When I first began to obtain the background I needed to understand the oxalate issues I found in autism 18 years ago (2005), I attended professional oxalate conferences. I was very surprised to discover they were only attended by kidney doctors and kidney researchers. To them, finding oxalate elevated in autism was an anomaly. In fact, finding oxalate elevated apart from kidney stone disease or genetic hyperoxaluria was in their minds, impossible.
Why did I start studying it? Beginning about thirty years ago, my academic work was all about sulfate and discovering its role in neurodevelopment. Years later, sulfate was found to exchange for oxalate on a special set of transporters called the SLC26A family of transporters.
I had already thoroughly explored the role of sulfate in autism, but this new science meant that now I needed to study oxalate to find out how oxalate could disrupt sulfate and other things important in autism. To accomplish that, I studied the oxalate literature for four months with a special focus on the genetic hyperoxalurias where it was known that oxalate traveled to the whole body.
I attended 7 professional oxalate conferences. To my surprise, the scientists there seemed to have formed an unspoken pact to ignore issues that were not centered around kidney stone disease. They were uninterested in how oxalate affected the general biochemistry wherever it went. I had already spent a decade recognizing complex issues in autism, so I knew that oxalate, by affecting sulfate, could alter neurodevelopment as well as hormone and neurotransmitter regulation, and it was a clear mitochondrial toxin. This new information required a reinterpretation of autism findings.
Before that, I had been studying sulfate's role, but now, oxalate could be a major disruptor. Formate was also a substrate of those transporters. Anyone can find literature about how formate and oxalate have been influencing each other, but I found nothing practically useful.
Chris, this is why I am particularly delighted to find your interest in this field and I like the way you are looking at it in the way it should have been studied a long time ago.
The oxalate field for so many years had blinders on...something that Sally Norton and I had both found and explored independently. Sally has been more into thinking about issues with diet, but I became more concerned about reaching academia and helping them study the oxalate the body makes under stress.
It was impossible to do a study in the US on oxalate in autism because the labs in the US that were skilled in measuring oxalate told me they would not test anyone unless they had kidney disease. That is why I recruited a highly qualified group of scientists to look at oxalate levels in autism, and we got astonishing results. That paper is ranked now in the top 4% of scientific studies and it has had 42 citations. That attention is really great, but it is still not motivating other scientists to look past the kidneys and find other types of diseases related to oxalate.
Chris, the commendable sort of thinking that you are doing is exactly what is needed to move oxalate research forward and into new territory. I eagerly invite you to further explore this fruitful area that has been in sore need of your skill set. I hope that you can generate experimental evidence.
In 2005, with a bunch of grateful autism parents, we formed the TryingLowOxalates network and it has has already helped more than 70,000 people discover the relevance of oxalate to their own health. This is the way we picked up an enormous amount of personal experience about reducing oxalate, but we have not seen nearly the amount of change we want to see in academia.
We're trying to change that. Our group performed the most successful fundraising of anybody this past year for the Oxalosis and Hyperoxaluria Foundation for Giving Tuesday, and that is because our vision is to support the sort of thinking you are doing to move the study of oxalate into a new era, where multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary work rules the roost instead of being barred from the roost.
Kudos on your deep thinking! I would be delighted to see people like you get funded so that we can together solve the many human diseases related to oxalate.
Best wishes,
Susan Owens
Head of the Autism Oxalate Project at the Autism Research Institute
Founder of the Trying Low Oxalates network since 2005
Thank you so much for your kind comments and sharing your story.
I am no longer in academia, though I do have interest in eventually returning to experimental work in some context.
I think the best thing for me to do right now is reach out to enzymologists and convince them of the public health relevance of the question and see if they’d like to collaborate on a paper they could involve them doing an enzymological study on it.
I do agree it could easily be studied in an animal model, though it would cost a lot more money and I currently don’t have a lab to do that in.
I think it would also be of interest to look at whether oxalate is playing a role in genetic deficiencies of biotinidase, holocarboxylase synthetase, and pyruvate carboxylase. I have not seen it studied but maybe I could make inroads with the people who specialize in those genetic disorders to take a look at the issue.
Oh my god! I am affected by two things: Cipro (FQ antibiotics) and oxalates at the same time. I have issues with sulfur metabolism for sure but cannot find a genetic reason (my CBS is normal, MoCo formation normal, SUOX normal). I know my vitamins get destroyed (B1 and B6) and I had allergies and even nerve damage from sulfites!
I have noticed that if I eat carbs only (with very low protein like 40-50g), I start dumping oxalate and feeling like my oxidative stress (which is felt like tendon and muscle pain) is lower and I feel like a normal human being. But when I eat high protein, I start to get high OS (muscle+tendon pain) from even eating normal carbs and I need a few days to detoxify the accumulated sulfite (despite my genes being all normal and me taking molybdenum often).
Another thing for me I noticed is taking CoQ10 also increases OS (unlike literally anyone else affected by Cipro (FQ abx.)). I might be low on copper at the moment since I've been dumping a long time and taking copper also leads to high OS for me but I speculate that my issue is actually low CoQ10 (since I had reaction to CoQ10 from the very beginning of my flox journey since Nov. 3 2022) in the cells (blood tests show 1.0 ref. range 0.8-1.4 in absence of supplementation) and/or poor H2S (again due to sulfite metabolism disruption or manganese overload (had slightly high of 20.1 ref. range <18 in absence of supplementation of anything at all for ~35 days) clearance as Chris said in another post.
It did not make sense to me until I thought: perhaps oxalate, like other toxins, e.g. glyphosate, actually disturbs sulfite metabolsim (perhaps the body tries to avoid the reaction of sulfite->sulfate transformation because it is trying to gatekeep oxalate from being dumped when it does not want it to be or maybe oxalate impairs sulfite metabolism by itself).
If you could confirm that or at least say what you know about this from personal experience, I would greatly appreciate and it would greatly affect my current well-being and future recovery! Thank you for your work! Have a good day!
Hopefully you are right about biotin helping to degrade oxalate. But even if biotin does not help to degrade oxalate itself, biotin very likely mitigates the toxic effects of oxalate on gluconeogenesis and fatty acid synthesis from lactate, as described in the articles you briefly referenced by Bannister, looking at the interplay of biotin and oxalate in isolated hepatocytes. I imagine this explains the exercise intolerance reported by those with oxalate issues. Too much build-up of lactate. Personally, I had to stop weightlifting because it started to make me feel nauseous and greatly disrupted my sleep. (I can, however, tolerate small amounts of "alactic" training.) Eating too much meat causes the same problem for me, likely because of the added need for biotin, as you have detailed in other posts. I just started some biotin supplementation (I'm starting at 75 mcg/day and will increase to 150 mcg/day), and will report back.
My results were excellent. Muscle spasms that have plagued me for 6 months were gone by day two. Exercise tolerance and energy level have improved dramatically. Dude you are on to something. Everything else in my diet has been exactly the same. I eat the exact same low oxalate diet every day and I measure everything down to the gram. The only change in my regimen has been adding 75mcg per day of biotin initially, now up to 225 mcg per day in three divided doses. Dude, I really think you are on to something.
I have an idea for a research project to test your theory: Administer radiocarbon-labeled oxalate to rodents who have either decreased, normal, or increased levels of biotin in their system, and then test the amount of radioactive expired CO2. If biotin facilitates pyruvate carboxylase to degrade oxalate, you would expect to see an uptick in the amount of radioactivity in their breath. It would be similar to the urea breath test that I do in my field (clinical nuclear medicine).
The methodology has already been worked out in these two studies:
Yes I agree with that study, and I’d also like to see the enzymological studies just see if formate pops out the other end. I don’t know if I could get this going but when things lighten up for me I’ll try.
Dead Sea salt baths saved me when I unexpectedly began dumping. It has been some years, I have triggered major oxalate (or something! formate? It burned on the way out, urine, skin, eyes, lips etc). Once I tried eating a couple leaves of raw swiss chard out of my garden after it had frosted. Immediate burning dumping misery, tender points fibromyalgia style, barely able to walk. Floating in a dead sea salt bath (high magnesium chloride, potassium chloride, some sulfate) for an hour or more at a time, literally melted a ton of it away in a few days through my skin. It felt like something granular was coming out of my knee joints and dissolving. I later triggered another dumping episode experimenting with high dose thiamine. Another with diatomaceous earth. I do more careful experimentation now with slower changes. Now my OAT is normal for oxalate and its precursors; I have some other oddball things that may have to do with high need for riboflavin though. I don't do things like raw kale but I am generally okay with COOKED high oxalate foods these days in reasonable quantities.
Hi Chris: I think now the cause of my episodes of dumping (painful and scary) was depletion/insufficient active riboflavin in my system. I have been following the work of Greg Russell-Jones PhD for several years and according to him, converting free riboflavin to FMN and FAD requires thyroid hormones and FMN to FAD is MoCo dependent. Therefore if iodine, selenium and molybdenum are insufficient, or iron, or poorly absorbed the activity of riboflavin will be compromised, including activation/recycling of B12. I looked back at some old hair tests at these particular minerals and molybdenum in particular was very low some years ago and is still below Greg's desired target. Trying to add in/go up on plain sodium molybdate gives me some real joint and back pain, even adding 20 mcg or so. Feels a bit like the oxalate (or whatever it was) dumps of yore. I'm finally at 100 mcg sodium molybdate a day through a multivitamin and some separate drops, 150mcg potassium iodide, 100 mcg sodium selenate. After adding a crumb of potassium iodide to my supplements in Feb this year, I immediately got cracked lips and dry eyes like my body was begging for riboflavin. Shortly after that I started carrying a 100 mg tablet with me and nibbling on it through the day. I noticed big physical and mental energy gains and backpacked the Grand Canyon early March with my new friend, the yellow riboflavin pill. Skiing with my yellow pill. I would get cranky and fatigued, bite off a bit of riboflavin and feel better in a few minutes. Mind you for years I have taken a Jarrow B-right complex (has 25mg riboflavin, evidently not enough for me), 100 mcg selenite, bone minerals etc.. My thyroid numbers aren't optimal but not bad. I am a person who got sick from mold and got mostly better. Prone to 3 day long migraines and stomach aches and chronic mental health problems, low blood sugar symptoms since childhood. I had gone three months without a major headache until yesterday, when I (oops) overdosed myself on active form of B12 yesterday using topical form. I recovered with some extra B2, I'll introduce B12 more gradually as instructed (duh).
Very interesting, I have some similar acute effects of high-dose riboflavin that I will be writing about.
The molybdenum could be burdening the respiratory chain by delivering more electrons to complex IV, and the riboflavin might be helping that. Doesn’t seem obviously related to oxalate to me.
As a prolific calcium oxalate kidney stone producer, I have, over the years attempted to find
some dietary modifications (beyond dietary oxalate restriction) that would decrease my oxalate burden. Two of the most promising possibilities I found:
1) Oxalobacter formigenes, an obligate anaerobic probiotic
which utilizes oxalic acid as its sole source of energy. Oxalate degradation by O. formigenes involves three unique proteins, an oxalate:formate membrane transporter, oxalylCoA decarboxylase, and formyl-CoA transferase. There have been several studies confirming significant degradation of intestinal oxalates. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a commercially reliable source of Oxalobacter available. Oxalo Therapeutics has been developing products that treat primary hyperoxaluria and prevent recurrent kidney stones, but nothing, as of yet, seems available. There is one product, available from India and listed on ebay that purports to contain Oxalobacter Formigenes & Other Probiotics for Calcium Oxalate Stones Reduction. Manufactured by Standford Labs, distributed by La Renon ( India). Needless to say, I am dubious!
2) Oxalate decarboxylase: a company called Nephure came out with a powder that one could sprinkle on food several years ago. Unfortunately, I believe the company stopped production. Here is a double blind that was done in 2020 looking at this product: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35372879/
So, there you have it, two low toxicity products that seem quite efficacious for oxalate reduction that are not commercially available. I guess, for now, back to a low oxalate diet!
This is very, very interesting...thanks Chris. I had severe 'oxalate dumping' symptoms a couple of years back.. still traces now. I was 7 times the upper limit on the organic acids test, and lactate was also very high with raised arabinose, high quinolinic, high hva/vma and a bunch of other stuff out. I work with an excellent nutritionist who suggested oat testing for improving health, thyroid and autoimmunity. Following this test, I started a low oxalate keto diet but struggled to get urine ketones up at first.. but it was this that kicked off the symptoms.. blood pressure drops, tachycardia and horrible anxiety followed by cloudy urine and surprisingly a sense of relief that always came along 10 minutes before the bathroom visit.. every 10 days/2 weeks for months, with all sorts of symptoms in between. I couldn't work or drive in that period. It was as if every time blood levels got below a certain threshold then it would restart! I couldn't believe it at first but a lot of testing and research comvinced me that the dumping was a distinct possibility. Repeated oat testing showed decreasing oxalates after some time of this. Often I felt cold, like feverish, with very dry lips and dizzy, histamine type symptoms. I see that biotin may help stabilise mast cells through cyclic gmp? I had seen evidence that oxalate can directly stimulate degranulation. I took b1, b6, magnesium, citrate, calcium with meals and herbs like phylanthus niruri, dandelion, schisandra to help protect kidneys together with a bunch of other stuff finding a few things that helped symptomatically, which included anything that could increase my blood pressure. I still have occasional symptoms..it would be interesting to.see if biotin made things better/worse!
This is great. Please do more research on oxalates. After reading this and the other biotin posts I am going to cautiously experiment with some biotin.
I feel like there must be a way to get back to being able to handle the Oxalates. I happily downed tons of peanut butter and chocolate all the way into my late twenties with no I’ll effect.
Now I can’t even tolerate 50 mg a day and it drives me nuts because even so many healthy things are off limits.
What do you think about the role of magnesium and manganese in pyruvate carboxylase function?
Pyruvate carboxylase seems to be a manganese-containing enzyme. But when manganese is lacking, magnesium can substitute, retaining pyruvate carboxylase's textbook enzyme function. (Scrutton et al., 1972.)
However, "oxalate inhibition" requires 7 times more oxalate to achieve the same effect (in chicken livers) in the Mg version of the enzyme, compared with the Mn version of the enzyme. (Scrutton et al., 1972, Table V.) Maybe the manganese in the enzyme is needed to metabolize oxalate efficiently?
Paradoxically, the manganese content in pyruvate carboxylase may indicate magnesium status.
Magnesium deficiency in rat diet resulted in less manganese in organs and less liver pyruvate carboxylase activity. Magnesium seemed to direct manganese (and also calcium) to the right places. (Kimura et al., 1996.)
Magnesium is so much more abundant than manganese, that we might expect magnesium still could fill in gaps in the enzyme for missing manganese, even in the case of magnesium deficiency. So when we lack magnesium in diet, we might find (paradoxically) more magnesium and less manganese in pyruvate carboxylase? Therefore, in magnesium deficiency, we might find as much as 7x less metabolism of oxalate by pyruvate carboxylase?
In addition to its role promoting manganese delivery to pyruvate carboxylase, magnesium acts as a cofactor in Mg-ATP, as you mentioned.
So poor reaction to oxalate could relate to magnesium deficiency causing low liver manganese, low Mg-ATP, and low pyruvate carboxylase activity?
Could apparent need for more biotin indicate an underlying need for more dietary magnesium to make manganese and pyruvate carboxylase work better?
As you speak with enzymologists about investigating pyruvate carboxylase in the first breakdown step of oxalate (as you mentioned in response to Susan Owens), maybe suggest investigating the roles of magnesium and manganese nutritional status, in addition to biotin?
References:
[1] Kimura, M., Ujihara, M., & Yokoi, K. (1996). Tissue manganese levels and liver pyruvate carboxylase activity in magnesium-deficient rats. Biological Trace Element Research, 52, 171-179. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02789459
[2] Scrutton, M. C., Griminger, P., & Wallace, J. C. (1972). Pyruvate carboxylase: Bound metal content of the vertebrate liver enzyme as a function of diet and species. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 247(10), 3305-3313. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0021-9258(19)45246-0
Virtually all mineral transport is directly or indirectly dependent on ATP, so magnesium deficiency will compromise the transport of all minerals. However, magnesium transport is also ATP-dependent, so any other reason for low ATP production or utilization will compromise magnesium transport.
That's very interesting that the Mg deficiency could lower Mn incorporation into the enzyme and increase Mg incorporation and lower oxalate clearance.
From a clinical/health perspective, this is a matter of looking for the ultimate cause. If it is genetic, the gene is ultimate. If you have many deficiencies it takes some "thinking metabolically" and looking broadly at many tests to figure out what is likely the primary deficiency, unless there is a very obvious dietary deficiency to blame.
I tried supplementing with Biotin after Susan Owens recommended I do so because supplementing with B1 (Benfotianime) would bring on oxalate dumping / clearance for me as well. Both Biotin and B1 do this for me separately. However, the intervals and intensity were a bit different. B Complex will do the same, obviously. Ramping up on these by cutting pills or using 1 drop, etc., however, makes the dumping far less intense and less frequent, and that's my tack right now to ramp up on B1 to solve some of the problems Elliot Overton says B1 supplementation can help with when you've been carnivore for a long time but still don't feel great. So it'd be interesting to know why both B1 and Biotin have similar effects.
Interesting, I’m a little confused: are you saying a high dose (ramping up) or a low dose (cutting pills) leads to less frequent symptoms?
If I used my model here, and speculate, I would say thiamin could be improving NADPH status via the pentose phosphate pathway, which increases formate binding to folate and facilitates the second step of the detoxification to indirectly allow a greater rate of the first step.
Sorry, seeing this weeks later. I've had more time to experiment though.
It turned out that both approaches behaved the same way in the end. Taking very low doses of B-complex (1/25 dose, 25 drops = recommended dose), and 1/8 of a Benfotiame pill, daily, results in oxalate dumps on the 4th and 5th day.
However, since then, I am trying a new approach. Taking 1 pill B-Complex + 1 pill Benfotiamine + 1 pill Biotin on the follow scheduled seemed to prevent a "unscheduled" dump from occuring.
Week 1: Wednesday, Friday
Week 2: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Week 3: Sunday, Wednesday
...bringing me to today. Taking larger doses, but with days with no supplementation in between is allowing me not to have serious dumps. In the three week period, I had one dump in Week 2 which was "on schedule for me."
Whereas, taking high doses daily, or taking really low doses daily, both gave me two dumps that happened between days 3 and 5... and having two in a row got me to stop the supplements to have a rest, because it was a lot to endure in close proximity like that.
People in a carnivore forum pointed out that my symptoms sounded like oxalate dumping, which I had never heard of before, and then I joined Trying Low Oxalates on Facebook and talked about it, and validated with them. So I went carnivore almost two years ago, started experiencing tons of problems, and then only discovered it was oxalate dumping later. I had a particularly high oxalate diet prior to coming to carnivore... but I had never tracked oxalates before. (I was AIP + low-FODMAP + low histamine just prior.)
The thing that marks it as oxalate dumping is mainly the cyclic nature of the symptoms... a period where it's every 10 or 14 days. Or every third week. It has changed over time.
The actual symptoms have classically been an eczema flair coming up on it. Most of it is gastro-intestinal. A night where I will have pain in the gall bladder area, indigestion, nausea, bloating, heartburn/reflux, a huge increase in stool volume, light/sandy stool (white in the beginning, just light later), sometimes some joint pain, usually some anxiety, lightheadedness, diarrhea at the beginning, but later just voluminous bowel movements, cramps, a burning sensation with the bowel movement. I'm probably forgetting a few things.
Well, process of elimination. Being carnivore, I eat basically the same thing every day. So with a lot of gastrointestinal distress but without eating different foods, it's very unlikely to be the foods, like a food poisoning scenario. So, it would have to be a cause that presents periodically and regularly that isn't food poisoning or related to something eaten. So until there's a third possibility of what it could be the choices are oxalate dumping or unknown.
Since it follows the rules of oxalate dumping, it's the most likely thing. Like, the cyclic nature, the eczema pre-cursor warning (which did have crystals pushing through the skin early on), being able to trigger it with B Vitamins, being able to quell it with oxalate containing beverages (i.e., green tea). Oh, and there was kidney pain, bladder discomfort, urine cloudiness, and some of the other things on the list in the first year. It's hard to remember and enumerate every symptom as they changed and got milder over time. If something else does all the stuff I named and is also cyclic, then, it would be good to know about what it could be in case it's not related to oxalate and actually something else.
I paid for the Vitamins and Minerals book at least 2 years ago. Guess I didn't realize you hadn't written it yet. When do you expect it to print? It's been a long time!!
Indeed. I was on the cusp of releasing it when COVID happened but was in the midst of massively expanding it from its original conception, then COVID took me off of it for a long time unfortunately. Right now I am finishing it before I move and I hope that to be within months but I’m not releasing an ETA till it’s done. What you see in my newsletter is generally a byproduct of research that is going into the book. The biotin research went a little deeper due to solving my own health puzzle but will ultimately make the book much better for having done it.
Ah, thank you so much for this article, Chris!! You have given me the explanation I was seeking. 😁
I have been on a low-vitamin A diet (dairy-free and egg-free, but not vegan--I eat beef and chicken) since 2018, but this year in February I decided to start incorporating a greater number of eggs back into my diet in order to increase my choline intake to between 800 mg and 1200 mg (prior to this, I had been somewhat above the female RDA for choline, but more in the 500 mg to 600 mg range). Turns out, they make me feel horrible, but I wasn't entirely satisfied with blaming retinol for this reaction, as my egg intake never took me beyond the RDA for vitamin A.
Just three to four eggs daily (whites always eaten cooked, yolks sometimes raw) produced unusual symptoms: a red bumpy rash on my leg, what felt like a mild bladder infection not bad enough to go to the doctor about, constipation (normally my digestion is great--I eat a legume-heavy diet), insomnia, and achy hands.
I do not get joint pain normally, at all. So I figured perhaps this weird reaction had something to do with oxalate, but wasn't entirely sure why eggs would trigger dumping so strongly.
I backed off on the eggs to give my gut a rest (it helped), then just this month I tried consuming eight eggs daily for three consecutive days. Chronometer tells me that amount provides nearly 300% of the RDA for biotin?! (I didn't know this when I decided to try it lol.) While doing this, my brain fog was worse than it has been all year, constipation was bad, my back ached (kidney area), my shins hurt, my toes and fingers hurt, everything hurt (kinda like the aches we get during a flu), the rash expanded, and an area on my finger where I had gotten a tendon stitched in the past felt like it had been smashed and was throbbing...
I was at my wit's end wondering why, but now, thanks to you, I feel I must blame all of this on biotin for triggering an oxalate dump! Yours is the best explanation of the dramatic symptoms I've found so far.
It'd be pretty cool if your idea here helps people manage the oxalate dumping process, instead of it feeling super random and overwhelming.
Thanks again SO MUCH, Chris!! 😁🌻☀
P.S. It might be good to include this fact: My oxalate intake has been between 50 mg and 150 mg daily for the past 6 months.
P.P.S. ETA: I should also note I found going full-vegan (particularly focusing on a ridiculous amount of raw fruit) without any added saturated fat from coconut oil (hemp and sunflower seeds seem fine) after ceasing egg consumption resolves the constipation issue within 24 hours for me so far, whilst consuming a meat and saturated-fat heavy diet seemed to prolong it. Will keep testing to confirm this holds true in my case, but this is my initial observation.
Thank you so much for your suggestion! 😁 I tried it. Except I used roughly an eighth of a 1,000 mcg capsule from Now since it was in my cupboard already. (Afterwards, I noticed it was expired...Lol.)
It totally caused the same symptoms! I had waited nine days for them to clear—even the rash was almost healed—but taking the biotin for three days flared everything! The rash became bumpy, angry red, and itchy. Symptoms were less intense than with the eggs though, overall.
Interesting indeed. 🧐
A couple of days later, I tried eating 100% of the RDA for vitamin A from retinol sources supposedly lowish in biotin (dairy fats, mostly). My body didn’t like that (too much vitamin A negatively affects my mood and energy levels), but it not result in the physical pain triggered by the biotin...
Thanks again for your article and suggestion, Chris!
Nope. Not at all. That’s why I didn’t really think oxalates were a major issue for me.
Since lowering my vitamin A intake below 5% of the RDA (from both animal and plant sources) in 2018, I have consumed black beans, brown rice, and white potatoes practically every day (at least, until I switched over to chickpeas, lentils, lima beans and white rice six months ago). I also would eat high-oxalate nuts and seeds (tahini, brazil nuts, walnuts, almond butter, homemade nut and seed milks, buckwheat noodles and porridge), vegan dark chocolate, and tofu a few days per week.
I am curious if higher amounts of dietary oxalate will affect me more now, and whether or not biotin supplementation will still trigger the same potential oxalate dumping symptoms if my oxalate intake is in the 250 mg to 400 mg range, so I am currently increasing it.
Okra and potato soup with tahini dressing all in one meal didn’t trigger anything out of the ordinary...
Haha, I tried to edit my comment, but there was a bug or something apparently, so the end got cut off. Here's the rest:
It'd be pretty cool if your idea here helps people manage the oxalate dumping process, instead of it feeling super random and overwhelming.
Thanks again SO MUCH, Chris!! 😁🌻☀
P.S. It might be good to include this fact: My oxalate intake has been between 50 mg and 150 mg daily for the past 6 months.
P.P.S. ETA: I should also note I found going full-vegan (particularly focusing on a ridiculous amount of raw fruit) without any added saturated fat from coconut oil (hemp and sunflower seeds seem fine) after ceasing egg consumption resolves the constipation issue within 24 hours for me so far, whilst consuming a meat and saturated-fat heavy diet seemed to prolong it. Will keep testing to confirm this holds true in my case, but this is my initial observation.
I've been troubled with a high pitch ringing in my ears for a few years. My doctor believes I am losing my hearing. My hearing is not perfect (I'm 77 yrs old), but I discovered that I can control the ringing by what I eat. Kale, chard, sweet potato, peanuts and other things make the ringing worse. If I don't eat anything high in Oxalate, it diminishes a great deal but doesn't go away. My brother had a kidney stone, my sister had cystitis, and my mother was put on a low oxalate diet. Until recently, I had been on a vegan diet with occasional small amounts of fish. I'm wondering if increasing my animal protein is going to make this problem worse. If I take biotin, will it make my body dump more and maybe give me a kidney stone, or will it detoxify the crystals? Although nobody seems to know if pomegranate (fresh) is high in oxalate, I got a big uptick in ringing when I ate a few tablespoons. It has apparently been used forever for kidney improvement - I'm wondering if it made me dump oxalate. Some people believe that if you take calcium, it will bind to oxalate and resolve the issues. Since the studies showing that supplemental calcium could cause heart attacks, I'm not anxious to do this. I haven't been eating dairy and am not anxious to go back to it and now dark green leafy containing calcium are not a good idea. .Appreciate your studies on this so much. Thank you.
You’ll have to just try these things and find out. If you’re worried about a high dose, take a low dose. Very interesting story. Thank you for sharing and I hope you figure it out.
This is interesting to me. This past week I tried to implement the potato hack - I ate only yellow peeled boiled organic potatoes and broke into a crazy itchy rash on my legs. Could it be oxylate?
If I take biotin will this stop? Or is this saying biotin will make this worse? The only other time I get a rash like this is when I have coconut oil.
Could be, in all cases. I would think biotin would help but as I noted if I’m right there could be paradoxical clearance reaction but if you have an acute event not a chronic accumulation, you aren’t as likely to have this paradoxical clearance reactions
Hi, Chris,
When I first began to obtain the background I needed to understand the oxalate issues I found in autism 18 years ago (2005), I attended professional oxalate conferences. I was very surprised to discover they were only attended by kidney doctors and kidney researchers. To them, finding oxalate elevated in autism was an anomaly. In fact, finding oxalate elevated apart from kidney stone disease or genetic hyperoxaluria was in their minds, impossible.
Why did I start studying it? Beginning about thirty years ago, my academic work was all about sulfate and discovering its role in neurodevelopment. Years later, sulfate was found to exchange for oxalate on a special set of transporters called the SLC26A family of transporters.
I had already thoroughly explored the role of sulfate in autism, but this new science meant that now I needed to study oxalate to find out how oxalate could disrupt sulfate and other things important in autism. To accomplish that, I studied the oxalate literature for four months with a special focus on the genetic hyperoxalurias where it was known that oxalate traveled to the whole body.
I attended 7 professional oxalate conferences. To my surprise, the scientists there seemed to have formed an unspoken pact to ignore issues that were not centered around kidney stone disease. They were uninterested in how oxalate affected the general biochemistry wherever it went. I had already spent a decade recognizing complex issues in autism, so I knew that oxalate, by affecting sulfate, could alter neurodevelopment as well as hormone and neurotransmitter regulation, and it was a clear mitochondrial toxin. This new information required a reinterpretation of autism findings.
Before that, I had been studying sulfate's role, but now, oxalate could be a major disruptor. Formate was also a substrate of those transporters. Anyone can find literature about how formate and oxalate have been influencing each other, but I found nothing practically useful.
Chris, this is why I am particularly delighted to find your interest in this field and I like the way you are looking at it in the way it should have been studied a long time ago.
The oxalate field for so many years had blinders on...something that Sally Norton and I had both found and explored independently. Sally has been more into thinking about issues with diet, but I became more concerned about reaching academia and helping them study the oxalate the body makes under stress.
It was impossible to do a study in the US on oxalate in autism because the labs in the US that were skilled in measuring oxalate told me they would not test anyone unless they had kidney disease. That is why I recruited a highly qualified group of scientists to look at oxalate levels in autism, and we got astonishing results. That paper is ranked now in the top 4% of scientific studies and it has had 42 citations. That attention is really great, but it is still not motivating other scientists to look past the kidneys and find other types of diseases related to oxalate.
Chris, the commendable sort of thinking that you are doing is exactly what is needed to move oxalate research forward and into new territory. I eagerly invite you to further explore this fruitful area that has been in sore need of your skill set. I hope that you can generate experimental evidence.
In 2005, with a bunch of grateful autism parents, we formed the TryingLowOxalates network and it has has already helped more than 70,000 people discover the relevance of oxalate to their own health. This is the way we picked up an enormous amount of personal experience about reducing oxalate, but we have not seen nearly the amount of change we want to see in academia.
We're trying to change that. Our group performed the most successful fundraising of anybody this past year for the Oxalosis and Hyperoxaluria Foundation for Giving Tuesday, and that is because our vision is to support the sort of thinking you are doing to move the study of oxalate into a new era, where multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary work rules the roost instead of being barred from the roost.
Kudos on your deep thinking! I would be delighted to see people like you get funded so that we can together solve the many human diseases related to oxalate.
Best wishes,
Susan Owens
Head of the Autism Oxalate Project at the Autism Research Institute
Founder of the Trying Low Oxalates network since 2005
Hi Susan,
Thank you so much for your kind comments and sharing your story.
I am no longer in academia, though I do have interest in eventually returning to experimental work in some context.
I think the best thing for me to do right now is reach out to enzymologists and convince them of the public health relevance of the question and see if they’d like to collaborate on a paper they could involve them doing an enzymological study on it.
I do agree it could easily be studied in an animal model, though it would cost a lot more money and I currently don’t have a lab to do that in.
I think it would also be of interest to look at whether oxalate is playing a role in genetic deficiencies of biotinidase, holocarboxylase synthetase, and pyruvate carboxylase. I have not seen it studied but maybe I could make inroads with the people who specialize in those genetic disorders to take a look at the issue.
I am very enthusiastic about involving experts in related fields so we can gain a more well-rounded and better-informed perspective.
Oh my god! I am affected by two things: Cipro (FQ antibiotics) and oxalates at the same time. I have issues with sulfur metabolism for sure but cannot find a genetic reason (my CBS is normal, MoCo formation normal, SUOX normal). I know my vitamins get destroyed (B1 and B6) and I had allergies and even nerve damage from sulfites!
I have noticed that if I eat carbs only (with very low protein like 40-50g), I start dumping oxalate and feeling like my oxidative stress (which is felt like tendon and muscle pain) is lower and I feel like a normal human being. But when I eat high protein, I start to get high OS (muscle+tendon pain) from even eating normal carbs and I need a few days to detoxify the accumulated sulfite (despite my genes being all normal and me taking molybdenum often).
Another thing for me I noticed is taking CoQ10 also increases OS (unlike literally anyone else affected by Cipro (FQ abx.)). I might be low on copper at the moment since I've been dumping a long time and taking copper also leads to high OS for me but I speculate that my issue is actually low CoQ10 (since I had reaction to CoQ10 from the very beginning of my flox journey since Nov. 3 2022) in the cells (blood tests show 1.0 ref. range 0.8-1.4 in absence of supplementation) and/or poor H2S (again due to sulfite metabolism disruption or manganese overload (had slightly high of 20.1 ref. range <18 in absence of supplementation of anything at all for ~35 days) clearance as Chris said in another post.
It did not make sense to me until I thought: perhaps oxalate, like other toxins, e.g. glyphosate, actually disturbs sulfite metabolsim (perhaps the body tries to avoid the reaction of sulfite->sulfate transformation because it is trying to gatekeep oxalate from being dumped when it does not want it to be or maybe oxalate impairs sulfite metabolism by itself).
If you could confirm that or at least say what you know about this from personal experience, I would greatly appreciate and it would greatly affect my current well-being and future recovery! Thank you for your work! Have a good day!
You are so amazing! I am so glad I fumbled my way into your orbit...
Thank you!
Hopefully you are right about biotin helping to degrade oxalate. But even if biotin does not help to degrade oxalate itself, biotin very likely mitigates the toxic effects of oxalate on gluconeogenesis and fatty acid synthesis from lactate, as described in the articles you briefly referenced by Bannister, looking at the interplay of biotin and oxalate in isolated hepatocytes. I imagine this explains the exercise intolerance reported by those with oxalate issues. Too much build-up of lactate. Personally, I had to stop weightlifting because it started to make me feel nauseous and greatly disrupted my sleep. (I can, however, tolerate small amounts of "alactic" training.) Eating too much meat causes the same problem for me, likely because of the added need for biotin, as you have detailed in other posts. I just started some biotin supplementation (I'm starting at 75 mcg/day and will increase to 150 mcg/day), and will report back.
I agree. I look forward to hearing your results.
My results were excellent. Muscle spasms that have plagued me for 6 months were gone by day two. Exercise tolerance and energy level have improved dramatically. Dude you are on to something. Everything else in my diet has been exactly the same. I eat the exact same low oxalate diet every day and I measure everything down to the gram. The only change in my regimen has been adding 75mcg per day of biotin initially, now up to 225 mcg per day in three divided doses. Dude, I really think you are on to something.
I have an idea for a research project to test your theory: Administer radiocarbon-labeled oxalate to rodents who have either decreased, normal, or increased levels of biotin in their system, and then test the amount of radioactive expired CO2. If biotin facilitates pyruvate carboxylase to degrade oxalate, you would expect to see an uptick in the amount of radioactivity in their breath. It would be similar to the urea breath test that I do in my field (clinical nuclear medicine).
The methodology has already been worked out in these two studies:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23821183/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16082175/
Do you have any PhD friends who might be interested in such a project?
Yes I agree with that study, and I’d also like to see the enzymological studies just see if formate pops out the other end. I don’t know if I could get this going but when things lighten up for me I’ll try.
Dead Sea salt baths saved me when I unexpectedly began dumping. It has been some years, I have triggered major oxalate (or something! formate? It burned on the way out, urine, skin, eyes, lips etc). Once I tried eating a couple leaves of raw swiss chard out of my garden after it had frosted. Immediate burning dumping misery, tender points fibromyalgia style, barely able to walk. Floating in a dead sea salt bath (high magnesium chloride, potassium chloride, some sulfate) for an hour or more at a time, literally melted a ton of it away in a few days through my skin. It felt like something granular was coming out of my knee joints and dissolving. I later triggered another dumping episode experimenting with high dose thiamine. Another with diatomaceous earth. I do more careful experimentation now with slower changes. Now my OAT is normal for oxalate and its precursors; I have some other oddball things that may have to do with high need for riboflavin though. I don't do things like raw kale but I am generally okay with COOKED high oxalate foods these days in reasonable quantities.
Interesting, thanks for sharing!
Hi Chris: I think now the cause of my episodes of dumping (painful and scary) was depletion/insufficient active riboflavin in my system. I have been following the work of Greg Russell-Jones PhD for several years and according to him, converting free riboflavin to FMN and FAD requires thyroid hormones and FMN to FAD is MoCo dependent. Therefore if iodine, selenium and molybdenum are insufficient, or iron, or poorly absorbed the activity of riboflavin will be compromised, including activation/recycling of B12. I looked back at some old hair tests at these particular minerals and molybdenum in particular was very low some years ago and is still below Greg's desired target. Trying to add in/go up on plain sodium molybdate gives me some real joint and back pain, even adding 20 mcg or so. Feels a bit like the oxalate (or whatever it was) dumps of yore. I'm finally at 100 mcg sodium molybdate a day through a multivitamin and some separate drops, 150mcg potassium iodide, 100 mcg sodium selenate. After adding a crumb of potassium iodide to my supplements in Feb this year, I immediately got cracked lips and dry eyes like my body was begging for riboflavin. Shortly after that I started carrying a 100 mg tablet with me and nibbling on it through the day. I noticed big physical and mental energy gains and backpacked the Grand Canyon early March with my new friend, the yellow riboflavin pill. Skiing with my yellow pill. I would get cranky and fatigued, bite off a bit of riboflavin and feel better in a few minutes. Mind you for years I have taken a Jarrow B-right complex (has 25mg riboflavin, evidently not enough for me), 100 mcg selenite, bone minerals etc.. My thyroid numbers aren't optimal but not bad. I am a person who got sick from mold and got mostly better. Prone to 3 day long migraines and stomach aches and chronic mental health problems, low blood sugar symptoms since childhood. I had gone three months without a major headache until yesterday, when I (oops) overdosed myself on active form of B12 yesterday using topical form. I recovered with some extra B2, I'll introduce B12 more gradually as instructed (duh).
Some links: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gregory-Russell-Jones-2
https://b12oils.com/rnb.htm (please note STRONG side effects are possible)
https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/21/11/3847 Riboflavin Deficiency—Implications for General Human Health and Inborn Errors of Metabolism, an excellent paper
Very interesting, I have some similar acute effects of high-dose riboflavin that I will be writing about.
The molybdenum could be burdening the respiratory chain by delivering more electrons to complex IV, and the riboflavin might be helping that. Doesn’t seem obviously related to oxalate to me.
Hi Chris,
As a prolific calcium oxalate kidney stone producer, I have, over the years attempted to find
some dietary modifications (beyond dietary oxalate restriction) that would decrease my oxalate burden. Two of the most promising possibilities I found:
1) Oxalobacter formigenes, an obligate anaerobic probiotic
which utilizes oxalic acid as its sole source of energy. Oxalate degradation by O. formigenes involves three unique proteins, an oxalate:formate membrane transporter, oxalylCoA decarboxylase, and formyl-CoA transferase. There have been several studies confirming significant degradation of intestinal oxalates. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a commercially reliable source of Oxalobacter available. Oxalo Therapeutics has been developing products that treat primary hyperoxaluria and prevent recurrent kidney stones, but nothing, as of yet, seems available. There is one product, available from India and listed on ebay that purports to contain Oxalobacter Formigenes & Other Probiotics for Calcium Oxalate Stones Reduction. Manufactured by Standford Labs, distributed by La Renon ( India). Needless to say, I am dubious!
2) Oxalate decarboxylase: a company called Nephure came out with a powder that one could sprinkle on food several years ago. Unfortunately, I believe the company stopped production. Here is a double blind that was done in 2020 looking at this product: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35372879/
So, there you have it, two low toxicity products that seem quite efficacious for oxalate reduction that are not commercially available. I guess, for now, back to a low oxalate diet!
Thanks for sharing!
This is very, very interesting...thanks Chris. I had severe 'oxalate dumping' symptoms a couple of years back.. still traces now. I was 7 times the upper limit on the organic acids test, and lactate was also very high with raised arabinose, high quinolinic, high hva/vma and a bunch of other stuff out. I work with an excellent nutritionist who suggested oat testing for improving health, thyroid and autoimmunity. Following this test, I started a low oxalate keto diet but struggled to get urine ketones up at first.. but it was this that kicked off the symptoms.. blood pressure drops, tachycardia and horrible anxiety followed by cloudy urine and surprisingly a sense of relief that always came along 10 minutes before the bathroom visit.. every 10 days/2 weeks for months, with all sorts of symptoms in between. I couldn't work or drive in that period. It was as if every time blood levels got below a certain threshold then it would restart! I couldn't believe it at first but a lot of testing and research comvinced me that the dumping was a distinct possibility. Repeated oat testing showed decreasing oxalates after some time of this. Often I felt cold, like feverish, with very dry lips and dizzy, histamine type symptoms. I see that biotin may help stabilise mast cells through cyclic gmp? I had seen evidence that oxalate can directly stimulate degranulation. I took b1, b6, magnesium, citrate, calcium with meals and herbs like phylanthus niruri, dandelion, schisandra to help protect kidneys together with a bunch of other stuff finding a few things that helped symptomatically, which included anything that could increase my blood pressure. I still have occasional symptoms..it would be interesting to.see if biotin made things better/worse!
Very interesting, thank you for sharing!
Thank you have shared to twitter and facebook.
Thanks for sharing!
This is great. Please do more research on oxalates. After reading this and the other biotin posts I am going to cautiously experiment with some biotin.
I feel like there must be a way to get back to being able to handle the Oxalates. I happily downed tons of peanut butter and chocolate all the way into my late twenties with no I’ll effect.
Now I can’t even tolerate 50 mg a day and it drives me nuts because even so many healthy things are off limits.
Thanks Sara, let us know how it goes!
Thanks. I had an oxylate kidney stone once.
Thanks for this fascinating hypothesis, Chris!
What do you think about the role of magnesium and manganese in pyruvate carboxylase function?
Pyruvate carboxylase seems to be a manganese-containing enzyme. But when manganese is lacking, magnesium can substitute, retaining pyruvate carboxylase's textbook enzyme function. (Scrutton et al., 1972.)
However, "oxalate inhibition" requires 7 times more oxalate to achieve the same effect (in chicken livers) in the Mg version of the enzyme, compared with the Mn version of the enzyme. (Scrutton et al., 1972, Table V.) Maybe the manganese in the enzyme is needed to metabolize oxalate efficiently?
Paradoxically, the manganese content in pyruvate carboxylase may indicate magnesium status.
Magnesium deficiency in rat diet resulted in less manganese in organs and less liver pyruvate carboxylase activity. Magnesium seemed to direct manganese (and also calcium) to the right places. (Kimura et al., 1996.)
Magnesium is so much more abundant than manganese, that we might expect magnesium still could fill in gaps in the enzyme for missing manganese, even in the case of magnesium deficiency. So when we lack magnesium in diet, we might find (paradoxically) more magnesium and less manganese in pyruvate carboxylase? Therefore, in magnesium deficiency, we might find as much as 7x less metabolism of oxalate by pyruvate carboxylase?
In addition to its role promoting manganese delivery to pyruvate carboxylase, magnesium acts as a cofactor in Mg-ATP, as you mentioned.
So poor reaction to oxalate could relate to magnesium deficiency causing low liver manganese, low Mg-ATP, and low pyruvate carboxylase activity?
Could apparent need for more biotin indicate an underlying need for more dietary magnesium to make manganese and pyruvate carboxylase work better?
As you speak with enzymologists about investigating pyruvate carboxylase in the first breakdown step of oxalate (as you mentioned in response to Susan Owens), maybe suggest investigating the roles of magnesium and manganese nutritional status, in addition to biotin?
References:
[1] Kimura, M., Ujihara, M., & Yokoi, K. (1996). Tissue manganese levels and liver pyruvate carboxylase activity in magnesium-deficient rats. Biological Trace Element Research, 52, 171-179. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02789459
[2] Scrutton, M. C., Griminger, P., & Wallace, J. C. (1972). Pyruvate carboxylase: Bound metal content of the vertebrate liver enzyme as a function of diet and species. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 247(10), 3305-3313. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0021-9258(19)45246-0
Virtually all mineral transport is directly or indirectly dependent on ATP, so magnesium deficiency will compromise the transport of all minerals. However, magnesium transport is also ATP-dependent, so any other reason for low ATP production or utilization will compromise magnesium transport.
That's very interesting that the Mg deficiency could lower Mn incorporation into the enzyme and increase Mg incorporation and lower oxalate clearance.
From a clinical/health perspective, this is a matter of looking for the ultimate cause. If it is genetic, the gene is ultimate. If you have many deficiencies it takes some "thinking metabolically" and looking broadly at many tests to figure out what is likely the primary deficiency, unless there is a very obvious dietary deficiency to blame.
I tried supplementing with Biotin after Susan Owens recommended I do so because supplementing with B1 (Benfotianime) would bring on oxalate dumping / clearance for me as well. Both Biotin and B1 do this for me separately. However, the intervals and intensity were a bit different. B Complex will do the same, obviously. Ramping up on these by cutting pills or using 1 drop, etc., however, makes the dumping far less intense and less frequent, and that's my tack right now to ramp up on B1 to solve some of the problems Elliot Overton says B1 supplementation can help with when you've been carnivore for a long time but still don't feel great. So it'd be interesting to know why both B1 and Biotin have similar effects.
Interesting, I’m a little confused: are you saying a high dose (ramping up) or a low dose (cutting pills) leads to less frequent symptoms?
If I used my model here, and speculate, I would say thiamin could be improving NADPH status via the pentose phosphate pathway, which increases formate binding to folate and facilitates the second step of the detoxification to indirectly allow a greater rate of the first step.
Sorry, seeing this weeks later. I've had more time to experiment though.
It turned out that both approaches behaved the same way in the end. Taking very low doses of B-complex (1/25 dose, 25 drops = recommended dose), and 1/8 of a Benfotiame pill, daily, results in oxalate dumps on the 4th and 5th day.
However, since then, I am trying a new approach. Taking 1 pill B-Complex + 1 pill Benfotiamine + 1 pill Biotin on the follow scheduled seemed to prevent a "unscheduled" dump from occuring.
Week 1: Wednesday, Friday
Week 2: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Week 3: Sunday, Wednesday
...bringing me to today. Taking larger doses, but with days with no supplementation in between is allowing me not to have serious dumps. In the three week period, I had one dump in Week 2 which was "on schedule for me."
Whereas, taking high doses daily, or taking really low doses daily, both gave me two dumps that happened between days 3 and 5... and having two in a row got me to stop the supplements to have a rest, because it was a lot to endure in close proximity like that.
Very interesting. What are you interpreting as an oxalate dump and how do you know it’s from oxalate?
People in a carnivore forum pointed out that my symptoms sounded like oxalate dumping, which I had never heard of before, and then I joined Trying Low Oxalates on Facebook and talked about it, and validated with them. So I went carnivore almost two years ago, started experiencing tons of problems, and then only discovered it was oxalate dumping later. I had a particularly high oxalate diet prior to coming to carnivore... but I had never tracked oxalates before. (I was AIP + low-FODMAP + low histamine just prior.)
The thing that marks it as oxalate dumping is mainly the cyclic nature of the symptoms... a period where it's every 10 or 14 days. Or every third week. It has changed over time.
The actual symptoms have classically been an eczema flair coming up on it. Most of it is gastro-intestinal. A night where I will have pain in the gall bladder area, indigestion, nausea, bloating, heartburn/reflux, a huge increase in stool volume, light/sandy stool (white in the beginning, just light later), sometimes some joint pain, usually some anxiety, lightheadedness, diarrhea at the beginning, but later just voluminous bowel movements, cramps, a burning sensation with the bowel movement. I'm probably forgetting a few things.
Interesting. Thank you for sharing. That sounds plausibly oxalate, but I’m not sure how it being cyclical makes that clear.
Well, process of elimination. Being carnivore, I eat basically the same thing every day. So with a lot of gastrointestinal distress but without eating different foods, it's very unlikely to be the foods, like a food poisoning scenario. So, it would have to be a cause that presents periodically and regularly that isn't food poisoning or related to something eaten. So until there's a third possibility of what it could be the choices are oxalate dumping or unknown.
Since it follows the rules of oxalate dumping, it's the most likely thing. Like, the cyclic nature, the eczema pre-cursor warning (which did have crystals pushing through the skin early on), being able to trigger it with B Vitamins, being able to quell it with oxalate containing beverages (i.e., green tea). Oh, and there was kidney pain, bladder discomfort, urine cloudiness, and some of the other things on the list in the first year. It's hard to remember and enumerate every symptom as they changed and got milder over time. If something else does all the stuff I named and is also cyclic, then, it would be good to know about what it could be in case it's not related to oxalate and actually something else.
I paid for the Vitamins and Minerals book at least 2 years ago. Guess I didn't realize you hadn't written it yet. When do you expect it to print? It's been a long time!!
Hi Lori,
Indeed. I was on the cusp of releasing it when COVID happened but was in the midst of massively expanding it from its original conception, then COVID took me off of it for a long time unfortunately. Right now I am finishing it before I move and I hope that to be within months but I’m not releasing an ETA till it’s done. What you see in my newsletter is generally a byproduct of research that is going into the book. The biotin research went a little deeper due to solving my own health puzzle but will ultimately make the book much better for having done it.
Ah, thank you so much for this article, Chris!! You have given me the explanation I was seeking. 😁
I have been on a low-vitamin A diet (dairy-free and egg-free, but not vegan--I eat beef and chicken) since 2018, but this year in February I decided to start incorporating a greater number of eggs back into my diet in order to increase my choline intake to between 800 mg and 1200 mg (prior to this, I had been somewhat above the female RDA for choline, but more in the 500 mg to 600 mg range). Turns out, they make me feel horrible, but I wasn't entirely satisfied with blaming retinol for this reaction, as my egg intake never took me beyond the RDA for vitamin A.
Just three to four eggs daily (whites always eaten cooked, yolks sometimes raw) produced unusual symptoms: a red bumpy rash on my leg, what felt like a mild bladder infection not bad enough to go to the doctor about, constipation (normally my digestion is great--I eat a legume-heavy diet), insomnia, and achy hands.
I do not get joint pain normally, at all. So I figured perhaps this weird reaction had something to do with oxalate, but wasn't entirely sure why eggs would trigger dumping so strongly.
I backed off on the eggs to give my gut a rest (it helped), then just this month I tried consuming eight eggs daily for three consecutive days. Chronometer tells me that amount provides nearly 300% of the RDA for biotin?! (I didn't know this when I decided to try it lol.) While doing this, my brain fog was worse than it has been all year, constipation was bad, my back ached (kidney area), my shins hurt, my toes and fingers hurt, everything hurt (kinda like the aches we get during a flu), the rash expanded, and an area on my finger where I had gotten a tendon stitched in the past felt like it had been smashed and was throbbing...
I was at my wit's end wondering why, but now, thanks to you, I feel I must blame all of this on biotin for triggering an oxalate dump! Yours is the best explanation of the dramatic symptoms I've found so far.
It'd be pretty cool if your idea here helps people manage the oxalate dumping process, instead of it feeling super random and overwhelming.
Thanks again SO MUCH, Chris!! 😁🌻☀
P.S. It might be good to include this fact: My oxalate intake has been between 50 mg and 150 mg daily for the past 6 months.
P.P.S. ETA: I should also note I found going full-vegan (particularly focusing on a ridiculous amount of raw fruit) without any added saturated fat from coconut oil (hemp and sunflower seeds seem fine) after ceasing egg consumption resolves the constipation issue within 24 hours for me so far, whilst consuming a meat and saturated-fat heavy diet seemed to prolong it. Will keep testing to confirm this holds true in my case, but this is my initial observation.
Actually your editing did work. This is very interesting!
If you wanted to verify this, I’d get a Life Extension 600 mcg capsule and empty out a quarter of the powder to see if it does the same thing.
Thanks for sharing!
Thank you so much for your suggestion! 😁 I tried it. Except I used roughly an eighth of a 1,000 mcg capsule from Now since it was in my cupboard already. (Afterwards, I noticed it was expired...Lol.)
It totally caused the same symptoms! I had waited nine days for them to clear—even the rash was almost healed—but taking the biotin for three days flared everything! The rash became bumpy, angry red, and itchy. Symptoms were less intense than with the eggs though, overall.
Interesting indeed. 🧐
A couple of days later, I tried eating 100% of the RDA for vitamin A from retinol sources supposedly lowish in biotin (dairy fats, mostly). My body didn’t like that (too much vitamin A negatively affects my mood and energy levels), but it not result in the physical pain triggered by the biotin...
Thanks again for your article and suggestion, Chris!
All the best! 🙂
Wow overall very strong support for biotin being able to stimulate oxalate dumping in you.
Have you found the same symptoms are caused by oxalate?
Nope. Not at all. That’s why I didn’t really think oxalates were a major issue for me.
Since lowering my vitamin A intake below 5% of the RDA (from both animal and plant sources) in 2018, I have consumed black beans, brown rice, and white potatoes practically every day (at least, until I switched over to chickpeas, lentils, lima beans and white rice six months ago). I also would eat high-oxalate nuts and seeds (tahini, brazil nuts, walnuts, almond butter, homemade nut and seed milks, buckwheat noodles and porridge), vegan dark chocolate, and tofu a few days per week.
I am curious if higher amounts of dietary oxalate will affect me more now, and whether or not biotin supplementation will still trigger the same potential oxalate dumping symptoms if my oxalate intake is in the 250 mg to 400 mg range, so I am currently increasing it.
Okra and potato soup with tahini dressing all in one meal didn’t trigger anything out of the ordinary...
That makes me wonder whether it might instead be an imbalance with something needed in the mitochondrial respiratory chain as I described here:
https://chrismasterjohnphd.substack.com/p/how-to-interpret-ketone-ratios-and
Haha, I tried to edit my comment, but there was a bug or something apparently, so the end got cut off. Here's the rest:
It'd be pretty cool if your idea here helps people manage the oxalate dumping process, instead of it feeling super random and overwhelming.
Thanks again SO MUCH, Chris!! 😁🌻☀
P.S. It might be good to include this fact: My oxalate intake has been between 50 mg and 150 mg daily for the past 6 months.
P.P.S. ETA: I should also note I found going full-vegan (particularly focusing on a ridiculous amount of raw fruit) without any added saturated fat from coconut oil (hemp and sunflower seeds seem fine) after ceasing egg consumption resolves the constipation issue within 24 hours for me so far, whilst consuming a meat and saturated-fat heavy diet seemed to prolong it. Will keep testing to confirm this holds true in my case, but this is my initial observation.
I've been troubled with a high pitch ringing in my ears for a few years. My doctor believes I am losing my hearing. My hearing is not perfect (I'm 77 yrs old), but I discovered that I can control the ringing by what I eat. Kale, chard, sweet potato, peanuts and other things make the ringing worse. If I don't eat anything high in Oxalate, it diminishes a great deal but doesn't go away. My brother had a kidney stone, my sister had cystitis, and my mother was put on a low oxalate diet. Until recently, I had been on a vegan diet with occasional small amounts of fish. I'm wondering if increasing my animal protein is going to make this problem worse. If I take biotin, will it make my body dump more and maybe give me a kidney stone, or will it detoxify the crystals? Although nobody seems to know if pomegranate (fresh) is high in oxalate, I got a big uptick in ringing when I ate a few tablespoons. It has apparently been used forever for kidney improvement - I'm wondering if it made me dump oxalate. Some people believe that if you take calcium, it will bind to oxalate and resolve the issues. Since the studies showing that supplemental calcium could cause heart attacks, I'm not anxious to do this. I haven't been eating dairy and am not anxious to go back to it and now dark green leafy containing calcium are not a good idea. .Appreciate your studies on this so much. Thank you.
You’ll have to just try these things and find out. If you’re worried about a high dose, take a low dose. Very interesting story. Thank you for sharing and I hope you figure it out.
This is interesting to me. This past week I tried to implement the potato hack - I ate only yellow peeled boiled organic potatoes and broke into a crazy itchy rash on my legs. Could it be oxylate?
If I take biotin will this stop? Or is this saying biotin will make this worse? The only other time I get a rash like this is when I have coconut oil.
Could be, in all cases. I would think biotin would help but as I noted if I’m right there could be paradoxical clearance reaction but if you have an acute event not a chronic accumulation, you aren’t as likely to have this paradoxical clearance reactions
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