oxalates word most of us have not heard you can really wreck your house on sweet potatoes dark chocolate tea and things we're trusting to be safe it's very clear that oxalate would promote dementia Sally K Norton a world-renowned expert in oxalates the bestselling author of toxic superfoods your healthy diet might be making you sick and it starts with plants oxy crystals are found in this place associated with Parkinson's disease 80% of us have it in our thyroid gland that is a huge amount of it in Bones it's all invisible and to see kidney stone is the classic sign of oxalate toxicity it's probably an endstage sign so if you already have kidney stones your system is overloaded with oxal the reason I needed a tonsilectomy at age 5 was because of oxal poisoning already and then at age 12 I started getting arthritis and back pain it turns out that all of those things the arthritis the foot problems the fatigue was my healthy diet I was a healthy eater most of the oxalate that ends up in your body is from foods and from vitamins supplementation the body has no way to metabolize it or break it down or detoxify it as you're removing oxyc acid this metal key later you need more calcium you need more electrolytes you need more salts if you don't you could end up with arhythmia and end up in the emergency room with what feels like a pending stroke or heart attack why people always say spinach and kale k and spinach when they're talking oxalates I don't understand do you think a carnivore diet for 90 days is a good place to start probably not before we start I have a favor to ask on this health podcast it's our mission to spread the message about root cause healing and that means that the food that we eat has the power to heal disease and you can help with this Mission by hitting the Subscribe button cuz we know that big food and big farmer they're most likely not going to help with this Mission but you can change that and over the last year we have grown to over 200,000 subscribers but I think we know that there are millions more people that could benefit from hearing our message thank you Sally welcome thank you nice to be with you now you wrote a groundbreaking book toxic superfoods which goes against everything we've been told about what is healthy to eat and something simple as a morning smoothie chocolate and even tea can cause millions of people to have chronic inflammation metabolic disease and unexplained fatigue even when everything else is perfectly normal so in this episode Sally is going to share her Decades of experience and talk about a toxin oxalates and what foods that we need to avoid that are high in oxalates that we're probably eating every day and most importantly the safe way to remove oxalates from your body without having excessive oxalate dumping but Sally my first question why is too many oxalates so dangerous in the body well maybe the worst problem with the oxalates in the body is that the body tries to hide it and you can't always tell that it's there undermining your physiology and structures of your body so you can carry on exposing yourself to a problematic compound for years and then when it finally surfaces you have no idea that it's your healthy foods that are connected to your symptoms so usually what happens when you start feeling poorly is you would add more of the foods that are causing your problem and you get stuck in this Loop of looking for answers and you think You' got an answer for a while and then that doesn't work and that doesn't you end up wasting a lot of your life on this frustrating path looking for health that is really unfortunate and unnecessary and it's there because of our ignorance about oxalate so I wanted to talk about oxalates but I think people might not know what is an oxalate what is oxalate in the body what does it do oxalates word most of us have not heard and it's ubiquitous plants make it soil fun es make it polluted air makes it it's in our environment and it's in a lot of the foods that we think are super healthy like beets beet green spinach nuts blackberries kiwi dark chocolate tea and things we're trusting to be safe and not only safe beneficial when in fact this has this undermining factor in them this High oxalate content so oxalate is a word or oxalates is a word that encapsula acid which is the parent compound oxyc acid is this very small molecule just two carbons with four oxygen that's a pretty heavy ratio of oxygen to carbon and that little thing is the end product of oxidation the body has no way to metabolize it or break it down or detoxify it it's an end product of metabolism as well so you can generate a little bit of oxalate in your metabolism but most of the oxalate that ends up in your body is from foods and from vitamin C supplementation that's another one that's what we call a precursor molecule vitamin C degenerates into oxalate in the body so oxyc acid has this negative charge on it either one or two drops a proton has two that negative charge keates or grabs metals like calcium magnesium iron you name it Metals connect with oxalate and so oxyc acid and a metal together that's an oxalate salt they and they can get together and they can stick really hard and tight that's called an insoluble salt like calcium oxalate or they can if they're in the water they can just stay as an oxalate ion the oxalic acid ion so that little ion very easily floating in water you absorb it from the food you're eating and it gets into your bloodstream and starts causing problems because it's so reactive and it starts messing with electrolytes and damages your immune cells your vascular system your liver uses up glut thione because it's creating oxidative stress in cells that oxidative stress in cellular damage turns up inflammation and that combination of oxidative stress and inflammation wrecks how the mitochondria work and the other structures of the cells and starts undermining your basic physiology in ways that are subtle because you're lots of cells and it's different in each person it also seems to get attracted to glands and connective tissues and gets stuck there it gets stuck in areas of the body that has inflammation where the cells are turning over because you got to get new cells routinely and then it starts accumulating and causing not only dysfunction in the cells so say in connective tissue or fascia you've got condr sites that are supposed to organize and maintain and make your connective tissues well if they're struggling they're low energy they have trouble doing what they need to do and your maintenance of those tissues goes way down because of the low energy poor cell reproduction but you also get these deposits and various physiologic effects that aren't well characterized in the medical literature yet but it's very clear when there's a lot of oxalate hanging around and connected tissues and other tissues you create other forms of calcification so you can have calcium oxalate crystals hanging in your fascia and your tendons and your joints and your bone marrow and your bones in your thyroid gland in your eyes in your brain tissues and that being there seems to help promote other forms of calcification so you can end up with calcified stiff fascia and tendons and end up with frozen shoulder and neck pain and arthritis and all kinds of issues with your connected tissue as well as your basic physiology could there's evidence in the literature and I see it in some of my clients that oxalates contributing to the prevalence of obesity and primarily insulin resistance and diabetes it's messing up how these receptors are working so you the cell receptors that are be able to bring in the glucose and make use of that energy are not working well absolutely I think it's so important to talk about oxalates in the bigger picture of our overall health because there's a lot of talk about insulin and insulin resistance especially because we have an obesity epidemic but when we eat these certain superfoods these healthy foods they form oxalates so oxalates are crystals that form in your body and they can go as s mentioned into tissues cause inflammation I wanted to focus on superfoods and these healthy foods that cause the oxalates because people are eating them every day let's talk about a superfood and what it is superfood is an invented concept that's a wonderful marketing tool and you can give people confidence with this label this healthy glow and label something as such and sell magazines and sell blenders and sell supplements and give people you know a little rabbit's foot of good luck for health without necessarily having real science behind it so a superfood is something that is marketed to you so for example a green smoothie let's talk about that which has spinach which has alond flour and all these different things in it why is that so bad for somebody sounds healthy well with oxalates you know you have a little tolerance for consuming some oxalate because your your body makes some oxalate it's part of nature so your body is familiar with oxal acid and the oxalates that it forms and it's designed to handle a little bit the problem with that smoothie is that Smoothie has eight or 10 times the amount you're designed to handle so that is a truly dangerously toxic amount of oxalate in it and you've blended it up so it's now in this kind of broken up liquidized form that makes the oxalate that much easier and quickly absorbed into the body so you can really nail your gut and then your bloodstream and the circulating immune cells one interesting study done fairly recently I think it was published in 2021 showed that 40 minutes after a green smoothie made with just fruits and spinach which had only about 700 milligrams of oxy in it showed that the circulating immune cells in the blood of those subjects were damaged putting out pro-inflammatory cytoid and no longer able to handle uh bacteria so they could no longer work as antibacterial immune cells because they themselves were damaged from a spinach smoothie in only 40 minutes now you have to know that absorption from the body that is materials in your food and the amount of time it takes for them to get into the blood can occur throughout the digestive tract from the stomach the upper small intestines and that whole process it's a 24-hour process but already in just 40 minutes you see damage in the bloodstream to your immune system so potentially people that have immune system problems autoimmune diseases could oxalates be affecting that or making it worse definitely and in that short run you would recognize that chronic sinus infections and other kinds of chronic infections that you keep getting over and over again is because your immune system isn't working well and the mucosal barrier that's supposed to protect your tissues that tend to get these infections is struggling and the immune cells that are there are struggling and then you've got this C Crystal collection in your system which continues to challenge the immune system because it's the immune system's job to bury those crystals which are very harmful to the local tissue so that they don't harm the local tissue so you have these processes like the formation of these balls like micr tumors where the immune cells come in and they end up wrapping around a crystal trying to get rid of it and they have trouble with it so they end up wrapping it in dead white blood cells or the immune cells come by and they exude their extr R their DNA and create this what's called a net again trying to encapsulate and capture those crystals so that they're less reactive to the local tissue so that's a lot of work on immune cells but later when the body is trying to fix your thyroid gland and your tissues and maintain them it's going to try again to deal with those crystals and again and again and those little crystals are sitting there just waiting to turn on the immune system well this over agitation of the immune system over and over and over again potentially leads to all kinds of things we call autoimmune diseases there's so many different things that oxalates can affect and we're going to talk about signs and symptoms and so that you know whether you have a problem with oxalates but I wanted to turn attention to you Sally because you've had an extraordinary Health Journey you've I mean oxalates nearly I guess ruined your life can you share about your story and what happened to you yeah you know in retrospect those of us who have undone this toxicity there's a reversal process and you look back in retrospect and you start seeing more and more earlier and earlier in life and I I wonder if the reason I needed a tonsilectomy at age five was because of oxalate poisoning already and then at age 12 I started getting arthritis and back pain and then when I was 19 I had this foot problem that turned into nearly a 10year saga of problems needing painkillers crutches wheelchairs foot surgery poor recovery from foot surgery another 30 years of foot issues in the meantime all kinds of autoimmune aches and pains really bad arthritis in my 20s and so on and lots of fatigue and trouble with brain function focus and so on so it turned turn out it turns out that all of those things the arthritis the foot problems the fatigue was my healthy diet I was a healthy eater as a little kid rhubarb is a classic High oxl food and myom mom had it behind the garage I love the rhubarb dessert that she made all summer or early spring and and through the summer and my sister and I used to play with that rhubarb as little kids and feed it to each other uh and that just should not be allowed should not do that to your child and it's I've learned so much too from my clients and followers how much oxalates are probably affecting early childhood development and our tendency to get childhood illnesses our struggle with learning and behavior little things with babies cradle cap fussiness uh Tantrums things like this this is neurotoxicity which is not something we've touched on yet but as a keator of electrolytes and a destroyer of cell membranes and so on oxalate is quite neurotoxic and so it's going to affect the neurodevelopment of children if they're high in oxalate so a lot of us who are really in tough shape probably started having issues early in life and then we were given antibiotics and so on and that just added to the susceptibility to the toxic effects of the oxalate we're seeing a lot of increase in dementia worldwide there's a lot of Alzheimer's so neurotoxicity how does oxalates affect the brain this is a massive deal that not many people talk about no and a lot of researchers aren't looking at it either it's the science there is thin but there's plenty of people saying H oxalate crystals are found in this place associated with Parkinson's disease and are probably related to Parkinson's disease probably related to dementia if you look at the mechanistic and the basic science on the effects on the nerves it's very clear that oxidate would promote dementia and all kinds of other neuro divergences including just mood problems the um apathy loss of motivation tendency to anxiety and panic attacks a tendency to depression I'm I've been blown away by how many people have come to me to say when they took oxalates out of their diet that took the anxiety and the panic attacks and the misery the emotional misery out of their lives now if you feel that you have a buildup of oxalates in the body you need to follow a low oxalate diet and Sally later in the episode we'll talk more about the foods that you need to eat and some foods that you need to avoid but when you make this transition to a low oxalate diet you might experience some side effects like fatigue headache and some nausea and that's quite normal at the beginning so what you can do is to add in some electrolytes you could add in some good quality salt especially to your meals and also to your water but if this doesn't work and you still have these side effects I would highly recommend that you lean on an electrolyte supplement and a great electrolite supplement is element because element contains the right amount of sodium potassium and magnesium the great thing about element is that it doesn't contain any nasties there's no preservatives or additives and I love to add the raw UNF flavored option to my morning coffee my husband he loves the chocolate Salt that he adds to his coffee so if you'd like to try element they are offering my viewers this free sample pack on every order so you're going to get eight single servings of element to try for free so if you want this just head to drink element.com sl5 minute body that's d r i n k l m nt.com sl5 minute body to get this free sample pack and thanks to element for sponsor ing this video oxalates themselves are not bad too much is bad so what is the normal amount that the human body can handle well it's variable from person to person so the a very unuseful metric that's used in toxicology is fatality how much it takes to kill you and that range is huge anywhere from three to five on the lowend grams of oxalate up to 15 to kill you so if I gave one person three grams I might be able to kill them three grams would be three spinach smoothies um some other person might need 15 spinach smoothies before I could kill them so that would be an acute dose in the same day but if you spread out those 15 smoothies over 15 days the body is busy trying to manage that excess toxicity and doing the best that it can and it has mechanisms that aren't well studied of How It's handling the oxalate but primarily it's holding on to the oxalate to protect your circulating immune cells your capillaries your critical organs and especially your kidneys because the kidneys are the organ with whose main job it is to get rid of it they're designed to handle oxalate they're designed to handle about 25 milligrams of oxalate a day and if if 12 of them are coming from your metabolism the other 12 is coming from your diet your metabolism plus your vitamin C on the 12 so you can have 12 milligrams of oxalate in your body from your food which when you account for how much in your food is actually moving into your bloodstream that depends on your gut health so if you have wide open leaky gut and male absorption syndrome you might absorb 50% of what you consume so then you would be only allowed to have 50 milligrams of oxalate a day which is about three or five spinach leaves it's like not so much or you know one handful of almonds and you're done but if you have really great health and really great um physiology and your cells are great and your gut is great you can probably have 200 milligrams that's about a half a spinach salad okay and the great thing about your book toxic Super Foods is that you spell out and you give some information around how much oxalates are in certain foods and we're going to talk about that today let's talk about signs and symptoms so somebody could just think right I have a problem with oxalates well you know where it starts showing up is really different in every person so you want to think about these major systems that it affects your nervous system so there could be a whole set of neurological Pro things like the learning that we talked about or headaches um poor coordination dropping things moodiness that kind of thing mood stuff could be so there's the nerve part there's the stomach thing a lot of people will have digestive issues because of the oxalates and once you have digestive issues that makes you more susceptible to the oxalates so if there's any kind of indigestion poor gut function irritable bowel syndrome problems with rectal control like either fecal incontinence or serious constipation bloating Tremors and Twitches hicups are an example of a neurotoxic Tremor and twitch when you the nerves are toxic you get these muscle spasms and sometimes that might look like fibromyalgia sometimes that looks like arrhythmias looks like hiccups and so on or bloating and belching and poor dis biosis is another kind of muscle spasms where things are not coordinated well so that's sort of the neurotoxicity and a lot of things that we think of our of muscles or digestion might be the neuro neurotoxicity piece causing it because nerves are controlling these tissues and even hypertension because again if you got spasms you can have vascular spasms and that's known in vasculitis inflammation in the vascular system would give you some hypertension so if you have periodic hypertension that might be a sign then there's the aches and pains you got achy joints achy muscles a tendency to stiffness and just yuckiness the neck it's a popular spot where that might happen and the fingers shoulders frozen shoulder hip issues clicking joints and then there's urinary tract if you're getting up at night to pee that's probably because oxalates are irritating your bladder and the bladder is like get this out of here and wakes you up to get rid of this High oxalate urine so nighttime urination frequent urination having to run to the bathroom and not peeing much incontinence these are all things that can be affecting bladder function and of course kidney stone is the classic sign of oxalate toxicity it's probably an endstage sign if you already have kidy Stones your system is overloaded with oxalate what about bladder stones yes yes bladder stones even probably prostate Stones saliva Stones these can I'll be oep so you mentioned arthritis um you stenosis which you had yes still have that's a thing like it's so sad with your story because you have to manage all of the symptoms that you have even to how old are you now sorry 60 and finally feeling good so let's now move on to worst oxalate Foods this is the fun part so let's start off with greens there's three of them spinach chard and Beak greens and then there's sorl which isn't that common in in North America but it's used in other countries but really the ones that you see are these spinach chard and sweet and uh and swiss chard and be greens are thrown in these salad mixes so you'll go for what you think of salad mix but half of it can be these greens and then the other greens that are there's lots of other greens they're perfectly fine people can eat that in unlimited quantity pretty much yeah even kale kale gets hooked as a high oxy food and everyone talks about kale and compared to spinach char and be greens kale ain't got nothing really it's tiny but kale can be three times or four times what's in Roma lettuce or in cabbage which are so little almost nothing so kale you might get 12 even maybe 15 depending on the variet of kale milligrams but with spinach you know per serving you're much closer to 900 to a th000 milligrams so you can see like they're not in the same ballpark why people always say spinach and kale Cal and spinach when they're talking Oxley I don't understand that's one reason we got the data book coming out maybe people will start looking at the at the oate data and uh you know it's in my book but you know this is straight like this is the data that shows you quit accusing kale kale has lots of reasons you don't want to eat it kind of like to me it's like eating hay but well I think people that are following a carival diet as do I mostly Kind ofal diet you know don't really love veget well some people love that vegetabl uh but you know not really a fan of kale I was a huge vegetable fan huge but not a big kale eater oh my whole life every meal had three vegetables and a salad I was i' come home from a busy day at work and put together This Magnificent meal really into vegetables growing them organically love vegetables from a time I was a kid one of the stupidest things I ever did well that's the interesting thing is that when you love vegetables so much and you think that they're so healthy for you but you know some of them can be as bad as Ultra processed foods it's very shocking to say that but they can cause so much damage to your body you know that is a very upsetting thing for people to hear they're like oh well vegetables are bad and all of everything else is bad there's nothing to eat and like it really upsets people and you can't blame them you know but most people who are pigging out on vegetables are not pigging out on Twinkies so it's two different audiences but both are prone to having too many potatoes people who eat processed foods are eating french fries potato chips tater tots and you name it all kinds of potato concoctions potatoes are a big problem I recently put out a video on my YouTube channel of a man who is not into healthy vegetables just kind of a regular guy eating regular food and really into French fries especially when he was a teenager and now in his mid 70s he's dumping oxalates on a carnivore diet probably a lot of that got started set up when he was 18 holding on to that with no obvious symptoms except he had obesity and he had gut problems and you know he was running to the bathroom and for years and now he's got the stuff out of his system and he's trim and fit and his in his mid 70s so we're gonna talk about how to dump how to not have the oxalate dumping because that's the radical dumping of oxalates how to excrete them nicely so that you don't have all the nasty side effects but that was another worst oxalate food which is potatoes so Roots so potatoes sweet potatoes and you mentioned the lace potato chips which people just love which is weird um next one peanuts yeah just to just to put an underscore on sweet potatoes sweet potatoes have this holy Halo you can really wreck your house on sweet potatoes don't buy into the idea that they're I thought they were low allergy and wonderfully safe and like this really safe medium to hang out get a little carbs and ah don't do it so the nuts the nuts in general are designed to mess up your gut they're not meant to be digested by humans and there's the worst ones with oxalate are almonds cashews and peanuts because peanuts of course are so ubiquitous and candies and used as a food and people throw it in all kinds of recipes and in their smoothies but we can have things like if you have nuts you can have things like macadamian walnuts peans are they okay they're all lower in oxalate and so reasonable small amounts you just shouldn't use nuts as Entre nuts are garnishes and flavor flings and special treats they're not easily digested so if you have a lot of pain and inflammation they're just going to aggravate pain and inflammation but if you're if you're in good health certainly you can have use those things but quit thinking them of as a meal and with our keto mentality right now people are turning nuts into bars and mixes you can go to Costco and buy in mega containers any one of like 15 versions of combinations of nuts and chocolate with some dried fruit thrown in it and people start carrying that in their car and snacking while driving and living on it is it because we're lazy absolutely totally agree next one is seeds seeds yeah seeds and nuts are same thing hard on your gut most of the seeds are less horrible in terms of oxalate content and there's some that are very low pumpkin seeds are very low in oxalate good if you're sprouting them but just make sure they really agree with your digestion sunflower seeds aren't too bad but hemp and and chia seeds big bad news I was surprised like when I heard you say that I was like what chia seeds before I was Carnival used to have so much chia seeds and then cuz you're just told like you know cheia puddings and all these different things it's the worst it's really bad it's really bad and it's sad because people are promoting it so much and pushing this forward and everybody's believing each other that that's okay to do next one beans beans the true beans the black beans the white beans that we used to make like the Boston baked beans and all kinds of things horrible High oxalate and full of lectins very hard in the gut issues if you have got problems beans don't belong in your diet but the peas the chick peas the green peas the blackeyed peas or cow peas you call them sometimes those are pretty low in oxalate so there's room for that which is helpful because for people who are plant-based they need somewhere to go with for some food to eat and so those would be good if you properly soak them to deal with the lectins which is another anti-nutrient in Plants you need a three-day soak and a high pressure cook heat to really make those safe to eat okay next one is H fruits fruits now fruits the oxalates and fruits are heavily in the insoluable Crystal side of things so when you juice the fruit and you remove the pith and the pulp and stuff you end up with a pretty low oxalate food so the fruit juices like pomegranate is pretty high in o oate with all that seeds and skin with the little arrows but when you turn into juice you can have a cup and it's about 10 milligrams of oxalate which is relatively not so bad so the fruits you know the some are pretty terrible star fruit can kill you including the star fruit juice but most people don't have that here but in other countries star fruit and starf fruit juice are like spinach smoothies it's the magic Elixir so they're trouble but blackberries are probably the worst fruit and maybe raspberries as a second and kiwi kiwi I'd stay away from kiwi and it's the seeds that are in these fruits even in vegetables well the roots in vegetables that are the problem right well the seeds add to the problem the oxy crystals like in the Kiwi there's these rapide crystals which are shaped like double pointed toothpicks very sharp Uber tiny little glass toothpicks come in bundles of hundreds of them in the cells and those are especially concentrated around the seed because can think of that as a fort a fortress with all these Spears protecting the seed so that the spears help prevent you from breaking down that seed so the seed can travel through you and you can remove it in your feal matter and plant it out there in the world for the sake of the kiwi tree or Vine it's really a Vine and the Rapides are there is the white soldiers protecting the seed so yeah it's around but see you can see when you juice things something like these raphide crystals which are in these vacul can be partially removed in the juicing but if you throw the whole thing into your blender like the Vitamix to make something with the Kiwi what you've done is you've opened up the vacu and you've opened up all these little Spears and now they're just out there and they're going to get you versus in the little bubble of pectin or whatever the materials are there so the more you juice and pulverize a food like kiwi the more toxic it is for your gut all right next one is turmeric and cumin yeah superfoods right well I'm Indian so like you know that's everything that Indians have for spices yeah in fact the Indian diet is probably the highest Oxley diet in the world because there it is plant heavy and there's potatoes and spinach and all this turmeric and everything so yeah that's a real concern you can use extracts with these Foods kind of like fruit juice is a bit of an extract from the fruit when you make curcumin extracts that are in the supplements there's almost no oxalate there anymore so the whole root is where that oxalate is but at Costco what they'll sell you is this like half gallon of whole root turmeric because we're convinced that the whole thing has got to be better but it's bad news and you might be taking it because you have arthritis and for some people it seems like it's sort of working there's a lot of mysteries to this so it doesn't work for arthritis said turmeric is not good because turmeric has been known to be very anti-inflammatory that's what they say and there probably is and with any toxin there's a or challenge to the body there can be an anti-inflammatory response because the body when it's injured tries to lower the pain and inflammation in your body so you don't suffer so much there's lots of different mechanisms going on which takes a lot of sophistication to try to understand sophistication that we as a species and as a set of scientists still don't have all the way we we think we know more than we often do that's why it's so helpful to just really see in real life and real people when you start removing these Foods what happens that's really telling because that's not Theory anymore that's just reality absolutely let's go to the next one which a lot of people have tea tea black tea the standard black tea is pretty high in oxalate there's room for tea if you're taking out the sweet potatoes and the nuts and the spinach there's room for some oxalate and we use tea a lot as a way of keeping some oxalate in the diet but if your background diet is always tea always potatoes and then your occasional rhubarb pie after that rhubarb pie are you really sleeping that well that's another one poor sleep could be a sign of oxalate problems so it's important to understand what is oxalate heavy which is the rubab the greens and then something like tea doesn't mean that you can't have it ever yeah sure absolutely no problem for most people but you know some people like construction workers or people who work outside they'll stop at the convenience Mart and they'll get a half gallon jug of tea and drink that all day long no don't do that okay let's talk about the last one the worst oxalate food um chocolate so an ounce and a half of dark chocolate has lots of oxalates in it very bioavailable meaning it moves easily into the bloodstream yep so chocolate they use it in studies and you can see how quickly it absorbs and even with calcium added to that challenge test you still get a significant spike in oxalate especially about four hours after eating the chocolate and if you're using cocoa powder and hot water making a hot cocoa that's um a great great way to deliver oxalates into the body okay so it doesn't mean with this list of foods that you have to just stop everything it's just to be mindful what foods have the most oxalates in it if you have the side effects or symptoms that Sally has mentioned so people are going to be thinking well that's a long list I can't eat anything I'm depressed I'm confused I always see this about oh everything is bad let's talk about what you can eat and what is a good starting point I think a great way is if somebody is thinking okay I have some symptoms I want to you know do a low oxalate diet first question is do you think a carnival diet for 90 days is a good place to start probably not um but it you know some people get away with the carnivore diet nicely and don't don't have a problem going but that's a radical shift if you're eating smoothies and chocolate and occasional potato products and like your fruits you are going from high daily exposure to nothing and the body is pretty Wise It's watching what you're doing it's sensing what you're doing it knows there's a lot of oxy coming in it's handling it it's in this mode I call sequestration mode where it's holding on to it stashing it away sticking it on the bed sticking in the Attic sticking it in the basement hiding it so it's not there for company to see so you won't notice how toxic you are right so that's what the body's been doing and then you suddenly there's no traffic at all and there's silence in the hallways the bloodstream is not continually being loaded from the gut with oxalate and the liver is like not getting loaded from oxalate after every meal the body's like what wow ooh and the kidneys are going nice and the tissues are going look the streets are open and so here comes the attic in the basement and under the bed thrown back out in this public spaces of the the vascular system your bloodstream and it's moving around the tissues again and hitting the kidneys again and so that's where you get into this idea of dumping like the body sees this clearing this like quietness it's not coming in and it's like thank goodness we can get rid of this the eyes the tendons the neck the back the thyroid gland the saliva glands you're like okay let's let's clean up house so you don't want that too eagerly for some people going straight into zero is such a sharp difference the body's listening and ready if you sneak out a little more slowly that might work now this is theoretical we don't have science to show who benefits from this very slow gradual approach versus who does okay on a sudden shift we don't have any science because mainstream science is not paying attention to the fact that we have been sequestering oxalate that 80% of us have it in our thyroid gland that there's a huge amount of it in bones and it's all invisible and hard to see and it hasn't risen to a level of importance in science yet where they're bothering to characterize what's going on so this is just based on best we can guess based on real life some people people do well on a carnivore diet for a year a month a couple weeks and then stuff can happen I've had people come to interview me from the carnivore Community who say you know I'm dumping Ox late I just started I've been on Carnivore for six years and now I can feel this all this stuff happening and I'm sick with this and that and I have rashes and crystallin stools and cloudy urine and I'm getting up to pee at night and I'm like whoa took six years so it's so variable and that's well documented in the medical literature that oxalate toxicity shows up with all this variability so there's not a good way to predict how your body is going to respond to this shift so the the general advice is to evaluate your own diet find those Top foods that you're eating too much of for you it might be almonds it might be buckwheat that's one we didn't mention we forgot to mention all those sort of pseudo grains that the gluten-free people start using like buckwheat te quinoa quinoa's big superfood right now they're really high in oxalate they're very gut damaging tough foods to be eating you might start with the buckwheat or the quinoa get rid of that for a month then get rid of the spinach and then the almonds and so on almonds are bad news I would probably start there but so you would work on that in in kind of a gradual way and I want think of it of like not trying to wake the sleeping baby so you've set the baby in the crib baby settled down and quiet and you're tiptoeing backwards out of that bedroom and slowly shutting the door so that kid does not wake up and scream and that's what you're trying to do with the oxalate and I forgot to mention previously when we talk about our worst oxalate Foods um because even people might be thinking okay that's not too bad but there are three things that people might be doing that could make oxalates worse as well or overload oxalates first one is the vitamin C yeah the vitamin C is fascinating because it accounts for a huge portion of what we call endogenous production that is the body's production of oxalate but it's really just that you're using so much vitamin C that you've got this precursor that becomes oxalate in the body and the same thing happens with the sequestration so you can be taking a lot of vitamin C not feel the symptoms of it not even have that much extra in the urine of oxalate showing up because the body is sequestering the oxalate from the vitamin C just taking vitamin C supplements alone consistently for years is enough oxalate burden in the body where you can be in trouble from just that and again this has been hard to characterize it's been hard to study how this works there's been some confusion about it the vitamin c does readily get picked up by cells and it's a good chance that some of that conversion into oxalate is happening inside of cells so it's already in a place in tissues where it can be held on to because the cells really don't have a lot of permission to release the oxalate as long as it's high in the bloodstream because that would blow out your bloodstream blow out your heart you'd end up with a M as maybe a heart attack it would blow out your kidneys so the cells are sort of obligated to hold on to it because they really need the heart they really need the kidneys so they're okay well okay I'll hold this for you bud okay I got it for you and they're holding on to it and then you quit the C and you quit the spinach and you quit the this and now those cells are like oh God finally a chance so and another thing which was interesting was uh thyine deficiency B1 why does that could cause why could that cause more Oates in the body right because in this process of molecules becoming oxalate in your metabolism you need Vitamin B1 to move these other precursors that come before you know there's several molecules that start changing from one to the next to the next that end up as oxalate and the vitamin B1 the thamin will take that final precursor and turn it into non-toxic compounds and those non-toxic compounds your body can deal with without the B1 you end up with more oxalate created from the precursors lyine creates other forms of inflammation that adds to the production of those molecules that become oxalate so you get more of those precursors in the liver especially and you have less ability to shunt them off to a less toxic Direction so that can really double up on you the low thy and it doubles up on oh more precursors to oxalate and more oxalate from more precursors so it has this multiplying effect where you really can up your quote endogenous production of oxalate from a deficiency in B1 and the last other thing to think about this was interesting collagen supplements everybody is saying to take extra collagen supplements but maybe we shouldn't be doing that yeah because glycine seems to have some cool effects but glycine but more importantly hydroxyproline is one of these precursor molecules that's the main molecule that becomes oxalate in the body so when when you turn over connective tissue that's where you're doing this endogenous production so you're adding more of that sort of connective tissue materials and increasing the oxalate in the body so on top of any kind of toxicity going on with oxalates you're adding more precursor you're just making things worse and I've had people who once they quit the collagen they've had their pain and arthritis go away which is ironic because often they're taking it for that very problem if you take a collagen like protein powder is that something as well yeah so you would tolerate a couple teaspoons of that a day but people are taking like four tablespoons it's way too much and but if you're on a low oate diet there's a little more room for that so say in a carnivore diet where you're eating more animal foods and getting more connected tissues there there's plenty of room to tolerate that if you get rid of all the other stuff so but it's worth knowing because then you can really think better and experiment with your own body how much of that you really tolerate and do you really need it if you're on a carnivore diet hopefully you're eating the tendons and the connector tissue and the fat that has that you're eating the skin on the sardines which is loaded with collagen and your fish skin you know there's lots of places to get it in your diet which is excellent to do I you don't want to restrict eating those connective tissues I don't think you need to even some broth which is another gelatin Source couple cups a day is probably okay but drinking a quart a day too much so you mentioned um on another podcast I think that you tried a carnival diet like a 100% Carnival diet and then it worked and then it didn't work for you yeah April 1st 2019 I quit the lemons and the coconut and just went carnivore and it was interesting because it showed me that I was had developed kind of a sensitivity to lemons which are important to help people not get oxalate stones in the body it helps the body remove oxalates it helps lower the acidity from all this inflammation and so on and you know it's pretty it's pretty fun to go carnivore because it simplifies your life pretty easy to do day in and day out you you don't need three meals anymore you usually do fine on two but that's all you know it's all flexible and negotiable but um it I was not I started to get thick in the middle like I lost my curve like I lost my waist I start to get like Butch looking and tired a lot and was having muscle cramps the main thing that had me realize I had to have carbs was I could not cure these leg cramps at night that was ruining my sleep and which for me was probably low muscle glycogen so your your muscles and liver need this sugar material in them for them to keep working when you're not eating they need to have some energy available and so that low energy from the low muscle glycogen was keeping me up at night and I was also just bolt straight up wak at night my body's like go get some food go it was I think causing hypoglycemia and just a general energy deficit in the body for me and by adding some simple sugary carbs in small amounts it makes a huge difference huge difference for me and improves my energy and athletic performance and sleep um and I think it helps with the metabolism I think starving yourself of carbohydrates slows your metabolism down and by feeding the mitochondria some sugar they're like having a party and getting energized and like your getting your your youthful metabolism it makes you kind of old if your metabolism is slowing down makes you cold um you know with sugar I don't I'm warm the thyroid seems to like it everybody's happier with a little bit of carbs in my body and that's I think for women especially true okay I'm thinking about my audien just listening to this because they're mostly Carnival keto lcop So when you say sugar and carbs how much are we talking about per day well I like to use coconut water and we'll get 25 to 30 grams of carbs from that and I will sometimes use a very clean ginger ale and get another 20 from that I generally think like if I can get at least 12 to 15 with a meal of carbs that keeps me pretty happy depends on if I'm working out I think the carbs help me working out and then recovery from working out kind of depends on the activity of the day and I think it's helpful to like vary it a lot too like there's no strict rules about it if you really start to nice thing about getting rid of the toxicity is that your body starts to speak in a language you're starting to understand and you can respond to your needs and so the the big problem is with oxalates I have so many food sensitivities now because of this immune system torturing I've been doing for decades and decades and then this whole oxalate recovery continues to work the immune system to get rid of all these oxalates from your tissue you're still in a situation where immune effects are still possible and some of us one of the side effects of the continuing clearing is that our sensitivities to food can get worse not better they get better for a while and then it's so hopefully that's not too common but it's happened to me and a few of my clients and so I don't have a lot of options for carbs I'm allergic to all the fruit fruits and the grains I just wanted to I guess clarify that because I think a lot of people that you know maybe they're on a keto ketal Carnival diet because they're trying to deal with the insulin resistance but obviously if you have damage from Decades of eating the wrong Foods including say potato chips and maybe some vegetables here and there but there's a lot of overload of toxicity and so to say when somebody makes um statements around I eat carbs I just like to clarify because what you just said is about it's still classified as a low carb diet some people believe in carb cycling and I kind of think that's a good idea for many people and this just so important to customize with all of this and that's why people come to me for individual counseling because everybody needs a very customized approach and at different stages of the game different things are going to work better than others so it's really important to not throw out a lot of hard and fast roles I never like to do that for anybody I don't want anybody to copy what I do because what I do is just this Twisted you know the game twister you have to twist yourself in whatever way is working for you in at this stage at 60 where I've done decades and decades and Decades of damage what I would like to see happen is people recognize that this can be a problem for anyone and prevention is the best thing let's not load up your children with sweet potatoes and chocolate and potatoes it's simple absolutely so somebody is now talking about the excretion process um so they've got something that they want to excrete all the oxalates they need to do a low oxalate diet so for a month pick the worst Food say for example it's spinach or almonds get rid that for one month and then keep going until you've simplified your diet what should those Foods look like in terms of a low oxalate diet for maintenance yeah well again it depends on your what you tolerate and what your food philosophy is and what you like but you should really Center a diet on protein animal foods with protein and fat with plenty of fat women do really well on butter and lard in these animal fats if you tolerate eggs great if you tolerate Dairy great but animal flesh that's fatty that includes a connected tissue cook foods that have the bone in them you know and use the the juices I just recently cooked a pork roast slow in the oven all day two days ago and I have this jar of one cup of the broth that was excr from the pork roast that I can't wait to drink is a delicious it's already salted and flavorful and didn't throw that out and waste that that's full of potassium and nutrients and flavor and I will be eating that as part that's like the whole animal kind of approach you know eat the fat in it eat the connected tissue in it if you get something with the skin on it you know do that whole food animal fats and animal proteins are healing they provide you know creatine and all kinds of stuff that really helps you heal so you need that energy to rebuild your bones and your muscles and to feel well and get back to the vital person you're meant to be so that's key if you can get there some people are not ready to eat meat because they've been vegetarian and vegan and hold on to that philosophy and they as they start to get the toxicity gone that emotional timidness starts to crack and their willingness to jump into a more nutritious diet opens up later let's say that somebody is following a meat-based diet all the good foods some vegetables low oxalate vegetables on the side um what happens if they get those symptoms of oxalate dumping what should they be do doing that situation right so the The Dumping is a term for when the oxalate de acccumulation process gets extreme and starts making you really sick with really itchy rashes with severe headaches with panic attacks with really cralin urine or crysaline stools or you know mouth pain you can have tooth and sinus pain all kinds of stuff buzzing ears you name it if it's disrupting your life ruining your sleep that we want to calm that down we don't want the immune system and the tissues that toxic because basically you've just you're toxic the tissues have dumped it into the bloodstream it's moving around and that is dangerously toxic so you have to add back oxalate into the B into the diet because there's this you know the body's holding on to it when it can and then releasing it when it can so now you're telling it oh quit releasing it by eating it that says it back into more of a sequestration mode of oh people got to hold on to it hold on to it let the blood rest let the kidneys rest you got to hold on to it so you have to eat enough to turn off those symptoms and if you've eaten enough say at dinner time enough oxalate within an hour you'll be like oh yeah crisis over feel better so if you if you're not getting through that crisis moment you're not eating enough oxy there's not a specific number it's whatever amount works for your body whatever how hard it hit yeah like sometimes it's a cup of tea and you're great and sometimes it's an entire sweet potato which is a lot of oxy that whatever amount the body needs go okay quit the quit the releasing like stop go into sequestration mode stop you need to get that that ask loud enough and for some people literally one cup of tea and 20 minutes later like ah okay I'm better now another side effect of all this inflammation and damage and de acccumulation Is acidity so you may want to check your urine pH and make sure you're not super acid all the time if you are you need to do alkalization the lemons are great for that uh citric acid minerals are great for that the citrate you know calcium citrate and so on bicarbonates Alka are gold there's alkalizing you know supplements available you may want to be containing that because when your system is really stressed and highly inflamed it raises the general acidity that's what really contributes to that insulin resistance and metabolic derangements and propensity to cancer development is this chronic acidity so you want to check that too and that'll help you feel better because feeling acid tends to make you feel foggy and overwhelmed and a little bit not up to your life like life feels hard when you're acid so manage that acidity get the electrolytes back in because you're as you're removing o iic acid this metal keator you're removing potassium and calcium and probably other minerals from your body you're already mineral deficient from years of a high oxalate diet you need more calcium you need more electrolytes you need more salt and as you're releasing them over the years and you're de acccumulation you're continuing to drain minerals out of the body so we need to pay attention to the minerals because if you don't you could end up with a arhythmia and end up in the emergency room with what feels like a a pending stroke or heart attack because you're it's a trough to be low in calcium this hypocalcemia in the blood makes the nerves not function and the muscles not function so you get this the heart starts struggling absolutely it sounds like um the treatment is you know the same as I guess treating any kind of disease but just certain foods that you have to focus on especially if you want to eliminate the oxalates the hard part is that when The Dumping happens and it's too fast clearance and you just have to be able to manage that but you can always buy Sally's book toxic superfoods and that's going to be linked in the description down below so you can go purchase it but Sally I want to say a big thank you for your time I think this has been an encyclopedia about oxalates and oxalate dumping and how people can have Optimal Health so if people want to find you more how can they reach you please reach out to us at my website Sally ke norton.com if you look around hard enough you will find a shop there where you can get cookbook and you can get the data book there's a way to sign up for group classes there there's lots of free information there free downloads and there's a way to email us and let us know what's going on with you I hope you enjoyed this interview now you need to watch this video next with Dr sha Baker All About The Ultimate Guide to start the carnival diet I'll see you guys next week