If you went suddenly carnivore, you may have dropped oxalate like a bad boyfriend. Immediately stopped having anything to do with it. Ghosted it. Dropped it like a rock. Kicked it to the curb. (Insert metaphor of choice here.)
Unfortunately, that’s not the best way to break up with oxalate.
Oxalate is a human toxin. It’s also a known metabolic endpoint; we actually produce a certain amount of oxalate “endogenously” (which means from our own metabolism), but the human body has no useful purpose for it. So, once we have produced it – we need to get rid of it. We do that via secretion and excretion, which is part of the reason that our kidneys do the lion’s share of the work when it comes to oxalate.
It’s also why one of the first places humans encountered oxalate is through the (dreaded) kidney stone. Known to be one of the most painful things that we can experience (and often compared to childbirth), having a kidney stone move out of your kidneys and exit via the urine is not anyone’s idea of fun. The sharp stone causes pain at every step of the way, hurting from kidney to ureter to urethra.
However, the fact that we learned about oxalate first because of kidney stones has coloured our understanding of this food toxin to such a degree that we think if you don’t have a kidney stone, you can’t possibly have an issue with oxalate.
Au contraire, mon ami.
Oxalate can be affecting other tissues in the body. In fact, the research on oxalosis (poisoning by oxalate) and primary hyperoxaluria (genetic issues where the body itself is making too much oxalate via the liver) shows that if oxalate builds up, it can affect all kinds of tissues from your cardiovascular system to your joints to your … well, just about everywhere. Why would this be? Oxalate can be moved by several types of cell transporters in the body – and wherever it can be moved by a cell transporter, it can end up in that cell. (To read more on this topic, you can see my article on Hormones Matter here, or you can also look up my Patreon site where there is a ton of information on how oxalate can be accumulating and affecting us.)
Now, why would it be a bad thing if you just stop taking it in? After all, then it moves out of the body and all is well … right? Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work like that. Oxalate will then start moving out of the tissues where it has accumulated – and while you want that, you don’t want it doing that too quickly. Oxalate is toxic – when it leaves it gets one more chance to make you sick as it goes.
There is a lot of nuance here, but in short: reduce your oxalate SLOWLY. You really don’t want to be dropping more than a maximum of 5 to 10% of your current oxalate intake per week. That also means that you have to know about how much oxalate you are taking in, before you even start to reduce!
The single most common question I get asked is: “How do you know you have an oxalate problem?” If you feel *great* and then feel badly after lowering oxalate, you have pretty much answered the question whether you have an oxalate problem. But if you want more information, check out my blog entry here.
How do you get help? There is a big support group online, called the Trying Low Oxalates group – and you can find it on Facebook, as well as Groups.io. But the groups are big and the amount of information can be overwhelming. What do you do? One of the places where you can get more help is my Patreon site, where I do answer people’s individual questions and have lot of helpful materials. It’s a subscription group that delivers a significant amount of bang for your buck. I try to give you the context to understand the oxalate playing field, so to speak. You can subscribe at different levels, so that you can get access to the kinds of resources that you want. Find it here.
You can also get individual help by booking an appointment with myself or my associate, Ally Wilinski. Check out “Book An Appointment” in the menu at the top of the page.
Here’s to your good health! And your lower oxalate way of eating.