What do spinach and nuts have to do mould toxicity in the body?
What are oxalyates?
Moulds, in particular the Aspergillus mould, produce oxalates.
Yeasts, such as the Candida species, also produce oxalates. It is very common to have yeasts present at high levels, when moulds are present in your body.
Additionally, certain antibiotics are believed to reduce the levels of Oxalabacter formigenes, a strain of beneficial bacteria, that assists in the breakdown of oxalates.
If you can imagine we have an ‘oxalate bucket’ in our body. That bucket is filled close to the top if we have an overgrowth of certain moulds and/or yeasts in our system.
Oxalates in foods can make our Oxalate Bucket overflow!
If we eat higher oxalate foods such as:
spinach
celery
nuts
cacao
sweet potato
kale
(think the paleo green smoothie or the Medical Medium’s endorsement of celery juice), our food oxalate intake will overflow our ‘oxalate bucket’.
What happens when we have high oxalates in our system?
Oxalates are primarily cleared via our urinary system.
When our oxalate bucket over flows, we may see urinary issues such as not fully voiding.
We may be bursting to urinate, make it to the toilet, only to think ‘That wasn’t much of a wee’.
We get up, move around for 15 or 20 minutes, and we are back urinating again, finishing off the initial wee!
The oxalate crystals can block the flow of urine preventing a person fully voiding. When you move around you dislodge some of the crystals allowing for urine to flow again.
Night urination is also a common issue with high oxalates. The oxalates irritate the lining of the urinary system. Your body wakes you during the night to urinate, in order to clear the irritation from the oxalate crystals.
The same thing can happen during the day with frequent urination and urinating more than what makes sense for your fluid intake.
Joint pain is also common with a high level of oxalates along with pain in the lower back region. This can be particularly evident in the morning.
These symptoms will ebb and flow depending on your oxalate consumption, making it difficult for people to pinpoint what is driving their symptom picture.
The gradual implementation of a lower oxalate diet can assist with reducing the symptoms of high oxalates in your body.
You should not move from high oxalate diet to a lower oxalate diet overnight.
This could result in exacerbation of the original symptom picture and you could be in significant pain as a result of oxalate dumping.
Best to take at least two weeks or so to gradually reduce your food oxalate intake. I generally recommend to my clients, starting with changing your dinners first for 3 to 4 days, then move your lunches over to lower oxalate for 3 to 4 days, then breakfast and finally snacks.
Urinary system support is also recommended as you clear excess oxalates:
A citrate-based supplement taken with each meal will reduce the oxalate levels of that meal, as the citrate binds to the oxalates.
You can use lemon juice as an alternative to a citrate-based supplement. Squeeze lemon juice over each meal.
A herbal tea mix of yarrow, dandelion leaf, corn silk and buchu can assist your urinary system as it clears oxalates. Three cups per day before 3pm. This may increase your urinary frequency initially.
A lower-oxalate diet is a band-aid treatment
You need to sort what the driver(s) is/are of the high level of oxalates in your system to begin with.
Addressing moulds, and their biotoxins, yeasts, and what is driving the yeasts, is paramount.
Excess oxalates bind to minerals such as magnesium, selenium, molybdenum, iron, calcium, zinc etc. Overtime, people may become very depleted in these minerals when oxalate levels are excessive.
Book a free 15-minute conversation to discuss what a low oxalate diet looks like and how to start to address the driver’s of your high oxalate levels.
Next up :
When I ask clients if they believe they may have had previous or current exposure to mould, I often hear “no more than than a bit of mould in the shower in the winter.”
I then ask them to go away and think a little more about this, as often it is the mould you don’t see that is the issue.
I will document some ‘mould stories’ next week that may just encourage to think a little bit more about possible previous exposure or current exposure.
