Need nitrite / nitrate advice

[Guest guest]

I don't know the first thing about nitrates / nitrites and I need an

education. Levine posted last week that beets have nitrites

(or maybe nitrates - I don't know the difference).

We have noticed several times that Tom has gotten stimmy and

unfocused after consuming beets, and for a while we thought it was

an oxalate problem, and did a short trial of removing the high-

oxalate foods from his diet (very difficult as most veggies he

tolerates are actually high-oxalate - spinach, asparagus, beets,

etc.). We didn't notice any behavior changes, os we stopped and then

started the SCD instead - where we've been having great results.

It is really hard to remove beets from Tom's diet until we have

something to replace it with, he needs it for one of his rotations.

Options are cabage and rutabagas, which he tolerates allergy-wise,

but I don't think his gut is well-healed enough for them. He still

isn't digesting well (undigested stools, we have some lamb pancreas

enzymes ready to start soon when he stabilizes a bit - we just

started Pentasa).

Anyhow, I guess my questions are:

1. What do nitrates / nitrites do?

2. Do they tend to cause predictable behavior problems?

3. How are they different/similar?

4. What foods have nitrates/nitrites? Is there a list somewhere?

Thank you!

Suzanne

Tom, ASD, LNH/gastritis, gut inflammation, 85 days SCD and WEANED AS

OF TODAY!