Greens and more, actually. Some seeds and nuts are also on the list of foods high in oxalates.
Oxalates: a plant’s defense mechanism
In an effort to be healthy have you ever:
- bought expensive, organic foods
- sprouted nuts and seeds, ground your own flour, and spent a lot of time in the kitchen
- invested in extra kitchen tools for special preparation
…and still felt bad, or felt worse than you did before?
After six months of eating a perfect alkaline diet, working hard in the kitchen every day, and drinking six 32oz bottles of green water every day, I gained twenty pounds, and I felt worse than ever. Some of the many complications I experienced: out of control food cravings, painful joints, stiff and weak muscles. I felt old, tired, and hungry, not at all what I expected from all the hard work.
Commitment and discipline were not my problem, but I felt like a failure.
Do you have any idea how much six 32oz bottles of water with green powder is?
I have a particular vendetta against the green smoothie. I started to develop this “Lalalalala… I’m not listening!” thing when anyone told me about their habit of juicing to maintin incredible health. It was a mystery why I had done all this, and more – way more – and I was still gaining weight and getting worse.
Can foods that are on every “healthy food” list be bad?
At one point, I really got determined and I bought into a company that sold expensive green powder and a host of other supplements that were designed to make my body alklaline, and my weight melt away, and my health issues easily subside. I thought I should go all in. Investing my money would motivate me even more. Working with a coach from the company seemed like the ideal way to finally work past the ceiling I had hit with my health goals.
Motivation wasn’t my problem. I went way beyond the call of duty. I believed this program was going to work.
I went vegan because, according to my coach, chicken meat was nothing more than processed urine. She was determined to make meat disgusting, and I complied. Listening to unscientific rants got tedious when I didn’t get results.
I was drinking supplements, spraying them in my mouth, timing everything perfectly, sprouting, grinding, cooking and reading all day long with great hope. Surely, I could finally beat my body into submission. I told people that they should get ready to see my body fat melt away. I was sure it would. How could all this work not produce good results?
I did not cheat.
One night I just broke down and ate a hamburger with my family. I gave up that night, feeling terrible about myself. Red meat never tasted so good — in the history of the world.
I didn’t recognize the craving for red meat as a need. I thought I was weak.
Does this sound familiar?
Oxalates
Oxalates are little knife-like crystals that are found in things like spinach and buckwheat and almonds in high amounts. They act like sand or diamond dust in the body as they make their way through our digestive tract, our blood, and then our elimination organs.
High oxalates can cause kidney stones, gallbladder problems, joint pain, fibromyalgia-type pain, insomnia, fatigue, frequent urination, low bone density, and a host of other symptoms.
Oxalates come from three sources:
- Exogenous – food and anything else we take into our bodies. Some supplements, like turmeric, contain oxalates. Leaky gut allows undigested, unprocessed food particles into the blood stream. Some of these particles are oxalate crystals.
- Endogenous – our metabolism can be prone to creating oxalates for various reasons. It’s outside the scope of this article to go into much detail on that here. Vitamin deficiencies and genetic SNPs can contribute to oxalate production. In most people, this accounts for as much as 80% of the oxalates in our bodies.
- Environmental – some forms of mold and yeast stimulate oxalate formation in the body.
If you’ve been trying to eat healthy and for some reason it doesn’t feel good, look into oxalates. If you have a problem resolving some of the symptoms I’ve described, look into oxalates.
Susan Owens is a researcher who has put oxalates on the map. She has made her research available on her website at http://lowoxalate.info, and to her private Facebook group, Trying Low Oxalates. You can access all her research for free, so don’t hesitate to look into it.
Do you think you’ve had a bad reaction to healthy food?
Leave a comment below and share your experience.
Sources:
Low Oxalate, lowoxalate.info/.
