It’s been a couple of weeks since I did a posting. It’s amazing how our health can affect everything in our lives.

I’ve been wrestling with some nasty symptoms that are not specifically allergy related. In fact, I’ve got yet another set of dietary restrictions: oxalates.

If you don’t know what oxalates are, you are part of a large majority. This is a relatively new understanding of our food and how it can affect us. Oxalates are a substance that is only found in plant food - think your fruits, veggies and grains. All unprocessed animal products have either zero or extremely small trace amounts of it.

Unlike commonly recognized allergens like gluten or dairy, oxalates occur in differing amounts in each individual food item. So, unlike managing allergens, I need to know how much oxalate is in each individual food - and sometimes even parts of a food - in order to know how much I’m consuming.

Like some allergies, the issue with oxalates is staying below a certain threshold of exposure. For instance, some people who I know that are allergic to cats can be in a room with a cat, as long as they don’t touch it. This allows them to stay below the threshold that causes a reaction. Some folks have the same thing with foods: a small amount won’t trigger their allergies, but a bigger dose will.

With oxalates, I have to keep below about 50 mg of oxalate a day, in order to feel healthy.

When I get too much oxalate in my diet, all kinds of things happen: insomnia, low thyroid symptoms, extremely low energy, digestive problems, “brain fog”. None of these things are helpful to the mother of a young (high energy) family.

It’s a challenge though. It is a lot like when I first had allergies: I’d get an accidental exposure to something because I ate a food and didn’t realize my allergen was lurking in it. Tracking oxalates is very new - as a result, many foods have not been tested for their oxalate levels, and eating it is a blind guess. In some cases, I’m lucky. In other cases, I end up with a nasty reaction and a few days of recovery.

Which brings me back to health, allergies and writing a blog. I have some foods I have to stay away from because of allergies. I have some new restrictions due to oxalates. When I mess up on one or the other of these areas, my health suffers. When I’m struggling with low energy and brain fog, my writing suffers.