Sally K. Norton

Author of Toxic Superfoods

Do you have aches, pains, gout, kidney stones or other symptoms that are getting worse instead of better?

Are you eating and living well but confused because you still feel lousy?

You might have something you’ve never heard of – oxalate poisoning.

Ironically, it could be your “healthy” diet that is making you sick. In fact, most doctors are unaware of this problem and are unable to help you discover and manage it.

Toxic Superfoods is a masterful contribution to the literature on nutrition. Here you will find a sweeping examination of oxalates from all angles—medical, scientific, historical, dietary, and cultural. You’ll learn why oxalate toxicity has remained invisible in medical and nutritional practice, and discover a simple and practical program to get relief from the myriad conditions that oxalate toxicity can create and aggravate.

Preorder her new book Toxic Superfoods.

Oxalates are a set of chemicals that become crystals in your body.  Free flowing in the body as oxalic acid, which is reactive and causes oxidative stress.   Cause cell damage, interfere with cell function. 

Oxalate crystals become stuck in the body where there’s inflammation or the cells are old and dying. 

Found in potato, sweet potato, peanut, almonds, chocolate, spinach, chard, greens, sorrel.  Cabbage family less likely to have much oxalates.

Medicine doesn’t train health care practitioners about oxalates.  It got swept under the bus.  No drug for it, no way to test for it.

Is a little bit okay?  Yes. 

Cacao portion of chocolate is loaded with bioavailable oxalic acid that easily gets into the body and is quite toxic.

Superfoods is commercial application of an idea that plant chemicals are antioxidants.  A disproven theory.

Greens have polyphenols, tannins, compounds with good and bad sides.  Mostly toxic, especially tannins. 

With the right dose, right genetics, and right microbiome, greens can stimulate your body to defend itself against it’s nastiness. 

Under the right conditions, greens will provoke an antioxidant response to a toxic substance. 

It’s a runaway train headed down hill.  You can’t stop it because it sells.  Everybody knows how to do a smoothie.

The more dilute the solution of oxalates, the more toxic it is.  Hello almond milk.

Research says taking Vitamin E and Vitamin C chronically shorten your lifespan.  It turns off the boy’s own signaling within the cell and is undoing the body’s own defenses.  The body needs pro-oxidant chemicals.

Research on beta-carotene supplementation showed negative consequences from taking it.

When you’re sick, you need high-functioning white blood cells, which requires Vitamin C.  Also need more Vit C if eating more carbs.

Vitamin C is a pro-oxidant and degenerates into oxalate in the body.

Taking Vitamin C to bowel tolerance.  Why take something that makes you poop?

Does a chocolate bar have oxalates too?  The darker it is, the more oxalates.

What are main symptoms of oxalate problems?  Blood in urine, cloudy urine, bladder pain, incompetent bladder, interstitial cystitis, kidney stone, heartburn, constipation, anxiety. 

Took Sally 9 years of low oxalate diet to get rid of all the crystals in her.

Patrick’s story of bladder pain leaving after starting carnivore diet.

Superfoods: cacao, buckwheat, rhubarb, swiss chard, beet greens, star fruit, raspberry, black raspberry, cashew almond peanuts, turmeric.

Lettuce and head cabbage are low oxalates, broccoli and asparagus have modest amounts.  Boiling leaches out the oxalates.

Trigger dose elevates oxalate concentration in the blood so it starts new deposits.  Maintenance doses- maintains what is in the body.  In low dose “winter season”, where you weren’t eating oxalates at all, body will remove the oxalates.

Food has crystals and oxalic acid.  Acid chelates minerals which sets up crystals. Crystals are sharp and cut.

Why would we eat any oxalates?  Oxalate containing food is not necessary.  Can eat vegetable-rich diet and avoid oxalates.

Don’t want to make an abrupt change to a low oxalate diet to avoid an oxalates dump.

Skin reactions are a classic oxalate reaction, especially if itchy, and around feet. 

Sauna helps correct inflammation in the body.

Can high oxalate be attributed to cancer?  Research shows cancer cases In the breast due to oxalates.

Any substance to get oxalates out?  Calcium, it’s a binder.  Also citrate. Calcium citrate, magnesium citrate.

Calcium don’t calcify your arteries, per Sally. 

Oxalates stick to damaged tissue.  Variation in location of damaged tissue Is why oxalate symptoms are so personalized.

Fiber indiscriminately feeds whatever is growing in the gut.  Bran is very high in oxalates.

We think we want to tell the body how to be healthy, and it already knows.

Fiber is very high in oxalates.  Produces dysbiosis. 

Most of the bulk of stool is dead bacteria.

Do we need vegetables?  Sally hasn’t eaten any for 3-4 years, except for some botanical fruit.  Less bloating, feels better.  Less noise.

What has drinking almond milk for years done to a listener?  Get a bone density scan to see if bones have been damaged by oxalates.  Thyroid gland gets messed up.

Baby red-skin potatoes have less oxalates than baking potatoes. 

Seeds are well-defended.  Are high in oxalates.

Some oxalate clients do better with a big load of carbs a couple nights a week.  If your body does better with carbs, eat them.

Be careful about seafood selection.  Swordfish is high in mercury.  Eat small fish.  Seafood is good.  Try sardines for breakfast.

Forget the fake sugars.  Some oxalate in beet sugar.  Organic is important with sugar.  Coconut sugar is good.  Coconut milk is great.

Recipes on Sally’s site.  SallyKNorton.com. 

Zucchini and winter squashes are low oxalate.

Seaweed, chlorella, spirulina, sea plants not tested for toxicity or oxalates.  High in purines, minerals.

Raw milk?  Calcium in milk is incredibly protective against oxalates.  Take 2 nights off a week.

Low fiber, high fat makes constipation go away.

The brain does need some sugar.  Hard to sleep if low blood sugar.

High 70s to mid-90s is a good fasting blood sugar.

More than 1 pee per night could mean oxalates are stirring up the bladder.

Special gifts if you preorder Toxic Superfoods.