Can anyone in the medical/nutrition/research field talk about the practicality of this finding (if any) on how people should moderate oxalate in their diet? Some of the healthiest foods have high oxalate levels, but I was under the impression it was one of those dietary fat != blood/bodily fat type things. Or how oxidants actually can help (in the right levels) by assisting in killing off errant and cancerous cells (which is why extreme over consumption of anti oxidants can hurt you)
I study medical and nutritional research for fun. Papers like these are always interesting to me.
Oxalates are a mixed bag, and are considered an "anti-nutrient", by binding nutrients and preventing absorption during digestion. Ex: Spinach has loads of calcium, but raw, is a poor source of calcium due to oxalate content. However, cooking foods with oxalates in them breaks down the oxalates and frees up the nutrients and partially prevents the anti-nutrient effect.
Excessively high Vitamin C diets (don't supplement to ridiculous amounts, some people do), possibly in combination with low calcium diets (calcium in the body is used to flush oxalates out), can lead to increased risk of kidney stones in diets with high oxalate content. Having a genetic mutation that leads to increased risk of kidney stones can add to this. Please note, there is a lot of ifs in that statement I just said, each one of them independently increases risk, but generally do not reach problematic levels unless you do (or have) more than one.
You shouldn't really worry about oxalates, just don't consume oxalate containing foods in absurd amounts, unless you already are at risk of forming the kind of kidney stones effected by oxalates, then you probably should switch to a low oxalate diet. As usual, talk to your doctor if you think you might be at risk.
This is a great example of a myth in the making due to poor reporting and science-by-case-report.
The report in question is just that-- a case report. It is not scientific in any sense. There's no way to establish causality here. All we can tell is this guy had oxalate kidney stones, and he also drank a lot of tea. That's it.
Controlled studies have found lower rates of kidney stones in tea drinkers:
And why iced tea in particular? That idea seems to have come from one single doctor, who said in an interview once that cold tea encourages people to drink more of it, versus hot tea. Again, no evidence, just cuz he thinks so:
The authors of that case report somehow miscalculated the oxlate content of tea by a factor of ten. They claim that tea contains 50-100mg of oxalate per 100 ml. The actual content is about a tenth of that. Much less than a host of other common foods. And of course their report makes attempt to ascertain the rest of his diet.
> However, cooking foods with oxalates in them breaks down the oxalates and frees up the nutrients and partially prevents the anti-nutrient effect.
This advice should be taken very carefully. The amount of oxalate removed is highly dependent on the cooking method and the food in question. Furthermore, some foods like spinach remain very high in oxalates in comparison to other foods even after preparation. Finally, cooking is not effective at reducing insoluble oxalates. It's probable that insoluble oxalates are less problematic, but I don't know of any good data showing they are harmless.
Well the only human data is in figure 1, and it doesn't look that convincing. There seems to be a small difference in oxalate metabolism between people with/without coronary disease. They do a bunch of comparisons which aren't corrected for multiple testing, and then claim it is of some relevance which is the 'most significant' based on the lowest p.value. This is poor statistical practice if you ask me, such language should not be permitted in an academic paper, although this is utterly typical of nutritional science and life sciences in general. In any case, I think it is crazy to test the association between some nutritional/metabolic factor and a disease outcome in just 48 humans, the results are almost certainly bunk.
The translation is that in actual humans, oxalate metabolism possibly isn't that important to cardiovascular outcomes on average. But it is probably important for some people.
From my understanding, the main issue is impaired synthesis of glycine due to impaired/suppressed? genes. if you have that, you'd have to dramatically reduce oxalates to the point where it causes other problems. smarter to supplement glycine.
From the looks of it, the increased consumption of glycine supplements won't affect oxalate. Yes, glycine/oxalate ratio would be improved, but this would not decrease the amounts of oxalate. So the associated problems related to the excess of oxalate would persist.
I'd assume this article hints at the potential of using mRNA to treat arteriosclerosis.
I'd be interesting to learn how fasting affects the expression of said gene. Thats the easiest intervention anyone can take. (FWIW, I've been treated with a 12 day supervised waterfasting therapy for NAFLD and it reduced the volume of my liver by nearly 20%).
