Navigating Salicylates & Oxalates with MCAS

Julie Matthews, CNC

Thanks Beth, I’m excited to do so.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And I ask everybody here at the beginning, what got you into this area? Not a lot of people know about salicylates and oxalates. I got into it out of need because of my own health journey. And I think that’s how many of us kinda get into these really specialized areas? What was it for you, what brought you into this field?

Julie Matthews, CNC

Well, my story’s very different, I think than a lot of people. I came into all of this from autism. So about 20 years ago, I met a man who recovered his kids from autism. I decided to specialize in that. And through that journey, I discovered that there are a lot of foods that can exacerbate or cause symptoms of autism based on what’s underlying their biochemistry. So as I started studying autism in great depth, I realized that there isn’t… Some people would say, “Oh, you need this diet, you need that diet.” And whatever the diet was, it really helps some of my clients. But then I realized it did not help others. So I was trying to figure out, well, what is it that it helps some. Let’s take salicylates, helps some people immensely doesn’t help others or oxalates, or gluten, or grains, or whatever that thing is. Why was it helpful for some and actually detrimental in some cases for others? And so I started doing a lot of research and that’s how I created bio-individual nutrition and the concept of methodology of, this personalized nutrition approach that is very fortunately really picking up steam. Now, 20 years later, people are realizing that, we have to personalize an approach in order to get effective results. And I figured that out through really clinical experience. And so that’s how I got involved in all of this.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And so many people can relate to that because many have figured out their histamine intolerance by first doing these diets that really emphasize bone broth, informants. which if you don’t have histamine issues, if you don’t have mast cells with sensitive histamine receptors, that’s great, wonderful. If you don’t have oxalate issues, great for healing the gut. And then one of the other patterns I see is, people shift over to doing a low histamine diet and they start eating a lot more higher salicylate foods or higher oxalate foods. For some people, it didn’t bother them at all, they’re just fine. But for other people, then they go, “Well, what in the world just happened to me? I crashed my whole body fell apart.” Because they switched over to the sweet potatoes. They switched over to the, I love a lot of herbs, but there was a period of time I couldn’t tolerate them. And these things are high salicylate, high oxalate. 

Now, let’s transition into that. What are the real problem… And first I wanna preface it by saying that, not everybody has salicylate issues, not everyone has oxalate issues. Just like not everyone has histamine issues. And we have a lot of people who get down to 10 or five foods. So please don’t whittle, whittle, whittle down your foods, make sure that you’re keeping that variety. And if you’re down into foods, this is not the time to take something out. If you’re down to 10 foods, this is not the time to take something out. But this interview is really for people who are trying to figure out what’s triggering them. They know foods are triggering them, they don’t know what, and they probably already checked the histamines. What are the challenges with salicylate intolerance? Or it’s just salicylates in general and oxalates in general, for people who are not metabolizing them properly or excreting them properly?

Julie Matthews, CNC

Well, in the context of our conversation today, oxalates can trigger mast cell activation and salicylates can trigger mast cell activation. So alone, just that, there’s something to be aware of. But there are also connections between the two of those, between salicylates and oxalates. And there’s connection between all three of those. So for example, if you have gut dysbiosis, then that can cause you to have your sulfate depleted. When that happens, you can have reactions to salicylates. You can also have reactions to amines. Histamine is different than… Well, we’ll get into phenolic amines and histamine in a minute. Well, that that’s one area. So dysbiosis can affect our salicylate intolerance. Dysbiosis can also cause oxalate problems, high oxalate levels in the body. So those are some concerns there. Also, when we look at inflammation, when we have inflammation, we can trigger histamine and mast cell activation. So anything that’s going to trigger inflammation is something to be aware of. 

So in the case of salicylates and oxalates, we know that salicylates can trigger histamine, salicylates can cause inflammation that can then create that cycle. We know that oxalates are incredibly inflammatory. So that process of triggering inflammation, in fact, they trigger something called the inflammasome, which creates this chronic inflammation with oxalates. And when you have that inflammation again, you can cause histamine intolerance, you can cause mast cell activation. All of that, it’s kinda all related. And then it’s kind of this vicious cycle so it feeds on each other. So those are all factors. Also, when you have low sulfate, sulfate is needed to process salicylates. And when you have low sulfate, oxalate can actually get into the cell on that sulfate transporter, and that can create problems within the cell, which can create issues with mitochondrial dysfunction and other things. So that’s another big factor there. There are so many ways that these aspects are interrelated. So when we look at… I guess those are just some of the ways. I mean, we could go into more and we can always come back to some of them. 

But those are just some of the biochemical areas that these are connected. Sulfate being one of the big ones, but also inflammation obviously is a huge one. And as we know, inflammation is really at the foundation of most chronic disorders. Now again, as you said, I think it’s really important, not everybody that has inflammation is going to have an issue with salicylates or oxalates. So I do think that’s really important to say, and I have seen what you’ve said, which at the beginning, someone feels better when they take foods out, but then they take so many out that they have no foods left and that can create really a serious detriment to their overall health. So I think that is just something important for people to be aware of as they go through all of this. One little thing there on. So amines, there’s different types of amines, there’s histamine, tyramine and others. So some of them are phenolic compounds. So if you take a food like bone broth, it’s gonna be high in histamine. It’s also gonna be high in other amines. So some people might not coming at this from a histamine perspective where they inherently… 

One of the problems with histamine in foods. The main thing is, it’s not a histamine intolerance like we think of a salicylate intolerance or a salicylate intolerance where you just don’t tolerate it. It’s usually an inability to process the amount of salicylate compared to what your body can process. So with histamine, you might have, not enough DAO enzyme, or you might have an issue with histamine N-methyltransferase enzyme and that will inhibit your ability to handle histamine and create histamine intolerance. But when it comes to salicylates, we can deplete sulfate and that depletes sulfation. And sulfation is needed to process the phenolic amines. And because things like bone broth have histamine and phenolic amine, then we can have a problem processing, many of those histamine foods. So the point here is there’s many ways to go about having mast cell activation from these foods, having histamine intolerance, getting inflammation and all sorts of things. Sometimes people will have to take out both of those food compounds, sometimes they don’t. So that’s a little bit of the kinda biochemical background that I like to talk about. We can get into a lot more practical aspects. So I don’t wanna go too far down that road for people that just want more practical information.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Yeah, I think that’s great. And I love that you’re bringing up this sulfur piece because sulfur has gotten a bad rap, particularly in people who are really interested in DIY genetics. And then they find out, “Oh, I’ve got this CBS mutation or I have this mutation, so I can’t have any sulfur.” And I see that a lot and people tell me, “Well, I can’t have any sulfur.” I say, “Well, that’s not exactly one how the genetics work.” But two, I see so many people that they’ve taken sulfur out, they felt so good for three to six months and then bam, they were in big trouble. And sulfur in addition to being important in those oxalates and preventing them from going through those transmits and through cells like you talked about. Helping to break down the salicylates. So what are major stabilizers for mast cells, for producing heparin sulfate. And so when people have had hydrogen sulfide SIBO, for example, is so critical that we get sulfur in through the skin, or we do something so that we don’t spiral into, ’cause that’s what people spiral into. Is these oxalates, salicylates issues when we pull the sulfur out.

Julie Matthews, CNC

Yes.

Beth O’Hara, FN

People are gonna wanna know, how do I know if I have a salicylates or an oxalate issue? And I know this is challenging to decide on your own. And I really wanna encourage people in this area that they work with an expert like you or they work with our clinic or some place that’s really experienced in these. ‘Cause these aren’t, it’s not the same as getting into history intolerance. This has got its own trips and hurdles and a lot of customization you have to do for people. Just kinda high level. What are you looking at, Julie, when you’re going, “Does this person have a histamine issue, versus oxalates, versus salicylates or a combo?”

Julie Matthews, CNC

Yes, so I have the Bio-Individual Nutrition Institute and some of the things I teach practitioners are there’s about seven areas that I like to look at. One are symptoms, that’s a big one. One of course is what does their diet look like? What nutrient efficiencies do they have? Sometimes there’s good labs. Sometimes there are not good labs to figure these things out. And that’s where I think symptoms come in handy. Sometimes as you said, genetics can play a role, but as you mentioned genetics are very complex and we can’t just look at one snip and say, “Oh, that means they have this problem.” So I guess for the majority of the people out there that aren’t practitioners, that aren’t looking to study this more significantly, symptoms are probably the most obvious or common way to figure that out. But now granted they can overlap. So if you think of some of the inflammatory symptoms, you can have a lot of overlap. So one of the things I do like to look at, and then I find really helpful for clinicians is to look at what I call symptom clusters. ‘Cause you can have inflammation and that can be salicylate, I mean, salicylate, oxalate or histamine, right? So then we look at, well, what other symptoms? You have a lot of pain. 

And again, I am super generalizing. Maybe it would lead you down one path. Do you have a lot of hyperactivity and irritability and aggression or does a child have that? Maybe it’s looking more at something else. And we can dive into what some of those things are as we go here. I think that looking at that helps because you can look at something like anxiety. And anxiety can be from a salicylate issue. It can be from an oxalate issue. It can be from a histamine issue. So we will look at inflammation or even something very specific like a neurological symptom, like anxiety, looking at a single symptom is not particularly helpful. It’s more helpful to look at clusters. But again, someone will say, “Well, I don’t have the most common symptoms you’re talking about. That’s where it gets a little tricky, right? So if I mention the top three and someone doesn’t have those top three, then they’re gonna think, oh, well I don’t have that challenge. At the same time, if I say inflammation, it doesn’t mean you have to take out all of them. So I would say that those are some of the ways I like to piece apart what somebody might have. And I’m happy to dive into any of those. If you have some specific questions, we can dive into each one of them, and we can go from there as well.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Well, I love the intro to it and that this is really looking at things from a lot of facets. This is not an easy, yes, no questionnaire. And I really like where you’re talking about looking at the foods, is this somebody who’s already eating a lot of high oxalates and then what are we seeing? Sometimes some lab testing will show it, but sometimes doesn’t show up on those O Markers and things like that. When I think about oxalates, there’s a lot of clues, but some of the clues that’ll really get my attention are things like joint pain, muscle pain, fibromyalgia diagnosis, thyroid issues, where they’ll lodge in the thyroid. Issues with interstitial cystitis, that urinary burning. And I agree with oxalate issues has those. So somebody says, “Gosh, my stool was sandy.” Or they get those sandy instead of goopy eye excretions, it’s sandy in the eyes. That’s how I know I had too many oxalates as I wake up in the morning. I’m like, “Whoop too many oxalates, okay.”

Julie Matthews, CNC

Interesting.

Beth O’Hara, FN

There’s some of those clues on the oxalate, and then on the salicylate, some of the clues can be in response to high salicylate foods, high salicylate herbs too. I’m tracking responses to herbs.

Julie Matthews, CNC

Mmh-mmh.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And I was just working with somebody yesterday where we weren’t sure. And we were bringing on some of our early muscle supporting supplements and she was trying resveratrol. She was trying quercetin. She was trying paraben, and it wasn’t entirely clear because she tolerated Chinese skullcap tincture. She was fine with pyrolusite extract. Then we got into quercetin, which has more of those phenolic groups. We got into resveratrol, and each time she got breathing issues, she got rashes, but other people will get GI distress and they’ll get ear ringing, or now and mold toxins can cause ear ringing. So this is where you’ve gotta really look at the whole picture. But that’s what I’m thinking is just kind of some of those clusters that you see and those presentations that you see. And I know we have different populations, so you might have different clusters than what we get.

Julie Matthews, CNC

That’s a very good point as well. I work with a lot of neurological conditions while I do specialize in autism. That really just allowed me to really dive deep into one thing, to understand the biochemistry. But then when you start from that biochemistry, you realize different people with that same biochemistry can manifest in totally different conditions. So if we look at something like oxalates, pain, like you said that’s a huge one. And then what’s underlying that. So sometimes you’ll look in like, do they have trouble digesting fats? Now, not everybody knows whether they have trouble digesting, but some people do. They can tell their stool changes quite a bit. It might seem greasier, floating and things like that. We look at fatigue. Now, again, fatigue is one of those symptoms that can be caused by a million different things. So we can’t look that one thing by itself, but we got pain and also odd types of pain. So headaches could be histamine. They could be salicylates, they could be oxalates. They could be all sorts of things, but–

Beth O’Hara, FN

Can be structuring, they can be hormonal.

Julie Matthews, CNC

Exactly. But if we look at things like burning feet or some of that burning pain or things like that, or like you said, just that all over body pain, fibromyalgia. I had a client once many years ago, actually, they weren’t a client, they were a good friend of mine. And they said, “I have pain. And every time I get massaged, the massage therapist is gonna think it helps. And it just makes it worse, right?” So things like that where it’s this kind of chronic pain, mitochondrial dysfunction. So that’s where we look at a lot of fatigue, but is really coming from a mitochondrial aspect. So if someone knows that, that might be helpful. Or if they’ve looked at other things that just can’t figure it out, or looking at some of the symptoms of mitochondrial dysfunction are like low muscle tone in children and kind of diving a little deeper into what some of those aspects of fatigue or pain are. And some of those nuances might help them a little bit, ’cause again, pain and fatigue could be lots of things.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Can I ask you a quick story on the pain piece before we move on. It might spark some people. My oxalate journey. I started with knee pain and then it spread to my other joints. I was misdiagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I was told I had a rare palindromic rheumatoid arthritis because it would come and go, but I never had the right blood markers. And then I saw an osteopath. They wanted to do exploratory surgery. Nobody could figure out what was going on. I had Graston Technique to get rid of scar tissue. It was just horribly painful. Didn’t do anything. But Julie, it got worse in the winters. And people thought I was crazy. But it got worse in the winters. And when I figured out it was the oxalates, well, in the winter I was eating seasonally. So I was eating a lot more sweet potatoes. I was eating a lot more beets. I was eating Swiss chard, things that I could get at the farmer’s market in the winter. And it was so bad that by the time I was 28, I used a cane to walk, I could barely hobble. And if I flew, I had to have a wheelchair, had to use a wheelchair in a grocery store. And then off the oxalates completely resolved it. And I know we’re gonna talk about not doing that cold turkey and the pitfalls there. But I just wanted to share that for people who are having these weird pains and nobody can figure out what it is and that this might be worth exploring. It may not be it. And Lyme can cause migrating pain and things like that. But for me it felt like I had ground glass in my joints. It was just excruciating.

Julie Matthews, CNC

Yes, that burning feet, shards of glass, walking on hot colds, walking on glass, or again, it doesn’t have to be that, I just have a good friend it happened to be on the bottom of her feet. But it can be other areas of the body too. And then also what’s interesting is that oxalate likes to go to the site of inflammation. So you can have an old injury and think, oh, it’s the old injury. It has nothing to do with something biochemical. But I’ve seen a lot of old injuries. It just keeps perpetuating that oxalate cycle. So don’t just automatically disregard that or disregard it as being, oh, well that’s just an injury that I had. It could also be that too. So that is a really super helpful story for people.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Here’s my other tip off, Julie. When I tried to do an Epsom salt bath, even at a cup, then I’d take it down to half a cup, a fourth of a cup. I would get really red. I would get very, very flushed and I would have rages, terrifying rages. And I’m not an angry person. Most people think I’m really gentle and sweet and I’d have to tell my husband, “Please don’t come in the room. I can’t control myself.” It’s terrifying. And so I was just getting this massive dump of those oxalates every time. So I had to start Epsom salt, literally with a few little granules in the bath. Now I’ve worked up to four cups. It took me 10 years.

Julie Matthews, CNC

How many years?

Beth O’Hara, FN

10 years.

Julie Matthews, CNC

Wow. Yes, so I don’t know. I have all these thoughts. We can go down the more practical route, but I think there’s probably some people that are thinking, what is a salicylate and an oxalate. Should we maybe define some of those things for people? Okay, we can come back to the other stuff. Okay, so salicylates are a type of phenolic compound found in plants, that plants use as a natural deterrent, pest deterrent which actually oxalates have a different type that they use as their own pest deterrent as well. So salicylates are a type of phenol. As we mentioned, phenols need to be processed through some of these biochemical pathways. And so salicylates are found in things like grapes, hence your resveratrol story there. Grapes, berries, apples, herbs and spices. And unfortunately, most of them. So that makes it a little bit challenging. Someone might think, oh, I need anti-inflammatory herbs. And they might feel worse when they’re doing things like turmeric and that sort of thing. Oh, let’s see what else, honey, almonds high salicylate. So those are some of them apples. A lot of fruits and a lot of herbs and spices.

Beth O’Hara, FN

These are the people who say, I feel so much worse when I eat healthy.

Julie Matthews, CNC

Yes, exactly. The oxalate people do that too, actually, but particularly the salicylate people because there are so many wonderful polyphenol-rich foods that are high in these compounds. And so that’s the other thing is that I’m not suggesting that these are bad foods that everybody should avoid, ’cause they have wonderfully nutrient dense properties to them. So it’s something that I feel it’s important that if we can pinpoint what it is and just reduce or avoid what they need to. I often think of it as a threshold of how much you can tolerate. And eating some of them within your threshold, I think is advantageous. It’s when we have too much and overfill the bucket, that’s when there can be a problem. So that’s a little bit on salicylates. Oxalates are high in things like, while spinach is the most common one people are familiar with. But one thing that often realize is almonds. Almonds are very high.

So if you think of spinach has about 500 milligrams in a serving. A quarter cup of almond flour has almost the same amount as a serving of spinach. So there are a lot. And so what sometimes people do is they think, oh well… And this was really popular in the autism world. Ooh, I need to get rid of grains ’cause grains are inflammatory and they’re bothering my digestion. Well, that might very well be true. So then it became, let’s do almond flour and nut flowers, and let’s do all that we want. So then people started doing… I mean, I had clients that before they came to me, they were doing nine muffins a day or a whole bread or just a lot. I had some people coming to me consuming 1,000 or 2,000 milligrams of oxalate in a day. And usually that made… I wasn’t gonna say usually that. That’s definitely way above the amount that we typically would consume in a day. So some of these–

Beth O’Hara, FN

We did even mention before, I’m sorry to jump in, but that’s making me think about that much oxalate getting processed with kidneys and kidney pain. And what’s most classically known for oxalate issues is oxalate kidney stone. But that’s only a tiny percentage of people that have oxalate issues get kidney stone.

Julie Matthews, CNC

Well, yeah, what’s interesting is they did a study on autism and oxalates. And they did a scan of the kidneys, and they found that in the study, none of the individuals when the study had kidney stones and yet they all had very significant oxalate issues. And so they were screened based on not having kidney stone issues and still had incredibly high oxalate issues. In fact, to the point where researchers wondered how they could be walking around and functioning. It was so high. And most of the researchers never seen it before. And actually at the time felt that it couldn’t be oxalate because they didn’t have kidney issues. At the time the science was you needed to have kidney stones or something with the kidneys in order to have oxalate issues. Now we know that, that’s not true. If you do have that in your family or individually, that can certainly be a problem. But many don’t. So just something to be aware of there as well. So nuts, spinach, as you mentioned earlier, Swiss chard, some of the grains, Buck Wheat, amaranth, those types are quite high. Sweet potatoes, you mentioned. Beets, rhubarb, which people don’t eat much of, but if they do that’s incredibly high. So those are a few of the high ones that come into my mind. There’s a lot more than that. That’s just the tip of them. Certain herbs and spices are going to be high, but again, not all of them.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Turmeric is one.

Julie Matthews, CNC

What was that?

Beth O’Hara, FN

Turmeric is one that’s really high compared. And then I know clove, cinnamon have. But most people don’t use as much of that as they’re using with turmeric.

Julie Matthews, CNC

Correct, even things like black pepper and other things like that. And so just being aware of… The good thing about this is once people are, they pinpoint what their issue is, and they become aware of it. There are things they can do in its place. They just have to be aware of it. And then there are all sorts of strategies and culinary tips and things that they can do to get past some of those challenges. So those are some of those foods. And then histamine I’m guessing that you probably have people on the summit already talking about this. But those could be anything. There’s two types of issues with histamine, foods that have histamine, like bone broths, sauerkraut, things like that. And foods that trigger histamine like strawberries and other foods like that. So there are different ways you can have a histamine reaction and a mast cells activation from foods. So there’s two different things to think about there.

Beth O’Hara, FN

So now that people can start to identify, this is something to look deeper into. And we’ve covered some of the basics. Where do you start people in terms of maybe we should take them individually first. Because it’s usually too much to try to do this all at once, but we also don’t wanna go on, let’s go low histamine, but super high oxalates, super high salicylate. If that’s causing problems, then we know we’ve gotta modify it. But what if we take first, salicylates, some of your top tips for starting to work with that for people and then oxalates.

Julie Matthews, CNC

So, it really does depend on the person. And I hate saying that, but being bio-individual nutrition, it really is always about that. So I would firstly look at who I’m helping or trying to help. So is it a child and their diet’s really restrictive and I only have so much, I can’t do maybe something as restrictive as I could with an adult, let’s say. That might guide me. I might have to start more slowly. I might have to start with more smaller list of foods or something like that. I might just look at their diet and figure out what their highest ones are and just remove those. Now with salicylates, it’s not usually as much of a problem to just remove them as it would be with something like oxalates. So now you might have people very unhappy about that, but it’s not usually gonna cause the big reaction that it’s going to. So, sometimes it’s removing just the biggest ones. Sometimes it’s reducing them all a little bit. Sometimes it’s taking all the big ones out and focusing just on the low ones. So those are different ways that you could look at salicylates. Also, I might look at amines at the same time. So depending on what it is. 

For me, when I’m looking at reducing salicylates, I always remove bananas. And bananas are low salicylates but bananas are very high amine. And so I don’t wanna overload that system with other types of things that could deplete the system. So I don’t necessarily go all low amine because that would really restrict it. Okay, so there’s various. So it might be on one end of the more restricted spectrum I might look at reducing significantly the salicylates and the amines. On the other end of the spectrum, I might just look at just a few of the super high salicylates that are in their diet and see what you see. And if you see some improvement, then go further and take it from there. Maybe reduce it just for a shorter period of time. If you’re dealing with say a child and you’re having difficulty, you can’t commit your brain to three months of avoiding all of their favorite foods. Maybe you say, “I’m just gonna do it for a week or two weeks.” I mean, usually you need a few weeks, three to six weeks, but most people can wrap their brain around. 

Let me just not give them those three favorite foods for three days to start, see where we are then keep going. Now at the beginning, it can take a while for them to get out the system. So it could take three to five days for them to even get out of the system. So I never really recommend just doing it for three days. I’m just giving people just a starting point. Usually I’m gonna say, if you wanna do this, usually a commitment of a few weeks is good. And then from there you have to decide, “Okay, now, do I really need to restrict it more? Do I need to look at some other categories of things.” But that’ll give people an idea. So a lot of what I see when I’m working with kids, it’s things like ketchup, berries, juices, apple juice, grape juice, raisins. Those are some of the big ones that I see. 

So those are some of the key suspects I’ll look for. So if I’m working with someone and they say, “Oh, my child or my teen is very, let’s say aggressive or hyperactive, or can’t go to sleep at night.” And I say, “Well, tell me about what they eat on a daily basis.” Those are some of the big, heavy hitters I’ll look for. And then I don’t know if we talked, I think we’re gonna come back around to symptoms. So symptoms for a child might be red cheeks, red ears, hyperactivity, problem sleeping at night. For an adult, it might look very different because they’ve learned coping skills to not lash out at a classmate. We can’t do that when we’re adults. So it might be other things. It might be a lot of irritability or headaches or processing speed, or things like that. Might be headaches or it could be hyperactivity as well. So could be some overlap, but then maybe not as… It depends again a little bit on what it is. So that’s a little bit on salicylates.

Beth O’Hara, FN

I love that. And one of the starting points we have for people, you mentioned before the inflammasomes, and I love that you brought that up ’cause they also trigger mast cell activation. So one of my favorite tools in the toolkit, particularly for people for salicylate and oxalate issues are bicarbonates. And bicarbonates are known to down regulate that inflammasomes production, which down the stream, reduce the mast cell activation. And so a lot of people don’t know, but they just naturally go for some baking soda or Alka-Seltzer for some people, although it’s got some citric acid that sometimes a little problematic for sensitive people. But sometimes long as you’re watching your blood pressure, that baking soda can be helpful.

Julie Matthews, CNC

That is one of the things that a lot of times we’ll do an autism and little baking soda and some water. That can sometimes be helpful for people. Again, it’s not the most tasty thing. So depends who you’re working with and whether that’s an option. But for those that it is an option or for those accidental, it’s once you’ve kind of figured things out, they get an accidental exposure at a birthday party or something. Sometimes a little thing like that can be super helpful. But for adults that is a much easier solution, a more doable solution. And so I’m glad that you brought that up. Yeah, there’s a lot of things. So I’m thinking about the food things, but then there’s a lot of other things that people can do. Like Epsom salt baths and other things as well. But like you said, depending on the person, can depend on why something might trigger somebody. So always I think it’s good to work with somebody starting slow. If you’re a practitioner really getting educated on it because I know even for myself, a little bit of information for my family, it’s like, “Oh, okay I feel dangerous.” A little information and I need more information so I can help my child more or my clients more. I wanna really know all of the aspects of it. ‘Cause I do see a lot of misinformation online. They’ll say like, “Oh, you’re reacting to it. Just do it more significantly, do it harder. Add more to the bathtub or whatever it is.”

Beth O’Hara, FN

Push through.

Julie Matthews, CNC

Right. And that I find can be pretty problematic. So either getting a knowledgeable practitioner or becoming really educated on all the different aspects. And that’s why I like to talk about the biochemistry part of it, ’cause it helps both individuals, but particularly clinicians start to figure out, well what might be at the root of it instead of just kind of stabbing around, trying to figure out what that bullseye is. They have a lot more clues, as I was saying earlier, like symptoms is one piece, but what are their labs? What are the other aspects? What is their health history? What other components can help us figure out which avenue we might wanna go down and going slow is always just a generally more moderate way to go when we’re looking at different approaches.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And that’s so critical what you’re mentioning that we’ve gotta look at what’s underlying all of this because we don’t wanna have to be low salicylate for the rest of our lives or super low oxalate for the rest of our lives. I still don’t eat sweet potatoes, almonds, spinach, Swiss chard. I don’t eat those big ones. But I’ve gotten my low back where I can eat a lot more. I can eat a lot more, salicylates I don’t struggle with anymore. We know some of the big root causes, like you talked about the beginning or the dysbiosis, the leaky gut where there’s oxalates are getting crossed into the bloodstream, the salicylates are getting crossed. We know that there are bacteria in the gut that can break down salicylates and oxalate. So that gets off. Then we start to get that load building. We see it a lot in mold toxicity, not everybody with mold toxicity. But we do see it a good bit in mold toxicity contributing to these salicylates and oxalate issues. And molds I just always like to tell people that the major phase two detox pathway for mycotoxins is glucuronidation is another pathway for the salicylates along with the sulfation, there’s glycines involved. And mold’s gonna put a load on all of that. And mold’s gonna put a load on the sulfate pathways that are important for those oxalates. Any other big root triggers you wanna put out there. And then I wanna let people know the caveats of reducing oxalates too quickly.

Julie Matthews, CNC

Yeah, I mean, there are more, but I think for our conversation today, that’s probably a good place so we can get to some of the other key things like you said, that I think are important in our short time that we have together.

Beth O’Hara, FN

So tell people the cautions about reducing oxalates. ‘Cause a lot of people get really excited. They wanna go out there, they wanna grab a list and they wanna get started tomorrow and they’re a sweet potato a day and they’re gonna take it all out. And then about 50% or more people are gonna be in big trouble if they do that.

Julie Matthews, CNC

Yes, so with oxalate, it is important to go very slowly in reducing oxalate. The body has this tendency to wanna what we call dump the oxalate. When it is not pouring into the body, the body has a little bit of a breather and it says, “Ooh, let me get rid of some of these.” And so it can cause dumping. So anything that can process oxalate, like you were saying like your Epsom salt experience or certain deficiencies can cause issues with oxalate. So if we try to replenish those deficiencies too quickly, that can cause a big dump. If we get rid of too many in the diet too quickly, that can cause a big dump. And those dumps can be very harmful and also symptomatically very painful and difficult. So going very slowly like five to 10% a week. So it might be just reducing one food by a certain percentage or reducing the overall amount just a little bit at a time when someone’s got, especially when someone’s diet is high in it. We didn’t really talk about is that, you can have an issue with oxalate because you have endogenous production inside the cell from certain deficiencies and certain other biochemical challenges, or you can have it coming from the diet. So some people are gonna think, oh, well I don’t have that much oxalate, but it can be a problem just biochemically as well. There’s certain nutrients that can also convert into oxalate. And so sometimes people will do really high levels of some of these nutrients thinking that they’re healthy and that can create a problem.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Things like vitamin C, glycine in those indulgent. And then if we’re low on B1, B6, those get depleted by things like molds and other toxins and pathogens. Then again, we’re into this circle here. But I just wanna share for people. I have worked with people who did not realize they needed to go slow. And before they came in and I met with them, they had actually landed in the ER because they had triggered kidney stones for themselves. So just like Julie is saying, please, please, make sure you know what you’re doing with oxalates, if you’re gonna do it on your own, I really encourage you to work with a specialist.

Julie Matthews, CNC

Absolutely, and again, and if you are somebody that works with these diets, really understanding the different components, is it endogenous? Is it exogenous from the diet? There are supportive supplements you can add that support some of that dumping. There are also things like you said, deficiencies that might be present that can sometimes help people also figure out. We were saying like, how do you know if you have a problem with certain substance? Well, some of it might be symptoms. So we talked about some of those symptoms for oxalates, cloud urine and pain, all of those types of things. A cyclical pattern to it is often fairly common with oxalates. And then, do they have B6 deficiency? Do they have pyroluria? Therefore they tend to bind their B6. And so they haven’t had it for a long time. Again, not everybody with pyroluria has oxalate issues. I’ve seen plenty that don’t, but some do. So that might be some clues for individuals or practitioners out there that are looking into that. What else do you wanna say? I guess those are some of the aspects around that, that would be helpful, just when someone suspects an oxalate issue. Just being kind of slow to anything that you change, whether it’s adding a supplement, whether it’s removing a supplement, whether it’s adding certain foods, removing certain foods. 

Those things can be helpful. And as you said, if you’re not really sure and you are gonna change your diet. This is where practitioner can be helpful, just not adding super large amounts of the super high foods in any one category. And that might be hard if you don’t know what those things are. So moderation is just a really good, just basic tip, right? If we don’t go super extreme on anything, then that’s generally speaking. Now, certainly you could do moderate levels of lots of super high things. And that could be a problem. But just generally speaking, if you’re just getting started, not radically shifting to high levels of any one thing, yeah.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Really, really good information. Such important information, ’cause it is hard to get accurate information about these areas. I always like to end with a message of hope for people because I know how hard it was for me when I got down to 10 foods and I had a few seasonings, but so limited, it’s socially isolating, it’s depressing because enjoyment of our food is really important psychologically. But we can get these foods back. I don’t know if I’m ever gonna be eating sweet potatoes with almond butter on top and an almond flour muffin on the side and things like that again. But I have a really varied diet. I have a lot of options. I eat way more variety than most people now. Took hard work to get there. But can you give people some hope to leave them with here at the end?

Julie Matthews, CNC

Well, I’m so glad you asked this because my autism and kids organization is called Nourishing Hope. So I love this. My message is all about hope. So absolutely, I have definitely seen people’s diets expand. So things like salicylates, now it depends again on the food. So some of them like you said, with oxalates, you might not be going back to super high levels of them, but depending on the food, working on the underlying biochemistry, which is why I like people to really be educated, not only what to avoid. But how can we get some more capacity for some of these and more ability to eat some of these food. And it is possible. I’ve seen it time and time again. So yes, it’s not always going to be this restrictive. I like to tell and work with my practitioners, teach them. The diet part is to kind of relieve some of the burden on the system and then start to restore and replenish some of the underlying factors so that we can go back to some of them. So it’s not intended that many of these things are expected to be lifelong diets. As I said, things like salicylates, we want to have as much variety as we can. We wanna stick within what’s possible. So absolutely there’s lots of hope at the beginning. It seems very restrictive, but there are ways on working and building up that capacity and having your diet be more well rounded as people go.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And I think one of the keys is having some knowledgeable experience support to help you navigate the pitfalls. ‘Cause I’ve seen people been low salicylate lows oxalate, low histamine for years and years. And it can cause its own problems, but we can get there, absolutely. Thank you again so much for generously sharing your time, and your experience, your wisdom with us. How can people find you?

Julie Matthews, CNC

Well, thank you Beth. I’m so happy to be here. I love this topic as you can probably see. So I’m glad to be able to share it. And I can be found at nourishinghope.com for all my work around kids, ADHD, autism, all that. And for practitioners that wanna particularly study bio-individual nutrition and how to choose which diet and then how to figure out removal phases, introductory things, how to figure it all out. That’s bioindividualnutrition.com.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Thank you so much, Julie.

Julie Matthews, CNC

Thank you.