What you’re getting yourself into
The favourite foods of doctors and dieticians contain highly inflammatory plant toxins that can lead to a wide cluster of health problems. If your diet is already immaculate, oxalates could be the reason you’re still struggling.
Nothing says health like grabbing a fistful of spinach and cramming it in your smoothie maker alongside some chia seeds and almond milk. Mother Nature’s finest and most benevolent ingredients, rolled into one nutritious punch that will send you into the morning’s affairs brimming with energy and self-satisfaction.
Most people would prefer I leave it at that. Because most people aren’t quite ready to talk about plant toxins. Even those that have come around to the idea that sugar and seed oils are driving the obesity epidemic.
You can take their doughnuts, you can take their bread, you can even take their cold-pressed organic rapeseed oil, but you can’t take their vegetables. Those are sacred.
So talking about oxalates is always bound to ruffle a few feathers. Imagine being scared of salad? No doubt the high testosterone men of generations ago would never have wilted at the sight of spinach. Plants are trying to kill you? Get a grip.
But here’s the thing, why wouldn’t plants try to kill you? They can’t run, they can’t fight, and they’re biologically driven to ensure the survival of their species. That’s why they have defensive toxins. 99.99% of pesticides are natural. Plants are the masters of chemical weapons. Oxalates are just one amongst many, but they could well be the one you need to be worried about.
Of that fine planetary smoothie I mentioned, all three ingredients are highly concentrated in this particular plant toxin that has the potential to assault your inside from a multitude of angles. And because the excretion of oxalates is capped, you could be dealing with the effects of that smoothie for a month to come.
This article will cover the insidious effects that oxalates can have on your metabolism, and why getting rid of them can often make things worse before they get better.
What Are Oxalates?
Around 10% of the oxalates present in plant foods end up getting absorbed in the body, often taking the form of oxalate crystals. When you see them under a microscope, you’ll get an idea of what makes them so unpleasant. They are razor sharp with an affinity for getting lodged in various tissues of the body and causing inflammation, damage, and dysfunction in the process.
High Oxalate Foods (per 1 cup serving)
- Spinach (raw): 1,510 milligrams
- Spinach (cooked): 1,312 milligrams
- Rhubarb: 1,082 milligrams
- Almonds: 441 milligrams
- Cashew nuts: 352 milligrams
- Baked potato (with skin): 194 milligrams
- Navy beans: 155 milligrams
- Beets: 152 milligrams
- Okra: 114 milligrams
- French fries: 102 milligrams
- Yam: 80 milligrams
- Rutabaga: 62 milligram
- Turnip: 60 milligrams
- Raspberries: 48 milligrams
- Bamboo shoots: 35 milligrams
- Mashed potato: 29 milligrams
- Orange: 29 milligrams
- Sweet potato: 28 milligrams
The plants make oxalates for detoxification, mineral management, and protection against herbivores. It’s not the only source of oxalates. The body produces some oxalates as a metabolic waste product. Seed oils create some oxalate due to the breakdown of linoleic acid. Collagen can produce some oxalate during the breakdown of hydroxyproline.
But while there are several contributors to the oxalate burden on the body, plant foods are the primary donor. And because they are present in abundance in many foods that are venerated by dieticians, they can be a serious thorn in the sides of people who are seemingly doing everything right, and still experiencing inflammation.
How Oxalates Cause Damage
A large part of the issue with oxalates is the fact that the body can only excrete a small amount of oxalates every day, under 50mg. Most people are eating around 200-300 mg of oxalates every day. If the ingestion and absorption of oxalates is outstripping the body’s ability to get rid of it, then it’s a prime stage for oxalate toxicity.
The Effects Of Oxalates
- Steal key minerals
- Foster systemic inflammation
- Destroy connective tissues
- Deplete glutathione, the chief antioxidant
- Cause mitochondrial dysfunction
- Cause kidney stone
The fact that oxalates can get virtually anywhere in your body means the symptoms of oxalate toxicity can be quite varied and imprecise. The effects that oxalate crystals have on your joints, for instance, can be similar to the damage uric acid crystals wreak during gout.
The only way to determine whether you are suffering from these hidden death crystals, therefore, is to stop eating high oxalate foods and wait to see if any signs of inflammation end up resolving.
Why Carnivore Can Sometimes Make Things Worse
Oxalate toxicity often doesn’t get shut down as soon as you stop eating oxalates, because the body will still need to release and excrete the existing oxalates through the circulation. For some people, this stage can cause the symptoms to significantly worsen. This is known as oxalate dumping.
Signs Of Oxalate Dumping
- Skin rashes or hives
- Mood changes
- Fatigue
- Dizziness
- Fibromyalgia
- Difficulty focusing
- Kidney pain
- Sandy eye excretions
- Mouth burning
- Cramps
- Joint pain / Joint burning
- Muscle pain / Muscle burning
- Painful bowel movements
- Sandy stools
- Leaky gut
- Urinary burning
- Urinary urgency
This would be a case where you might be better off tapering down into carnivore rather than making an overnight switch to straight-edge paleolithic life. Including a pinch of oxalate will offset the severity of the dumping symptoms, and you’ll be able to further limit the damage by including binders like biotin, calcium, and magnesium that will attach to oxalates and assist their removal from circulation.
Not everyone is going to suffer from oxalate toxicity. It will be the people with leaky gut, suppressed antioxidative capacity, and impaired detoxing pathways that suffer the most when overloading on these foods. But even if you don’t sense any unwanted reactions from eating high oxalate foods, that doesn’t mean you’re getting away with it. It’s often quite hard to notice when you’re under the effects of systemic inflammation. Because the body loves to adapt to the status quo. Your “normal” may well be a state of suppression that’s been there so long that you’ve grown to see it as your optimal healthy state.
You won’t know until you cut those foods out.
If you want to figure out the best way to set up your own metabolic revival, reach out to me on Twitter, Instagram, or sign up to my coaching programme below.
