Are you sensitive to oxalate foods?
Keep watching to find out how to reduce your sensitivity.
Hi there.
If you're new here, my name's Amanda Malachesky, I'm a certified Functional Nutrition Health
Coach and Digestive and Allergy Detective.
For awesome tips and tricks on how to manage and navigate your digestive and allergy challenges.
Please consider subscribing and be sure to click the bell to be notified when I post
a new video every week.
My most watched video to date is about oxalates and digestive symptoms and so today I want
to take this video a step further and talk a little bit about what else you can do besides
just reducing dietary oxalates, if you have an oxalate problem.
If you don't know anything yet about dietary oxalates, I encourage you to go back and watch
that earlier video called Oxalates and Digestive Symptoms and by the end of this video you'll
have some additional ideas about how you can manage your symptoms related to this.
I found that these oxalate tips are really valuable for my clients who have pain symptoms,
especially those in the bladder or kidneys or female digestive organs, sometimes the
bowel and gut and also joint pain.
So I've gotten my oxalate related pain symptoms under control and I know that you can too.
So let's get started.
First, let's review what causes oxalate sensitivity.
Usually your body can handle your dietary load of oxalate, but certain things can change
the terrain such that it can't handle the new load.
So the first thing that often can cause some trouble with oxalates is antibiotic use.
This is because we usually have a naturally occurring bacterial species that helps break
down oxalates.
But of course when you use antibiotics it's likely that you wipe them out or significantly
reduce their population and reduce your body's ability to process oxalates.
Yeast overgrowth or mold is another possibility because yeast and mold both produce oxalates.
If you're constantly exposed to this problem, you may have an oxalate problem.
Fat malabsorption or a sluggish gallbladder can be another cause and this is because when
there's excess fat in the intestine, it can bind to calcium and magnesium, which ordinarily
would bind to the oxalic compound and help excrete it.
But if there's not enough available because of too much fat in your intestines because
you're not digesting your fats well, this can also lead to an oxalic problem.
Deficiency of vitamin B1, B6, magnesium, calcium, zinc, or copper can also lead to an oxalate
problem for the same reason, just because these compounds often bind up the oxalate
and allow them to be excreted, but if there's not enough, they aren't able to do their job.
And remember that vitamin B6 and magnesium are reduced significantly by both the use
of birth control pills and a high dietary consumption of sugar.
Finally, a leaky gut, whether it's caused by dysbiosis or food sensitivities or other
causes, will allow excess oxalates to pass through the digestive wall and enter the bloodstream
and then travel elsewhere in the body.
So the first obvious low hanging fruit is to reduce dietary oxalate by consuming a low
oxalate diet.
I talked through all of this extensively and also give you my oxalate food list in my earlier
video called Oxalates and Digestive Symptoms, so be sure and go check that out.
I'll leave a link for that video below this video as well as for the food list.
A really important food to avoid in this phase is wheat or gluten foods.
This is because most commercial wheat is GMO and is treated with Roundup or glyphosate
as a way to speed up the drying process and glyphosate acts basically as an antibiotic
in the gut.
So this may be one reason why a lot of people with non celiac gluten sensitivity are having
a problem with wheat foods.
This applies to any other GMO foods.
So in general, you want to avoid GMO foods while you're working on this.
But remember, and I talk about this in the other video, you do not want to drastically
reduce your oxalate food consumption really quickly.
This is because it can lead to something called oxalate dumping, where the stored oxalate
in your body is now free to exit your body tissues and start circulating again, but this
can cause a lot of pain.
So please go watch that earlier video to get instructions on how to do this safely.
You are aiming for about 40 to 60 milligrams of oxalate daily on a low oxalate diet, so
you want to take some time to get there and for a really extensive low-FODMAP list with
really specific amounts of approximate oxalates per serving of food, please go check out the
Facebook group called Trying Low Oxalate.
I'll leave a link for that below this video.
Next, you'll want to work on healing the terrain of your gut.
If you have a history of antibiotic use or bacterial, fungal, or parasitic infections,
you might consider running a GI map stool test or other stool tests to see what kinds
of flora are living in your digestive system that may need addressing.
I talk about which tests are great to use in my earlier video called Gut Microbiome
Testing for IBS.
I'll leave a link for that below this video and you can go check that out.
In the meantime, working on general digestive supports is a really great idea and in this
case it might be a good idea to include probiotics that are helpful for helping break down oxalate
and I'm going to read these to you.
It's a little hard to remember these fancy names, so you want to look for a product that
contains lactobacillus gasseri, lactobacillus acidophilus, lactobacillus paracasei, bifido
lactis, bifido longum, and bifido adolescentis.
These have all been shown to help reduce and breakdown oxalates.
A specific probiotic brand that's been shown to be helpful is called VSL#3.
I'll leave a link for that below.
You can find it online and because excess fat in the intestines can lead to an oxalate
problem like I mentioned in the first step, it can be really useful to include either
digestive enzymes that include lipase, which would help break the fats down or ox bile
as a supplement.
Both of these can help reduce the amount of unbroken down fat that's circulating through
the intestine, which leaves more calcium and magnesium available to help bind up oxalates.
Additionally, leaky gut supports L-glutamine, collagen, and bone broth can help improve
leaky gut and therefore reduce the amount of oxalate that's passing through the gut
wall.
One more relief care step you can take is to use a supplement that contains magnesium
and calcium citrate.
There's a product by the Allergy Research Group that has a hundred milligrams of each,
and you can take one capsule of this with each of your meals to help bind up the dietary
oxalate.
I'll leave a link to my dispensary below so you could go check that out if you want.
It's also worth including a high quality B-complex that includes a good dose of vitamin B1 and
vitamin B6 because these also help with oxalate metabolism and they also have the added benefit
of supporting your liver detox function.
Finally, if you suspect that mold might be part of your picture, you certainly won't
get too far with your oxalate problem without addressing this.
So things to consider are, "Am I noticing any musty or moldy smells in my home?
Is there any visible mold in my home or workplace certainly, or your school, if you're a student?"
It doesn't take a whole lot of mold exposure to drastically affect the health of people
who are sensitive to mold.
So this is a much bigger topic that's way larger than the scope of this particular video,
but if you need a little bit of support learning more about this, I encourage you to go check
out Ritchie Shoemaker's website called survivingmold.com.
I'll leave a link for that below this video.
Which tip do you think would be most useful for your particular current oxalate problem?
Tell me about it below in the comments.
I hope that these tips help you get started on managing and unraveling your oxalate sensitivity
challenge and help get you feeling better.
If you like how I'm thinking into this problem, I encourage you to download my free guide
called Roadmap to Gut Recovery.
It's a self help guide that gives you some tools you can use right away to get started
thinking about what you can do to feel better.
You can download that free guide by visiting confluencenutrition.com/roadmap and I'll also
leave a link for that below this video.
If you've already tried some of these tips and you're not really getting anywhere and
you're ready for a little bit more guidance, I encourage you to schedule yourself a free
30 minute assessment session with me where we can get to know each other a little bit
and I can troubleshoot or brainstorm with you, your next step ideas and we can also
talk about what it would look like to work together.
You can schedule this free 30 minute assessment session with me by visiting confluencenutrition.com/contact
and I will also leave a link for that below this video.
Until then, best of luck reducing your oxalate sensitivity.
I hope this video has helped you out and I look forward to seeing you all next week.