Oxalate overview

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OMG--this is making so much sense to me! I have had issues with the symptoms of UTI's since one year ago....exactly the scenario they described with no evidence of it, but the symptoms, and rounds of (expensive) antibiotics. I believe a low oxalate diet is the way for me to go right now.This website has excellent information: www.lowoxalate.infohttp://www.lowoxalate.info/research.htmlOxalate OverviewOxalate is a highly reactive molecule that is abundant in many plant foods, but in human cells, when it is present in high amounts, it can lead to oxidative damage, depletion of glutathione, the igniting of the immune system's inflammatory cascade, and the formation of crystals which seem to be associated with pain and prolonged injury. Ordinarily, not much oxalate is absorbed from the diet, but the level of absorption has to do with the condition of the gut. There is a lot of medical literature showing that when the gut is inflamed, when there is poor fat digestion (steatorrhea), when there is a leaky gut, or when there is prolonged diarrhea or constipation, excess oxalate from foods that are eaten can be absorbed from the GI tract and become a risk to other cells in the body.Those with a history of heavy antibiotic use or recent antibiotic use may be at much greater risk from dietary oxalate. Many antibiotics can kill back the flora that degrades oxalate, including lactobacillus acidophilus and bifidus. These bacteria that comprise the main ingredients in most probiotics may have been taken with the idea they would discourage yeast. It is a very good idea to try and replenish these familiar commensal bacterias , but they are just so-so at degrading oxalate because they really prefer other foods. That is not the case with another bacteria, which is an anaerobe called oxalobacter formigenes. Oxalobacter cannot survive without eating up oxalate, so oxalate makes it happy and makes it grow.. Several studies have shown that those who develop oxalate-related disease generally lack oxalobacter in their stool.People who do well on a high oxalate diet may be people who have a healthy amount of oxalobacter in their colon. They might be able to eat nut breads and spinach on SCD or high-oxalate dairy substitutes on gf/cf and flours that may be high oxalate like buckwheat, because the oxalobacter would happily degrade the oxalate and keep the dietary oxalate from being absorbed in the colon where it could travel by blood into other tissues. If this is the case, a patient should have low plasma and low urinary oxalate while they are eating a high oxalate diet.The urinary test by itself may not be sufficient for this "ruling" in populations known to have sulfation problems because insufficient sulfate inside of kidney tubule cells would be predicted to affect the ability of the kidneys to remove oxalate from the blood and deliver that oxalate to urine. This caveat regarding urinary testing would be a concern for those with autism and those with HIV, a disease known to be associated with urinary wasting of sulfate. So, a high level of oxalate in urine should be a concern, but a low level in urine may not properly represent the amount of oxalate absorbed from the gut.The article Oxalobacter formigenesand Its Potential Role in Human Health found that many antibiotics can and do kill this special microbe called oxalobacter formigenes:chloramphenicol (chloromycetin)nalidixic acid (no longer used in US)erythromycinclarithromycin (Biaxin)co-amoxiclav (Augmentin)metronidazole (flagyl)doxycycline (the only tetracycline studied)We are glad that a company named Oxthera is busy getting approval for a probiotic of oxalobacter formigenes that will be sold as a drug. It is being developed at this site: Oxthera Products.Urinary Tract InfectionsWomen in the Vulvar Pain Foundation have described a no-win scenario that may happen in other populations. They found that they were being treated prophylactically with antibiotics when they went to the doctor complaining of symptoms that suggested they had a urinary tract infection. Later, the culture would come back negative after they had already been on yet another round of antibiotics. Of course, those antibiotics may have further damaged the flora by killing off the oxalate degraders. IF OXALATE WAS THE CAUSE OF THE SYMPTOMS, then you can see that this scenario would keep the problem perpetuating itself. Many of these women found that on the low oxalate diet, they lost the symptoms that felt like a UTI, and stopped being on this antibiotic merry-go-round. Many found similar relief from yeast infections on this diet, so they no longer required constant anti-fungal medication. Clearly, this is an area where a correct diagnosis that recognizes oxalate's role in these symptoms may be able to end the otherwise endless rounds of medication...that is, IF oxalates were the cause of symptoms.Yeast OvergrowthIt is likely the tie to yeast infections involves a problem in the immune system and its ability to recognize yeast overgrowth and respond. Oxalate is known to impair carboxylase enzymes producing symptoms equivalent to biotin or biotinidase deficiency. The literature on those conditions is clear that when carbxylases are impaired, it is easy to get runaway problems with yeast. Perhaps this explains why some people on the low oxalate diet would lose this inhibition, resulting in a loss of their tendency towards chronic candidiasis. If this reduction of yeast doesn't seem to be working in the first months of LOD when "dumping cycles" may come more frequently, then it certainly might make sense to increase the level of biotin in the diet (with a supplement that furnishes biotin in mgs rather than mcgs) to see if that also helps keep back yeast by enhancing carboxylase activity. For a more thorough explanation of biotin-dependent enzymes and processes that we now realize may suffer inhibition by oxalate see page.309-310 in the Defeat Autism Now! manual and search the archives for biotin at Trying_Low_Oxalates.The Defeat Autism Now! manual, though written for autism, still contains many principles that could be applied to other conditions where there may be oxidative stress, difficulty clearing toxins, gut inflammation and dysbiosis, and problems with immunity, so it is recommended as a potential resource for those with oxalate-related issues.