My oxalate story isn't just just about oxalates
I used to have my mould or CIRS story and recovery journey up on this blog, but I took it down as it’s the past and I’ve moved on. It’s not my identity, if you see what I mean.
But after mould came oxalates. This is why I’ve posted a lot about it.
So what is this? Oxalates are naturally occurring compounds found in high amounts in certain plant foods. They can bind to minerals like calcium, forming sharp crystals that can accumulate in tissues, joints, kidneys and blood vessels, contributing to inflammation, pain, and kidney stones. In sensitive people, excess oxalates can also impair mitochondrial function (energy), increase oxidative stress (disease), and exacerbate chronic health conditions.
Oxalate sensitivity can be caused by many things. For example a yeast or fungal infection; inflammation and ongoing infections (which often start in the gut); food sensitivities; gut permeability from low stomach acid, eating too much sugar, refined carbs and processed seed oils, low digestive enzymes, bacterial imbalances and infections; stress; antibiotics and other drugs; and a change in diet that includes a lot more of certain plant foods like spinach and grains. We can have genetic tendencies too, and of course there’s mould which wreaks a lot of havoc across all the body’s systems.
Back to my story. After leaving the mouldy house, I became sensitive. I suffered from itchy skin that drove me mad, bladder sensitivity that felt like infections but wasn’t, achy swollen joints, fluid retention, air hunger and more.
So I ate low oxalate. It helped a lot, but I knew higher oxalate foods were not the cause but ather the trigger, as I’d tolerated them for years. Did I really think it would be necessary to eat low oxalate for the rest of my life? No. So what was the cause.
Then one day I had too much chocolate and I couldn’t breathe for hours. It was scary and the hospital couldn’t find anything. Then I recognised this from when I was a teenager, and at other periods in my life. I actually used to faint from taking in too much air (sort of hyperventilating), but eventually learned how to manage this with slower breathing, though still unpleasant and stressful.
What did those times in my life have in common? When I was a child and teenager, I had chronic tonsillitis, ear and throat infections. My parents gave me many rounds of antibiotics, an assured recipe for poor gut health and infections.
Post mould, everything in my gut was similarly in a bad way.
So I went about healing, rebalancing and rebuilding my gut health as described here, and over 6 months, my sensitivity reduced by 80%.
Then I noticed some oxalate type reactions to foods that contained no oxalates like dairy. How many of my oxalate reactions had not been caused by oxalates, I wondered, but by a food I was allergic or sensitive to? What a realisation. Inflammation was key!
I did some more gut testing (things can change quickly), and had some ongoing work to do. I also did a lot of Psych-K on myself after completing the Health & Wellness Psych-K course to reduce my sensitivities (the final piece in my training), and discovered my sensitivity to both dairy and oxalates were rooted in relationship challenges
My mother had been forced to give up breastfeeding me due to poor advice from a doctor, and replaced her milk with bottled cow’s milk. At a subconscious level I associated milk with rejection, meaning it now felt unsafe to consume dairy, putting my nervous system into fight and flight mode
Oxalates were about my father, who loved spinach more than anything, and seemed in many ways to be a hard person to my young self
My oxalate and general food tolerance is now between 90-100%, depending on the day. Not bad for someone who couldn’t have a chai tea without spending the rest of the day limping with knee pain and inflammation.
I continue to work on my gut, recognising that getting older means I need to do more to maintain good function, especially for me or any other women post menopause as we lose a lot of function and natural protection.