OT: Paper on Autism, Vitamin K, and Oxalates

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http://gutresearch.com/v1.html

To the list - This is a link to a paper I wrote last week concerning Vitamin

K deficiency in autism. In this paper I address the issue of oxalates,

including some theories on the source of the oxalates, their purpose, and

how to get rid of them. Many of you are aware that a researcher has been

looking into oxalates as a contributor to autism this past year; that

researcher has concluded that oxalates in diet are a hazard, and that a low

oxalate diet will be beneficial for the kids. That researcher established a

listserve called Trying Low Oxalates in order to investigate his/theories on

this diet, including advising parents on how to implement a very low oxalate

diet. I have been on that list since its inception and have read all the

posts, including every one of the abstracts and all of the positive and

negative parental reports. I have also put my children on that diet, twice.

(For those of you who don't know me, my kids and I started the Specific

Carbohydrate Diet over 4 years ago. I am one of the original members of

this list although I haven't been active in a while.)

I have come to some different conclusions concerning the source of oxalates

from the researcher's, and I believe my conclusions fit the data better. I

have no doubt that autistic children have lots of oxalate crystals in their

bodies, and many of the non-autistic people on SCD probably have oxalate

crystals too. However, I believe the primary source is endogenous

production, not dietary absorption, and that the endogenous production is

occurring in humans for the same reason it occurs in plants: to manage

calcium. So the interesting question becomes, why does calcium need to be

managed? And the answer concerns the importance of calcium to the nervous

system, a topic which has not been addressed much by the DAN researchers. I

also have come to believe, based on both my research and my experience with

my sons, that the Low Oxalate Diet is unnecessary and ill-advised, and that

there is a much better way to remove oxalates from the body.

Here is a summary of the paper:

Vitamin K is an important vitamin that is probably deficient in autistic

kids and others with chronic illnesses. Vitamin K " activates " bone proteins

that " escort " calcium around the body. If the proteins can't be activated

due to a Vitamin K deficiency, the calcium is unescorted: that means it

leaves its proper storage places of bones and teeth, and gets deposited in

places it shouldn't like the blood vessels, the organs, and the nervous

system. Unmanaged calcium in the nervous system can overstimulate the

neurons, causing them to continue to fire repeatedly until they are

exhausted and die.

I believe (and this is a hypothesis) that a Vitamin K deficiency causes the

liver to produce oxalates. The oxalates bind up the unescorted calcium so

that it doesn't get into the nervous system. Later on, when the diet

includes Vitamin K again, the activated proteins pull the calcium out of the

calcium oxalate crystals, leaving the oxalic acid for disposal. The body

can dispose of oxalic acid via the kidneys and the intestines. It appears

that the intestines can dispose of quite a lot of oxalic acid, IF the proper

bacteria are available to degrade the oxalic acid into carbon, hydrogen, and

oxygen. The most specific bacterium for this job is called Oxalobacter

formigenes and it is easily killed by antibiotics. Lactic acid bacteria can

also degrade oxalic acid, and they too are easily killed by antibiotics. So

if the proper bacteria are not in the GI tract, the body will not be able to

dispose of much oxalic acid. Remember, too that Vitamin K is produced by

gut bacteria, and these Vitamin K-producing bacteria are again easily killed

by antibiotics.

Dr. Clive Solomons, originator of the low oxalate diet, very specifically

stated that people should NOT stay at the " low " level for very long because

he found they began to produce oxalates. A low oxalate diet excludes leafy

greens, an important dietary source of Vitamin K, and people who eliminate

leafy greens from their diet run the risk of becoming depleted in Vitamin K.

The low oxalate diet as recommended for children with autism does not

include the use of Vitamin K. It does recommend the use of citrate

minerals, especially calcium citrate and magnesium citrate, which seem to

chelate calcium from the CaOx crystals. However, without Vitamin K in

place, the chelated calcium is merely set loose into circulation, without

the " escort " proteins, to cause new problems elsewhere in the body.

I believe the reason some kids have problems with SCD, or plateau after a

period of time, is that the probiotics - especially in the yogurt - are

dissolving calcium oxalate crystals in the intestines, but the child is

deficient in Vitamin K so the liberated calcium is now drifting around the

body again causing problems. More children should tolerate and benefit from

SCD, and the gains should be bigger, if they are also receiving Vitamin K.

The US RDA is the amount needed by the liver for blood clotting functions

only. The amount needed by the bond proteins is unknown. Some Japanese

studies on osteoporosis used an adult dose of 15 mg three times daily (TID).

To adjust for a child, divide the child's weight by 150 and apply that

fraction to the dose. Vitamin K appears to be a powerful calcium chelator,

and I recommend that parents proceed slowly with this nutrient. I amusing

Vitamin K2 from Thorne Research.