate, such as brown rice milk, almond milk, potato milk. Some have had success with either goat milk or coconut milk.

Don't be afraid that the low oxalate fruit will kick off candida. This doesn't seem to happen in most children. . In fact, many children find that their tendencies to have dysbiosis and yeast infections will go away on this diet.


Disclaimer: We are assuming that those attempting this diet are under the care of a physician, and we also advise you to talk to your physician about any problems you encounter that could benefit from his or her professional advice. The dietary advice listed here is not medical advice, but many things we do in life have medical implications. Keep your doctor in the loop, for he is there to provide oversight .

Why are some children with autism
trying and responding to a low oxalate diet?

Many months ago, a lady spoke to me who was familiar with autism, and she had a chronic pain condition which had been researched by a scientist named Clive Solomons. She told me how Dr. Solomons' research had found that tissue pain may be associated with having high urinary oxalates (called hyperoxaluria), and she told me that he had also discovered that this pain might diminish on a diet restricted to include only low oxalate foods. Other scientists had studied how oxalates find their way to tissues that are damaged and why they stop in those tissues and form crystals and cause oxidative damage that may cause additional pain. She wanted to know: Could a mechanism involving oxalates be prolonging gut issues and pain in children with autism?

I began examining the literature on oxalates and found that scientists have described a condition called enteric hyperoxaluria that develops when the bowel is inflamed, such as in the conditions ulcerative colitis and Crohns disease, and these are very similar to autistic enterocolitis. Hyperoxaluria may also develop whenever there is poor digestion of fats (steatorrhea) such as happens in celiac sprue, or it may also develop when excess oxalates are easily absorbed through a "leaky gut". Could the gut issues in autism be associated with hyperoxaluria as well?

There are many links between oxalates and known biochemical problems in autism, and oxalate problems are improved by many already successful autism therapies. You may remember that many years ago Dr. Bernard Rimland was involved in many studies that showed B6 was a very effective therapy in autism. We have known B6 was important in the conversions along the sulfur pathway, yielding cysteine, glutathione, taurine and sulfate. All of these molecules may be at abnormal levels in autism but they also have specific roles in the oxalate chemistry. An enzyme called AGT directs the precursor of oxalate into less harmful directions, but this enzyme will fail when pyridoxine (Vitamin B6) is deficient. The result is that other enzymes take over and they produce excess oxalates. One of those enzymes, glycolate oxidase, is inhibited effectively from making oxalate by alpha lipoic acid, which many with autism have used as a chelating agent. Oxalate production is ordinarily restricted by other sulfur molecules like cysteine and glutathione when they bind to oxalate's precursors, but these "thiols" cannot protect us from oxalate production when they themselves are deficient.

Oxalates cause oxidative stress and lower glutathione levels, and lead to a high GSSG:GSH ratio. These problems are exactly what Jill James found when she examined the sulfur chemistry in autism. A related molecule called an oxalyl ester will complex with thiols in a way that regulates some hormones and also influences a major enzyme that recycles glutathione in the kidney. All of these common threads with the sulfur metabolism leave us with the haunting question: To what degree are the sulfur compounds in children with autism tied up with high oxalate or its precursors, removing sulfur compounds from the ability to do their other jobs?

Oxalates form crystals with certain amino acids, such as beta-alanine. They also crystallize with calcium, removing that calcium from other uses. This is why hyperoxaluria might lead to osteoporosis or delays in bone or tooth maturity. Citrate, zinc, magnesium and Vitamin A protect us from forming oxalate crystals, but oxalates make us waste zinc but not copper into the urine, and that may cause copper/zinc imbalances. Some bacteria use oxalates for fuel, but other fungi and bacteria may themselves generate more oxalates as a response to metals like zinc, copper, and cadmium. In fact, oxalates are recognized chelating agents. How do they fit in with heavy metal issues in autism?

Since there is so much evidence of potential associations, we had to consider that oxalates could be a major issue in autism. We decided to test seven children with autism for high oxalates, selecting our candidates from children who seemed to have pain or behavior problems with sudden onset or they had urinary problems like the ones associated with hyperoxaluria in other conditions.

The testing we used on the seven children worked this way: we collected a new sample every time the child urinated for 24 hours, and Dr. Solomons’ lab tested for bound and free oxalates. When we got the results back, it was easy to see that there were big swings in the oxalate levels which you would expect to find with enteric hyperoxaluria. Only one child had levels that were steadily very high. For most of the children, their oxalate level doubled at certain times of day. These high levels seemed to occur in the urine collection that followed the time of day when the children were having pain or behavior issues. Because of these variations, we concluded that the standard 24 hour oxalate tests that are used to identify stone-related kidney disease may not always catch the children whose oxalates are coming from the diet because their levels may be normal at times of day that are not influenced by meals. We also concluded that children with varying levels would be the children most likely to benefit from the low oxalate diet. At this point, we asked the parents if kidney stones ran in the families of our test subjects. The answer was yes in most of them, but not all.

The mothers in our pilot group agreed to do a trial of a low oxalate diet, and soon things were changing in their children. One child who had urinary issues had been craving and eating citrus rind, which is a very high oxalate food. He also characteristically used a huge amount of salt on his food. After beginning a lower oxalate diet (but not yet a low oxalate diet) his urinary issues improved considerably and he stopped wanting to use the salt shaker, and this astonished his mother. Another child with a mother who has been particularly careful to exclude oxalates, found that her son rapidly lost the chronic diarrhea he had experienced his entire life, This improvement went far beyond what had changed on the early SCD diet or by medical treatment. To our great surprise, though, over the next weeks on the diet, this child also made impressive gains in speech, motor skills, and cognition, as recognized by his therapists and teachers. He also lost some lingering autistic behaviors, and grew two inches in two months. That left us with a challenge: Could oxalates be harming gut function and be creating neurological problems in autism that are not seen in genetic hyperoxalurias?

In order to find out if any such ideas were being entertained by oxalate scientists, I attended the FASEB oxalate conference, a conference which only occurs once every three years, but provides a meeting place for the top scientists in the oxalate field. There I was privileged to meet personally about sixty oxalate scientists and was able to brainstorm with many of them who will help us on this project.

There are many other organizations for diseases associated with oxalates. They have done the preliminary work on how to implement a low oxalate diet, but our autism population presents some special challenges, because children on the spectrum tend to be already on a very restricted diet. That is why I set up a yahoogroup where people can learn from each other how to manage this diet and can learn which foods have high oxalates. With this knowledge, a parent can determine if his child is eating a high oxalate diet and can watch to see if exposures to those foods seem to influence behavior, cognition, or urinary and bowel issues.

We hope that this diet will heal the gut enough that the children may be able to eat foods that needed restriction previously. A few families are finding they can expand the diet a little from where it was before the diet. New foods are being introduced that are succeeding in putting smiles on faces, for the list has some wonderfully creative cooks. We will also be discussing which supplements reduce the absorption, toxicity, or endogenous production of oxalates and will be borrowing, as much as seems appropriate, from work on other conditions where people have developed successful methods of repairing tissues that were injured by oxalates.

Unfortunately, Dr. Solomons retirement at the end of June meant he permanently closed the lab that did the testing for us. We are negotiating right now with a lab which will hopefully begin to offer the same sort of testing (with improvements) that will allow us to properly distinguish the oxalate issues in autism. As that testing comes on board, we will get better at identifying the best candidates for this diet in ways that are objective. Working with the DAN! doctors, parents will also be able to determine ways that may reduce excess oxalates the children are making themselves.

Please feel free to join those who are exploring this diet at the new yahoogroup called Trying_Low_Oxalates@yahoogroups.com. The website includes links to other organizations with experience with this diet and food lists. The members are compiling lists which will enable the reader to determine if a particular food meets qualifications for this diet or for many other diets used in the autism community. The list is also monitored by a nutritionist named Carol Simontacchi who also attended the FASEB conference with me.

We look forward to working with parents, doctors, and other researchers and organizations to see if this new area offers a promise for an even greater recovery in those with autism who are improving with biomedical treatment.

Susan Owens

Member of the DAN! Thinktank of the Autism Research Institute
Listowner of sulfurstories@yahoogroups.com
Lecturer on the sulfur system and its role in autism

jdp710 - Great info on oxalates, specially on page 1

I know that kidney stones can be prevented virtually 100% of the time with sufficient b6 and magnesium. However, I wonder to what extent supplement Mg and B6 will have on oxalate sensitive individuals.

Here is some studies on Mg & B6 relative to oxalates:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/906678

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19670811

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9563149

Thanks for the studies CS. Magnesium and B6 are very important in the low oxalate diet and is very helpful and is 2 of about a dozen supplements that help but unfortunately isn't the cure like it is with kidney stones. I dunno, maybe those with kidney stones are deficient in B6 and thus have more of a problem with their body creating excess oxalates but less of a gut issue while those who respond to the low oxalate diet have more of a gut issue and less of an issue with their body making excess oxalates/B6 deficient.

When I mean gut issues if I'm not mistaken it would be undigested fat, interaction with gluten --->leaky gut, lack of beneficial bacteria/probiotics, not enough calcium/magnesium with food that contains oxalates, etc.. I could be wrong though but that's my take why B6, magnesium, etc. doesn't work as well compared to those with kidney stones.

BTW, beta alanine/carnosine is low in those with oxalate issues as well ... beta alanine binds to oxalates just like how calcium and magnesium does.

Here's a good post from that forum.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



One of my old lectures talks about the progression of events that might
lead to celiac disease which I was shocked to discover was spelled out
incompletely in the literature some years ago in a model I had not heard at
celiac meetings. Basically,what I learned is that the downhill process
begins with damage to the glycocalyx which is the protective coating on the
top of intestinal cells. This coating is made up of a lot of
glycosaminoglycans and other sulfated molecules. From research I did in
graduate school, I discovered an area very unfamiliar to most biologists
outside of studying cartilage, and apparently completely unfamiliar to the
neuroscientists at my university. (I asked.) Back then (1996-2000) I
learned that these molecules get their secondary structure (shape) and
their function from interacting with positively charged ions. Those
positive ions bind to the negatively charged sulfate that is hanging like
leaves on branches on these glycosaminoglycan chains. The difference,
though, is that because of sulfate's attraction to ions like calcium, it
makes these molecules dependent on the presence of ions like
calcium. The loose slinky-like "arm" of the glycosaminoglycan chain is
drawn tight by the presence of these ions, and that makes the glycocalyx
shrink up to become more dense. Think of it like tiny pieces of velcro that
are built in on a slinky that don't attract each other (actuallly repel
each other) but calcium is like little balls of fuzz that would link to the
velcro on adjacent rings, and that would tie up the slinky to be
tight. This change in the glycocalyx also changes the activity of
molecules like the enzymes that grow out of the intestinal cell surface and
are also occupying the same space. These enzymes are needed there to break
down the peptides that have been produced by the proteinases that chop up
big proteins into smaller pieces in the lumen or center of the gut.

Scientists have found that when the ions are stripped from the glycocalyx,
that this covering and protection to intestinal cells actually breaks
down. When it breaks down, then molecules that are supposed to be acting
on the food may start to attack instead the cell surface, and this may be
the beginiings of the kind of damage that leads to the autoimmune side of
celiac disease. You can see that if the peptidases weren't working to chop
longer peptides into dipeptides or tripeptides, then this would allow
longer immunogenic peptides from gluten to find their target. This is what
one study said:

>The serine-containing group of peptides appear to be essentially cytotoxic
>in animal models of coeliac disease, whilst the tyrosine-containing group have
>the capacity to initiate damaging immunological reactions in patients with
>coeliac disease.
>Both types of activity in coeliac disease are only possible if there is
>defective
>digestion of the active peptides, as mucosal digestion studies indicate.
>Amino Acids (2001) 21: 243–253

What was so remarkable to learn is that the breakdown of the glycocalyx
comes first before anything that has to do with the genetics of celiac
disease. But also remarkable to find out was that this breakdown has
already occurred in a lot of other conditions that do not produce celiac
disease, but would lead to the leakiness of the gut and the development of
food allergies and maybe other problems, too.

The specifics of what happens then is perhaps geneticially determined, but
exposure to other food antigens (other foods) may be the trigger to ending
up with flattened villi in people with different genetics. So, it isn't
just gluten! There are only a few studies mentioning this flattening
occurring with other foods or from other exposures (like drugs), but you
won't hear about this in celiac circles, because the "establishment" feels
that gluten is "it". That is what was so ironic to me about attending a
HUGE celiac conference a few years ago with one of our listmates who lives
in NY, where I found out that there were many PROBLEMS in celiac disease
that were not solved by the gluten free diet, and this related to the
development of "comorbid" diseases that were quite serious and could be
what actually leads to your end. These scientists were presenting lots of
epidemiology on this, but with no ideas as to WHY these conditions may
persist despite a gluten-free diet. Nobody talked about OXALATE, even
though there is a lot on oxalate in celiac disease in the literature. No
suspicion = no research. One of the reasons I'm here with you is to drum
up enough evidence that says it would be gross negligence for scientists
not to investigate these things!

So, Marcia, guess what would strip the calcium from the glycocalyx....
Oxalate from food! Also, undigested fat which is often a comorbid
condition in celiac disease. Thirdly, more oxalate will show up in this
gastrointestinal real estate that may come from the gastrointestinal cells
secreting oxalate to the gut in what is more than likely a very normal but
not yet characterized process. (The couple doing research on intestinal
secretion are kidney doctors, so they are only looking at this mechanism
related to kidney disease, so they are not really trying to find a normal
process, or a process that occurs in people without kidney
disease,) Anyway, intestinal secretion of oxalate that was building up in
blood and tissues would be a wonderful way to detoxify from body oxalate
when the gut is populated by oxalobacter formigenes and other oxalate
degrading bacteria, but it wouldn't be happening when there was inadequate
flora to metabolize the oxalate.

Of course, I am talking about intestinal "dumping", but the scientists in
the oxalate field right now don't believe in dumping....yet. I'm trying to
educate them with your stories!

This is what one of them said to me this week, who doesn't believe in our
listmate stories about the sandy stool, because he hasn't heard of it from
anyone else in his field, and he hasn't seen these sandy stools with his
own eyes.
He said:

>Everyone has oxalate crystals in their stool at a concentration, normally
>ranging from 0.2 - 2 mg/g. that is, 0.02 - 0.2%by weight of the stool.
>This low amount and because such crystals are tiny suggests they do not
>cause a visually grainy stool. If they were on a low oxalate diet it is
>less likely. We don't look for crystals in stool and only do oxalate
>measurements.....I would suspect if some individuals benefit from a low
>oxalate diet, it is likely to be for some reason other than its low
>oxalate content.

After readin his comment, is it any surprise that scientists in the field
have never used the low oxalate diet except to give people with kidney
stones a one-page list of high oxalate foods? Scientists do not change
their minds easily, especially if they are at the top of their
fields. That is just the way it is.

So, Marcia, getting back to your story. Can you tell us the progression of
these conditions in yourself? Which problem came first, and how long was
there between the appearance of these conditions? Were there other
oxalatish things that occurred even earlier, like pain, or rashes, or
whatever you've heard listmates talk about here?

I hope you've read the mechanisms paper that is available
here: http://lowoxalate.info/papers/mechanisms.html because it gets into
more things like the role of zonulin.

jdp710 - Very interesting, and that said, this seems to be more proof that just avoiding gluten or taking gluten digesting enzymes maybe a false sense of security.

For tea I had chicken, celery, potatoes, carrots, peas and gravy, yet my scalp is itching as hell, more than it has for ages, why is this?

Hey CausticSymmetry,

Yeah, avoiding gluten may be the answer for some but not for everybody ... especially those who seem to have changing food sensitivities or those who haven't fully recovered after going off gluten.

tooyoung,

Probably the gravy. Could also be the salt content in the gravy .... aldosterone.

If that's not it, then it could be the potatoes.

Also, could be the salt content if the peas, carrots, etc. are canned.

For the itching, make sure you use a good topical to fight the fungus, bacteria, etc.. Should alleviate most of it. Also, if you notice increased itching after eating foods high in salt then focus on aldosterone ---> magnesium, potassium, lead, etc..

jdp710 - What topicals do you recommend? Whats wrong with potatoes? Do the magnesium, potassium and lead you mentioned work against the aldosterone?

Topicals are very important but mostly when first combating MPB. The other forums use Nizoral but there are better options. One good option is this which is said to outperform Nizoral http://www.immortalhair.org/topicals.htm

Regarding potatoes, it's high in oxalates. Oxalates can cause dandruff. Plents of people mentioning dandruff disappeared once going on a low oxalate diet. The same fungus/yeast that causes dandruff is probably in most that have hair loss as well.

Regarding aldosterone, CS posted an awesome reply here and his response deserves to be a sticky as it's that important while keeping in mind that food sensitivities can prevent retaining adequate levels of potassium and phosphate issues also are correlated with low potassium

https://immortalhair.forumotion.com/natural-hair-regrowth-forum-f1/is-minoxidil-actually-harmful-t2796.htm

another good quote on oxalates that I've posted previously


"Losing hair can be related to one of two issues that could be made worse by
oxalate. The first is a biotin deficiency which can be brought on by a
history of antibiotics or by being high in oxalate. Oxalate actually
inserts itself in enzymes that use biotin as a cofactor, and greatly
impairs their activity.

The other possibility is that you are losing hair because you are low in
thyroid hormone or thyroid activity .... Oxalate can collect and does collect in the
thyroid in virtually everyone if they live long enough. It is a cumulative
thing, like cholesterol building up in blood vessels. Oxalate being there
can impair the making of thyroid hormone."


"Oxalates are related to metals – they are very potent in their chelating abilities. Not sure how this relates to DMSA or DMPS, but ALA [alpha lipoic acid] seems to reduce oxalates. So while we might have thought it was a great chelator, perhaps the effect we’re seeing is from the reduction of oxalates. ALA is anti-oxalate, noone has ever thought to test the other chelating agents to see if they are."

"Oxalates deplete glutathione in a big way. Oxalates may be changing the trafficking of zinc. Oxalates and inflammation seem to go hand in hand, more research needs to be done on oxalates and inflammation. Oxalates induce oxidative stress and reduce glutathione, could possibly affect TH1 to TH2 shift"

"Oxalates are oxidants. And oxidant creates oxidative stress. Molecules that are not supposed to be bound together get bound together during oxidative stress. Proteins work differently when under oxidative stress."

"Taurine is anti-oxalate, give more taurine. Oxalates bind beta-alanine. If your son is urinating constantly, this diet might very well help."

"Acidophilus is an oxalate eating species, but if you get too much oxalate it kills off acidophilus"

"We’ve been experiencing with calcium citrate and magnesium citrate, which are both anti-oxalate. The calcium is important in the gut – if there is calcium in the gut, the oxalates won’t be reabsorbed in the body, they’ll stay in the stool" [maybe this is why moreless protocol from curezone works for some].

jdp710 - This description of oxalates explains quite a bit, as in many studies I read (not fully understood) with respect to how some chelating agents work.