Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / 136 // Are Superfoods Sabotaging Your Thyroid? Sally K. Norton Explains Oxalates

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136 // Are Superfoods Sabotaging Your Thyroid? Sally K. Norton Explains Oxalates · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

• 0:00
  Welcome to episode 136 of the Health with Hashimoto's podcast. I'm Esther.
• 0:05
  I'm a registered nurse, and every week I help you find simple and sustainable
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  ways to take charge of your health.
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  Because with Hashimoto's, your whole person matters.
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  Body, mind, spirit, diet, environment, all of it.
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  And today I've got something really special for you. I have an interview with
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  Sally K. Norton. She is the author of the book Toxic Superfoods.
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  A heads up, this episode does run a little bit longer than usual,
• 0:30
  because I wanted to give you really good insights.
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  I wanted to help you learn what are oxalates, what do they do in your body,
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  how do they relate to your thyroid and autoimmunity, and most of all,
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  empower you with what can you do with this information.
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  So it did take, I think we ran about a half an hour, maybe 40 minutes,
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  and I know you are going to get so much out of this interview.
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  Head down to the show notes where you can find a link to her book.
• 1:00
  In the video of the podcast, which is on my website and on YouTube,
• 1:05
  you can actually see us talk to each other.
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  And towards the end, she will hold up a book.
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  It's the companion guide to the actual book.
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  And she describes the difference between the two and why you might want the
• 1:19
  companion guide or why you might want the book or both.
• 1:23
  I have the book, I have the audio book, and I will be getting the companion
• 1:26
  guide because it looked so useful.
• 1:29
  Whether you have had Hashimoto's for years and years, or you're just trying
• 1:33
  to figure things out right now, my goal is always to empower you with ideas
• 1:37
  that you can use without overwhelm.
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  So with no further ado, here is the interview with Sally K. Norton.
• 1:45
  All right, welcome back to another episode of Health with Hashimoto's.
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  I am so excited for you to listen to this episode.
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  I have a special guest, and we are talking about oxalates. So I heard about
• 1:57
  this book, Toxic Superfoods, on another podcast listening to an interview,
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  and now I get to interview the author, Sally K.
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  Norton. So let me tell you a little bit about her and then we'll get into her story.
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  Sally is a leading expert on dietary oxalates. Don't worry, she's going to tell you what they are.
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  And she has her nutritional science degree from Cornell University and a master's
• 2:20
  in public health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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  So she is not just like spouting anything from the top of her head. She is researched.
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  She has credibility. She really knows what she's talking about.
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  For over 30 years, she's been helping people with health and wellness,
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  and she specializes now in oxalates-aware eating, and she's going to tell us
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  why that is so important.
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  So Sally, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
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  Can you tell us a little bit about your story? Obviously, you were interested
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  in nutrition, in health.
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  What got you interested in oxalates? And then, of course, what are they?
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  Well, in school, oxalates are covered just to hear a paragraph here and there in your textbooks.
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  And, you know, those people who get kidney stones or have kidney problems need
• 3:06
  that low oxalate diet and you're done. You know everything you need to know.
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  Well, that is a just big black hole for you to fall into, which is what happened to me.
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  My unawareness of oxalate's effect on our physiology and that we're eating enough
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  of it to affect your health landed me in a life of struggle.
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  And I realize now both thyroid issues and oxalate issues, which are intimately
• 3:30
  connected, have been affecting my life since before I was even conceived.
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  Well, yeah, my mom had three miscarriages.
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  She had a baby, two miscarriages, a baby, a miscarriage. Her pregnancy with
• 3:43
  me was declared a miscarriage.
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  And it turned out it was, of course, because her thyroid level was low.
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  Wow. Because they just really didn't diagnose that back in the 60s and late
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  50s when she was starting to have her family.
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  And I'm now suspecting that my mother was suffering from oxalate-related thyroid damage.
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  Oxalate is this tiny little chemical that plants make that's in a lot of popular
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  foods. And my family, my mom grew up in the Depression era, and they relied
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  on garden greens like bee greens and chard.
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  And they had rhubarb and made rhubarb desserts, especially rhubarb crisps,
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  which is delicious. I grew up on that. I loved that when it was in season.
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  And those foods are really high in oxalic acid.
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  So oxalic acid is a tiny little two-carbon molecule that has a charge on it
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  and can drop another proton and get another negative charge.
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  So it's a strongly charged, uber tiny little acid, oxalic acid,
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  and it grabs minerals and it connects with things like calcium.
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  And that's its connection with kidney stones. You see, you have to pee out this acid.
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  You eat it. It gets into your bloodstream, moves through your liver,
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  your heart, your lungs, your veins, your arteries, everything.
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  And then your kidneys have to get it out. And if you have a particular kind
• 5:03
  of difficulty handling all this oxalate in your diet, you can end up with kidney stones.
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  Or if you're just really overdoing the oxalates on and on and on,
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  you will eventually get kidney stones. But a lot of us, we don't get the kidney stones.
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  But this calcium oxalate that forms in nature, plants use it to its advantage.
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  Plants not only make oxalic acid that we're eating, but they also build calcium
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  oxalate crystals specifically for lots of metabolic purposes and self-defense.
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  So they'll make these double-pointed toothpick spears that are super uber tiny
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  that can puncture cells too deep.
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  They're literally designed as baited arrows to puncture your membranes and to
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  make it hard for insects to chew on them.
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  And they make big blocks and put them in their bark.
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  You know, something like cinnamon will have blocks uber to us,
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  small, but kind of big if you're a burrowing beetle.
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  Like a little not good to chew on. So nature makes oxalic acid.
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  Plants will build it up as calcium oxalate crystals.
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  You will eat oxalic acid and calcium oxalate crystals both in these foods that
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  include not just the chard, beet greens, rhubarb, and spinach.
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  Spinach and nuts, almonds, almond milk, cashews, peanuts, which we eat a lot
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  of. we tend to potatoes, the big baking potatoes that we make French fries and
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  tater tots out of, and then beets themselves.
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  That's, you know, sweet potatoes. This is all like baby foods.
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  You know, when you're one, you get your chocolate cake and then you start eating
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  nuts and, you know, then you go all gluten-free or something and you're adding
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  in quinoa and these gluten-free products have high oxalate ingredients.
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  So if you start having health problems and you go into like Dairy-free,
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  that's another problem because you need the calcium,
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  high-calcium diet to help you manage this thing that grabs calcium because this
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  thing that grabs calcium is sucking you dry of calcium.
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  And so you've got a little bit of calcium ions in your bloodstream,
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  and oxalate gets in there and can start grabbing the calcium out of your blood,
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  and it can start causing inflammation, which causes acidity.
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  So the body will start pulling calcium and minerals out of the blood to keep
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  your pH good and to keep your calcium levels right in the blood.
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  So you can be, you know, working on weak bones, messing up your growth.
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  If you're a baby and you get calcium deficiency and iron deficiency and other
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  mineral deficiencies because your mom's on a high-oxalate diet or feeding you
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  high-oxalate foods, it's going to affect your growth,
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  your weight gain, the size of your body. It's going to affect lots of things.
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  So we eat oxalic acid and foods we trust and love have no idea we're doing this.
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  So you mentioned oxalate-aware eating.
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  If you don't know what you don't know, you have no idea that food that is reported
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  to be healthy actually has problematic oxalic acid and oxalate crystals in it.
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  So the oxalic acid is the part that gets into your bloodstream and starts messing
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  with your electrolytes and causing your poor liver has to use up glutathione
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  because it's causing a lot of cell damage and oxidative stress,
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  which means not enough of your own inherent glutathione thion is being made
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  to keep up with the damage that's happening.
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  And then that brings in inflammation and it wears you out.
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  All kinds of tissues wear out, including your circulatory white blood cells.
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  So I didn't know any of this stuff, even though I went to Cornell for nutrition.
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  And you know, being a health geek, I was a vegetarian for eight years and then a vegan for eight years.
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  And none of that was working well for me, but I couldn't admit it.
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  I wouldn't ever imagine And my perfect diet had anything to do with the fact
• 8:54
  that I had no energy, and I was just dragging mentally,
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  physically, as everything was an effort, and I was having arthritis and back
• 9:01
  problems, and it just went on and on.
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  I had foot problems in college. I couldn't walk properly. I ended up needing
• 9:09
  painkillers, crutches, wheelchairs.
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  I had to get permission to drive on campus at Cornell.
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  Had surgery, didn't recover well from it. I went for pretty much 30 years with imperfect feet.
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  I mean, I got past the painkillers and the crutches after about seven or eight
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  years, but continued to be unable to go barefoot or to run or do sports or any
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  of that until I turned 50.
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  Right before I turned 50, I had made this connection between arthritis and oxalates.
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  And then I got real surprise after I really got serious about changing my diet and getting the.