Are Oxalates Harmful To Your Health?

February 5, 2023

Oxalates in of themselves are harmful to health, but it turns out that individuals with a diverse gut flora can break down oxalates that are consumed in foods, thereby minimizing the lethal effect that they can have on the body. Per an excellent article published by Whole Foods, one particular strain of bacteria in the gut biome "degraded up to 98% of available oxalate in vitro and also promoted endogenous oxalate secretion by the gut mucosa in mice."

So we can take comfort in the thought that if we have great biodiversity in our digestive system, we may be fortunate to have microbes in our body that can actually help degrade and breakdown oxalates. Here is another article found at Hormones Matter that is very encouraging in this regard. Here is a link to a PDF of that article.

Perhaps GPT Chat sums it up best by stating (from You.com): "According to a study published in The Journal of Nutrition, which looked at the dietary intake of oxalates and the effects of gut bacteria on oxalate absorption in healthy adults, the intake of oxalates from whole foods such as vegetables, fruits, nuts, and grains was found to be significantly higher than that of other dietary sources. Additionally, the study found that certain gut bacteria are able to break down oxalates, preventing them from being absorbed. This suggests that foods high in oxalates such as nuts, vegetables, and whole grains can be beneficial to health if the gut is populated with the right bacteria."

Supplements can impact oxalate for better or worse. As explained in the article just linked, one supplement in particular, Vitamin C, can increase oxalates in the urine, but interestingly, who eat lots of foods rich in vitamin C tend to have fewer kidney stones.

For those unable to break down oxalates, an expert named Sally K. Norton is able to provide many resources on how best to take countermeasures against oxalates or how to avoid them altogether. For those individuals, many of the foods that we might think of as superfoods--such as spinach, sweet potatoes, dark chocolate, and almonds--which contain high levels of oxalates--can be very harmful to health. That can explain why sweet potatoes which are high in oxalates could be harmful to some people whereas to others it could be one of their favorite health foods (such is the case with Sabine Hazan, who has more phylum of bacteria in her gut than the average American).

Oxalate build up in our bodies over time may go unnoticed. But as is the case with smoking, although we may seemingly escape the harmful effects of oxalates for years, the endgame is never rosy. Oxalates (with a charge of -2) love to bind with calcium (with a charge of +2), so they either reduce calcium absorption of the food we eat or they bind with the calcium in our body, both of which can result in our body pulling calcium from our bones to keep things running (the heartbeat going, etc.) Many health disorders can arise from oxalate build up--kidney stones, osteoporosis, vision problems, rashes and cysts, fibromyalgia, and fibrous tissue where healthy tissue should be--to name a few. Unfortunately, it can take years to reverse oxalate buildup in our bodies.

A good overview of the oxalate issue can be found in a Dr. Joseph Mercola interview with Sally K. Norton, who recently wrote a book (with over 400 citations) on the harmful effects of oxalates on our health and how to avoid them. Sally is one of the few people--if not the only person--who has written a competent book dedicated to the topic. My only criticism of this interview is that they failed to mention that degradation of oxalates can occur through healthy bacteria in our gut (if we are fortunate to have those strains in our gut). I'm not sure if Sally covers that insight in her book. The transcript to the interview can be found here.

Many helpful suggestions are found in the Dr. Joseph Mercola interview with Sally K. Norton, and many of the suggestions have to do with minerals. In the interview Sally recommends taking calcium citrate and magnesium citrate twice a day. Sally says that before bedtime is an ideal time for one of the two doses of those two minerals because magnesium can improve sleep and also, during the night, is a time when our body can best use the calcium.

Most calcium and magnesium supplement combos have twice as much calcium as magnesium (1,000mg of calcium to 500mg magnesium is typical). The PureBulk website suggests that most adults need 1,000mg of calcium per day, but they suggest taking no more than 600mg of calcium at a time. Supposing that 2:1 is a good calcium to magnesium ratio, a good starting point for supplementing with those two minerals would be to take 500mg calcium citrate and 250mg magnesium citrate, twice per day.

Sally also gives the suggestion to add a little potassium to the calcium if you find that the calcium is a little irritating. (I have not found that to be the case.) Speaking of potassium, in general we shouldn't supplement with potassium but rather we should rely on foods that are high in potassium to give us the potassium that we need. Examples of such foods are bananas, milk, eggs, avocados, raisins, and blackstrap molasses to name a few.

Further speaking of minerals, if you drink filtered water, it's helpful to supplement a little with Boron, for as this well researched paper with 135 citations states, there's nothing boring about Boron!