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zinc because they will also form deposits with oxalates. If you have excess They may also have pain in the urinary tract.
oxalates, you may have to increase your intake of calcium, magnesium That pain is relieved when a low oxalate diet is
and zinc. In addition, rather than acting as antioxidants, oxalates are pro- instituted. Owens also found that children had
oxidants, so they encourage the oxidation of your fats, forming rancid fats improved cognitive, academic and motor skills
in your body. once the amount of oxalates in their diets was
sharply reduced. The same dietary measures
A FUNGAL ORIGIN helped reduce pain in their muscles and feet,
An unexpected finding is the fact that oxalate crystals are produced in and also brought about a reduction in abnormal
very high amounts by molds and fungus. Aspergillus—a common organ- behavior and self-abuse as well.
ism that causes infection in humans and also is found in the black fungi Eighty percent of people with genetic dis-
that you see in your bathroom—produces oxalates. eases that cause them to produce kidney stones
I remember I was in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at the old fort that over- die before the age of twenty. These genetic dis-
looks the sea. There was a lot of black mold on the walls and I could see eases, which belong to a class of disorders called
stalactites coming down. The stalactites in this case were formed from hyperoxaluria, are frequently fatal unless the vic-
calcium oxalate. Aspergillus produces these oxalates, and these stones tim receives both a liver and a kidney transplant.
will form any place that has infection by the fungus. Sometimes even after the transplants people die
In the case of sinus infection, mold and fungus, not bacteria, are the because the oxalates are deposited in tissues all
most common causes of infection. A colleague of mine, who is an eye, nose throughout the body. The oxalates will come out
and throat specialist, X-rayed a patient’s sinuses and found large oxalate of the bones or the muscles and then form in the
crystals in her sinuses, which disappeared after anti-fungal treatment. transplanted kidneys and still kill the person.
Large oxalate crystals have also been isolated from the lungs of people More than a third of children with autism
who had Aspergillus infection of the lungs. The deposits can also form in have oxalate values as high as people who have
the skin where they create black areas and necrotic lesions in people with these rare genetic disorders, even though these
very high oxalate levels. autistic children do not have the disorders. The
question naturally arose: If they don’t have this
OXALATES AND AUTISM genetic disorder, why are their oxalates so high?
I first became interested in this topic because of improvements that We correlated the amount of oxalate in au-
were noted in autistic children by the researcher Susan Owens. It was tistic children with other biochemical parameters
Owens who collected the data showing that many autistic children had and found there was a high correlation with the
frequent urination of small volume and found that the phenomenon was sugar arabinose, which is a Candida marker. It
associated with oxalates. She also found that these children often mani- appears that the main reason for the high oxalates
fested gastro-intestinal symptoms such as diarrhea and stomach pain. in children with autism is because of the Candida

OxALATE PATHWAYS

About fifty percent of oxalate comes from the diet and the other fifty percent comes from what your body makes
itself. Oxalic acid in the diet is first converted to glycolate, then glyoxylate, and then at this point glyoxylate can either
bind to a mineral to form oxalate or it can be transferred and form glycine.
If you have a genetic deficiency in the enzyme AGxT, the glyoxylate primarily forms oxalate because reduced
amounts of AGxT do not function adequately to override this process. One in five people in the population has this
genetic variant in which they cannot detoxify this compound. Instead it predominantly forms oxalate.
It has been found that one third of the people with oxalate toxicity have this genetic variant, and 53 percent of
them are likely to have acute, very severe neurotoxicity versus only 4 percent in those with normal genotype expres-
sion. Probably a high percentage of people who have kidney stones are in this group of 20 percent of individuals with
this genetic variant.
One of the body’s energy production factories called glycolysis is inhibited by oxalates. The enzyme pyruvate kinase
is involved in the last step in the body’s energy production and is strongly inhibited by oxalate. It is very interesting that
the same enzyme inhibition is largely responsible for Tourette syndrome. People with Tourette syndrome, however,
have strep antibodies that inhibit this enzyme. Oxalates also strongly inhibit the same enzyme.
The critical factor here is that this enzyme works much better in the presence of high amounts of vitamin B . This
6
is another one of the holistic treatments for people with kidney stones. In fact, vitamin B treatment is also used by the
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mainstream medical community for people with kidney stones.
SPRING 2010 Wise Traditions 43