Transcript
Speaker: Another very common issue in autistic children is elevated oxalates. Very basically, oxalate or oxalic acid is an extremely acidic organic acid that can bind with minerals in the body. So things like calcium, magnesium, and when it binds with these minerals, it forms crystals. Oxalates are found in many foods. A lot of fruits, vegetables, and grains have high oxalate content.
Speaker: but they're also produced by certain fungi and they can even be formed naturally in our bodies. Usually when we eat dietary oxalates from spinach, sweet potato, things like that, we only absorb a portion of them, but if the gut is disturbed, damaged, inflamed, leaky, and of course this is common in autistic children,
Speaker: then they can start absorbing more oxalate, right? And when you add on this things like candida overgrowth, then it's no wonder that when tested with the organic acids test, a lot of autistic children show elevated oxalates. Now these crystals, they can form in the bones, the joints, the kidneys, even the brain, right? Even in some cases, even in the eyes,
Speaker: In fact, calcium oxalate is the major component of kidney stones. So oxalates are very prevalent in our diet. And again, if you're otherwise healthy, your gut is in good shape, they're normally not a problem. But as soon as you have inflammation, leaky gut, you can start to absorb more of these. If you have candida, which again is very common in autistic children,
Speaker: then these oxalates can start building up in the body and they can cause a number of problems, they can deplete our antioxidant glutathione, they can cause oxidative stress and importantly, they can inhibit the absorption of essential minerals such as calcium, magnesium, zinc and iron.
Speaker: And another pretty nasty thing about oxalates is they can bind with certainly heavy metals. They can trap them in the body so then we don't have the ability to excrete them as easily. So in the next module, I will show you on the organic acids test the marker for oxalates. And basically this is another thing that you will be able to test for. And if your child's oxalate burden is heavy or higher than normal,
Speaker: Then there's dietary strategies that we'll discuss later on how to reduce that oxalate burden as you work to help your child heal their gut, eliminate or reduce infections or pathogenic overgrowth and things like that.
