Oxalates and possible reason some people get sick on carnivore

#42

stay dirty as it suits you personally FB! I get that!!!

(Edith) #43

Ah… do you listen to the Peak Human podcast?

(Bunny) #44

If you had the proper gut microbiome (oxalabacter formigenes) I don’t think you would have to gradually remove or dump anything?

Sally likes to ignore (a cherry picker?) the fact that the proper microbiome (lactobacillus and formigenes) creates the enzymes that breakdown oxalates even exists? You aren’t going do that eating only meat and water? That is why I eat resistant starch (an oxalate oooh OMG) with my meat and raw most of the time!

That’s problem with these carnivore gurus they ignore and cherry pick the research and gloss right over any suggestions that they are wrong which is what they turn around and accuse other people of doing? = junk pseudo science?

Footnotes:

[1] Oxalobacter formigenes is an oxalate-degrading anaerobic bacterium that colonizes the large intestines of numerous vertebrates, including humans. O. formigenes and humans share a beneficial symbiosis. The broad-spectrum quinolone antibiotics kill O. formigenes. …More

[2] “…formigenes and L. acidophilus, can degrade large amounts of oxalate, while others, such as L. Lactobacillus acidophilus increases the expression of the oxalate -degrading genes, oxc and frc, when the pH increases from 4.5 to 5.5, but expression is reduced at a pH of 6.8 [84]. …” …More

#45

The second paper is really good. It brings together some things we’ve been investigating.

Gut pH, especially in the colon, affects the oxalate break down by a number of bacteria species. It is also the major site of absorption of intact, unbound oxalic acid. The bacterial species include probiotic formulae species such as Lactobacillus and Acidophilus, so it opens the research path as to whether those probiotics persist through the stomach to reach and survive in the colon?

The fluquinalone effect on killing Oxalobacter is interesting for an anecdote. When I had kidney pain in 2017 the primary care doctor prescribed antibiotics for a urinary tract infection. They were fluquinalones. That may have exacerbated the problem and increased the risk of the calcium oxalate kidney stone that formed. They are the only antibiotics I’ve had recently. Previous to that I’ve taken penicillins for various animal bites and resultant infections. I got to stop patting every critter I meet.

The colon pH for optimal oxalate breaking down activity for Oxalobacter appears to be quite alkaline of around 6.5? I wonder if that is where fibrous vegetables and the resistant starches play their role in creating that pH?

In a more acidic upper colon niche of pH 4.5 to 5.5 Lactobacillus and Acidophilus have their greatest oxalate breaking down activity? I think those two bacteria may be associated with digesting dairy based foods? So I wonder if there is an oxalate defence double whammy of dairy calcium binding the oxalate in the gut and also feeding those gut bacteria that have oxalate break down capacity?

I reckon my Oxalobacter took a hit in 2017 and I’m still paying for that. Also attempting clean carnivore without dairy takes away another oxalate barrier.

So I might try a form of carnivore that includes probiotic dairy foods as I gradually wean off the higher oxalate foods.(But Bunny fig season starts next month!). If I’m going to be a dirty carnivore, or a dirty Keto omnivore, I’ll look at testing n=1 some resistant starch to see what happens with my nutritional ketosis goals.

Cool stuff @atomicspacebunny. Dang my improper gut biome snow flakiness. Maybe a series of poo tests are in order to see if there are any Oxalobacter?

I’ll aim for a Colon of Dreams, build it and they will come.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #46

#47

Maybe. (Brian is in my head. It’s that laid back Hawaiian Californian accent).

#48

The above graphic is misleading, as lemon juice and ACV are acid outside the body but become alkaline in their corrective/balancing role within the body’s internal pH environment, once they’ve been fully metabolized and their minerals are dissociated in the bloodstream their effect is alkalizing and therefore raise the pH of the body to above 7, which is alkaline. They have a negative PRAL (Potential Renal Acid Load) score, whereas positive score foods are acid-forming (as in all animal flesh and products, which points to benefits of fasting for carnivores). https://www.clinicaleducation.org/documents/revised-summary-pral-list.pdf

Coral calcium is mineral rich and directly alkalinizing, as is mineral exudate/pitch collected from high elevations in the Himalayas and Andes (called shilajit or mumijo, the culmination of hundreds to millions of years of organic matter decomposition, loaded with humic and fulvic acids , trace minerals as well as amino acids!). Mineral-rich ancient cave salts (mineral salts) aren’t directly alkaliizing but they do help remove acidic toxins from the body so are indirectly alkalinizing.

There’s a descriptor word for that alkalinizing action characteristic of certain foods, it’s escaping me at the moment - but it’s a known phenom in functional medicine and natural healing. (Anna Cabeca MD and Louise Gittelman PhD are recent voices on the importance of reducing acidity in the body via veg/fruit and intermittent fasting).

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #49
#50

What does this mean? Is it of the blood?

For example:
Blood pH has a tightly controlled physiological range (7.36-7.44).

Specifically, persistent acidogenic diets have the potential to cause small decreases in blood pH and plasma bicarbonate, but not beyond the normal physiological range. (1)

Metabolic acidosis occurs when the body has more acid than base in it. Chemists use the term “pH” to describe how acidic or basic a substance is. Based on a scale of 14, a pH of 7.0 is neutral. A pH below 7.0 is an acid; the lower the number, the stronger the acid. A pH above 7.0 is a base; the higher the number, the stronger the base. Blood pH is slightly basic (alkaline), with a normal range of 7.36-7.44. (2)

Metabolic acidosis, including ketoacidosis and lactic acidosis, does occur in disease states and is something that requires fixing quickly. I think our context of discussion is the non-diseased ‘healthy’ human? But is nutritional ketosis a potential form of low grade metabolic ‘acidosis’ (i.e. blood pH closer to 7.36)? I think this was argued very strongly only a few years ago as keto came in vogue, and was a reason to advise against staying continuously in nutritional ketosis. It would appear metabolic acidosis despite not being a true acid state is more acidic than the mid-range normal pH of blood, the original point of measure.

Metabolic acidosis is suspected based on symptoms, but is usually confirmed by laboratory tests on blood and urine samples. Blood pH below 7.35 confirms the condition. Levels of other blood components, including potassium, glucose, ketones, or lactic acid, may also be above normal ranges. The level of bicarbonate in the blood will be low, usually less than 22 mEq/L. Urine pH may fall below 4.5 in metabolic acidosis. (2)

So, as part of “the body” there are areas that are exposed to compartmentalised greater variations in pH.

  1. The stomach can be an acidic environment.

  2. The environment of the lower gastro-intestinal tract (bowels/intestines) can have variations in pH depending upon its contents and inputs (bile, digestive enzymes, food stuffs, water…), so the lining cells of the gut potentially have that exposure (but are often protected by a mucus barrier).

  3. I wonder if the gall bladder and duct are acidic environments in relation to bile? (The pancreas seems like it might be acidic but its digestive juices are enzymatic rather than directly, chemically acidic.)

  4. The kidneys are active pH controlling organs and the resultant urine may be acid or alkaline depending upon how the body is buffering the whole system, so the lining cells of the urinary tract may also encounter variable pH, including acidity. Again these cells are often protected by mucus.

When I see articles or statements about meat acidifying ‘the body’, I initially imagine the body has an overall acid pH (<7.0), and it is the whole body, all the stuff packaged inside the skin, including the circulation, extracellular fluid space and intracellular fluid. But it really does appear that is not so. It seems I’m getting it wrong.The “acidification of the body” may be a transient effect before physiological buffering with bicarbonate ions, that eventually lead to further blood pH balancing through excretion of hydrogen ions through the kidney to create an acid urine. But the acidification or acidosis is a variation down the pH scale of numbers from a set point, even though the blood pH remains alkaline.

Or, acidification may pertain to digestion that might result in an acid environment of the digestive tract (part) of the whole body.

There is an interesting aside that links extracellular fluid acidification and cancer, thus adding a fear factor to the acidifying labelled foods. It seems true that some cancers spread in acidic extracellular fluid environments. But that acid is self generated from inside the cancer cells (1), it doesn’t come from dietary sources. I don’t know if that is an acid pH, or if it is a movement of the pH down the scale toward acidity in the extracellular fluid.

I’d be interested for any more discussion on the physiological foundations of the acidification and alkalinisation of the body type messages in the nutrition world. I clearly do not yet understand it well enough yet. Thanks for trying to help me.

This was an interesting paper, from which I’m getting a lot of my questions, and is a paper referenced from the one posted by Michael @amwassil
I’m not fully versed on the reputation of the journal and haven’t yet explored the potential biases of the author.

  1. https://nutritionandmetabolism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-7075-9-72
  2. https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/metabolic+acidosis

Are we too far off track for your topic @AuntJane? Acid conditions (at least in the urine) do pertain to calcium oxalate kidney stone formation.

#51

@VirginiaEdie Edith. This potential metabolic acidosis of a carnivore diet is a potential differential diagnosis for heart rate arrhythmia. Could we be blaming the oxalates for what the meat has done? No, surely not. Maybe? Interesting investigation path to follow.

(Edith) #52

@FrankoBear, I’m not sure. I just joined the carnivore subgroup of the Trying Low Oxalate Facebook group. I can pose a question there.

Most things I’ve read there so far pertain to dumping too quickly/severely due to carnivore being pretty much zero oxalate. I’ve seen suggestions of eating a few squares of dark chocolate (preferably 100%) or drinking some black tea each day to slow things down. One thing that I have read on the group which I am going to look into more is they suggest using potassium bicarbonate in water, I believe to make things more alkaline.

I’m at the end of an annoying dumping episode that seems to have gotten triggered by taking antibiotics for a sinus infection. I hadn’t been sick for over three years. (Coincidence or carnivore?)
My lips peeled, I had crusty eyes when I awoke, sandy colored diarrhea, and terrible joint pain - especially in my lower back. That’s finally coming to an end. It does not seem to cause heart arrhythmias for me.

I was tied up with family business over the weekend and haven’t had a chance to delve into the potassium bicarbonate, in particular, more deeply. I have also seen where they suggest citrate forms of magnesium and epsom salt baths to help with dumping. I’m hoping to look into all this today.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #53

I believe it’s because we can eat quite a bit of spinach before hitting the 20 g limit, and therefore people don’t feel so deprived of carbohydrate.

Bear in mind that our understanding of what’s going on tends to run in cycles. When I joined the forums a few years ago, the big problem was how bad people felt from the Candida albicans die-off that resulted from depriving one’s yeast infection of glucose. Now it’s oxalate-dumping. I don’t mean to minimise either problem, just to point out that there will always be some sort of issue or other that can result from any major dietary change.

We also need to bear in mind the logical fallacy known as post hoc, propter hoc (meaning “It occurred afterward, so it’s a result”). Naturally, quite often the symptoms that occur after a dietary change are related to the change, but we should always bear in mind the possibility that they are unrelated. This is important, because the symptom(s) in question may reflect the presence of a medical condition that needs to be addressed, one that coincidentally revealed itself at the same time as we went keto/carnivore/etc. We always need to be aware of our assumptions.

#54

I’m no expert on it - just a perpetual student and experimenter, that’s for sure.

The connection between acidification/de-acidification with hormones and toxins has several fascinating angles. pH is a particularly renal thing - the balance is maintained by the kidneys and ascertained via urine levels. Another thing is that though sugar is not in itself acidic, it feeds bad bacteria and they in turn release acid byproducts. So acidification is also has a gut/microbiome aspect.

Without the mineralization of alkalinizing input via trace minerals (whether through foods or supplements like ancient salts - the benefit of veg/fruit foods is that they also usually contain tons of antioxidants which are helpful for cellular health), there is hormonal havoc pertaining to cortisol and sex hormones due in part to lack of proper nutrient absorption over time. Dr. Anna Cabeca’s books have a lot more about this.

Developmentally, observing young children who have access to a range of in-season or dried garden/wild/stored foods from an early age is informative. They love to sample different things, not just proteins, as they search for any minerals their body requires as it fluctuates daily (and mother’s milk also fluctuates in anticipation of that, quite remarkably). Non-nurslings frequently will even eat dirt/clay and/or bark to satisfy their roving quest for whatever minerals or mineralization is needed. The human child under 3-4 tends to love strongly alkalinizing things like lemons and sour plums/gooseberries (and other things like pickles when they’re not peppered) - as well as certain clay/dirt - due to their stage of palate/brain development which makes such things taste very pleasant, and possibly even sweet, ensuring that they avail themselves of it whenver needed. This is often obscured in industrial culture environments where children hardly spend any time outdoors and/or have a monodiet of packaged foods :crying_cat_face:

(Jane Srygley) #55

I don’t believe that’s accurate. These bacteria are easily killed by antibiotics, so the problem tends to be that even if we had them initially, they are very likely to have been killed off in most of us.

(Edith) #56

But… boiling vegetables also leeches out potassium which is what causes the vegetables to be alkalizing in the first place. You would need to drink the water to get the potassium which means you would also get the oxalate.

(Anna ) #57

In the Trying Low Oxalates (TLO) group, which I have been a member of now 3 years, they suggest when eating foods that contain oxalate, eat those foods with some Calcium Citrate. The oxalates in the meal with bind to the Calcium. Citrate supplements are recommended as they seem to help kidneys excrete urinary citrate and decrease your risk for calcium stones. Yes, lemon water would help as well, but when you have health issues and must keep your oxalate slow, supplements are just the easy way to go.

Since I don’t eat dairy, that was my preferred way of dealing with it and after lowering my oxalates and supplementing with Calcium Citrate for 2 years, I didn’t seem to have all those issues with oxalates, although I’m still on a low/med oxalate diet, and have to watch my intake. Since I don’t eat foods that are high oxalates often, I no longer supplement with calcium citrate at every meal. I will still take some calcium citrate after eating baked goods that use almond flour, since almonds are high in oxalates.

(Anna ) #58

Many of the people that have issues with oxalates, had also had many rounds of antibiotics in their lives, and their microbiomes are neither healthy or intact. There is evidence that oxalate issues and D-Lactic acidosis are related. There is some mention of that in some of the medical studies, but D-Lactic Acidosis is still one of those problems that is under the radar, as is oxalates, unless you actually have kidney stones. Most people won’t know that they have issues with oxalates until they pass a kidney stone or change their diet significantly, and start dumping oxalates. Most people won’t know they have issues with D-Lactic Acid, very few get a major case of lactic acidoses and end up in the emergency room. Most just have mild Lactic Acidosis that just makes them sick for a few days.

I am one of those people that has oxalate and D-Lactic Acid issues. I can’t eat foods that contain most of the Lactobacillus strains and some of the Acidophilus strains. Since this hasn’t been studied very well, I just avoid all foods with Lactobacillus and Acidophilus and all fermented foods. Most commercial fermented foods like yogurt and sourkroutuse are started with Lactobacillus. I also can’t eat most fibers, because even if I avoid eating foods high in lactic acid, there are microbes in my gut that make it, and they feed on sugar and fiber to most extent. Therefore a keto diet is ideal for people like me, especially the carnivore diet. But if you have issues with oxalates, it’s very hard to just go carnivore, you have to reduce your oxalate levels slowly, you don’t want to dump and end up hurting your kidneys. So the ones that can really benefit from going carnivore, have a hard time doing so.

(Bunny) #59

…unless they are drinking lemon water…

(Anna ) #60

If it was that simple, don’t you think the 26,000 members of the Trying Low Oxalates group would have figured that out? Susan Owens, who runs the group, is a researcher, she has developed a low oxalate diet for kids with autism. There is no one simple fix for oxalates.

#61

Recently the skin on my feet and ankles have been peeling. I wasn’t sure what was going on but I think I came across a mention of ox dumping causing peeling skin. Think it could be related?
I joined the TLO group as well but haven’t read through all of the units yet.