Histamine Well Podcast: Exploring Histamine, Methylation & Holistic Health

Are Oxalates Causing Your Histamine Intolerance and Lowering Homocysteine? | Featuring Melanie Peers

• Joanne Kennedy • Episode 3

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In this episode of the Histamine Well podcast, Joanne is joined by her colleague, Melanie Peers, an expert in oxalate issues. Together they explore the complex world of oxalates, their profound impact on histamine intolerance, methylation pathways, and overall health. 

They discuss how oxalates drive chronic inflammation, deplete sulfur levels, and disrupt both the methylation and transsulfuration pathways, causing low homocysteine levels.

The discussion also covers the extensive symptoms associated with oxalate toxicity, common high-oxalate foods, and the often-overlooked impact of mold on oxalate levels. 

They also offer valuable insights for practitioners and patients on tackling oxalate-related issues, addressing nervous system dysfunction, and the importance of a holistic approach to health. Whether you’re a health professional or navigating your personal wellness journey, this episode is packed with essential information and actionable advice.


Connect with Joanne:

Joanne Kennedy:

Hi, it's Joanne. When it comes to having both histamine and methylation disruption at the same time, there's almost nothing more causative than oxalates. These tiny crystals cause chronic inflammation driving up your histamine and at the same time can deplete the body of sulfur, causing low homocysteine levels and disruption in both the methylation and transsulfuration pathways. This episode is packed full of important information for anyone dealing with oxalate toxicity and is also full of clinical pearls of wisdom for practitioners. So join me as I chat with my colleague, Melanie Peers, who is an absolute world of knowledge when it comes to oxalate. Welcome to the Histamine Well Podcast, designed for practitioners and patients alike. This is your trusted source for insights on histamine intolerance, methylation, gut health, women's hormones, and much more. I'm Joanne Kennedy, your host, naturopath, author, and educator. Passionate about breaking down complex science into clear, accessible knowledge. Whether you are a health professional or navigating your personal wellness journey, the Histamine Well Podcast reaches the gap between cutting edge research and practical understanding to empower you with the tools to thrive. Hi everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today, I am super excited to have my trusted colleague, Melanie Peers join us. Melanie is an absolute gun when it comes to oxalate issues. Well, partly'cause she unfortunately had an oxalate issue herself. But she takes on all the complex oxalate cases in our clinical practice. You've been with me for like five years, Mel. Is that right now? Four or five?

Melanie Peers:

I, I don't know how long it's been actually.

Joanne Kennedy:

Time flies. Has seen so many of our complex patients throughout Australia and Europe, and she is an absolute world of knowledge when it comes to oxalates. And guys if you have histamine issues and you haven't got to the root cause. Oxalates, I call it like the hidden culprit. Oxalates and mold, like the hidden culprit of high histamine. And you'll also learn about how oxalates are a major disruptor of the methylation pathways. So Mel, thank you so much for your time today.

Melanie Peers:

Oh, I love being here. I love talking about all of this stuff.

Joanne Kennedy:

Mel loves it. She's constantly calling me about cases. Jo, did you know this? Did you see that? I'm like, it's good. It's great to have you on my team. Okay, so we're just gonna dive straight in. So Mel, please explain to patients what oxalates are.

Melanie Peers:

Oxalic acid is what's found in foods, in varying levels, in plant foods only. So it doesn't come in dairy, eggs or animal proteins. It's in plant foods. And when it binds to minerals, it forms these oxalate crystals. And that's when we have issues. Now, there's a few reasons people have issues with oxalates, but one of the main things I'm seeing is just the overwhelming amount of oxalates that we're consuming because of our industrialized food system. We have access to these amazing, what we call super foods. We're not paying attention to the oxalates. We're eating spinach year-round, we're eating nut flowers. Not possible before we're industrializing our food supply. So that's a really big factor for the general population. And then we'll talk a little bit more later that the subpopulation of who are really struggling with oxalate.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. Mel, let's just stop there because people need to be aware that a lot of healthy food are really, really high in oxalate. So like the almond flour almond meal. So it's true. People go gluten-free and they have almond meal everything, don't they?

Melanie Peers:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So yeah, there's a few kind of therapeutic diets that put people at risk of really increasing their oxalate intake quite a bit. So going dairy free, going vegan, going on like a paleo type diet where you start to wanna replace all of those baked goods and things like that. We still wanna have our lattes and our baked goods and everything, so we're just trying to find ways that fit within that diet that we're having. And so we start using things like almond flour or almond milk and things like that. Just in such high quantities that we're actually intaking a lot more than we would in a natural diet.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah, I see that all the time as well. There are somewhat more easy cases to deal with if you can just stop them in their tracks and say, Hey, I think you're eating too many oxalate. If you can get people when it's just a dietary problem, it's way easier than the other causes of high oxalate.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah, well, or it really depends on how much they're having. Some people are having extraordinarily high levels. A hundred years ago, or even 50 years ago, we didn't have access to the foods in these quantities. You know, nuts used to be quite rare. You know, our grandparents didn't eat nuts regularly, but some people are eating them every day. That's a problem. As said for the just the general population. We do have as we said, those people that are more susceptible for other reasons. But it is just something to consider. And I know there's a lot of talk about like other plant toxins like leptins and things like that. But with oxalates, it's very much the poisons in the dotes.

Joanne Kennedy:

Poison is in the dotes. Can you just tell people the common, very high oxalate foods,

Melanie Peers:

sorry, spinach is the number one. Won't be having any more spinach smoothies. That's off the list of me. A lot of nuts. So almond's a really big one, but most nuts are really high in oxalates. Potatoes, sweet potato, beetroot, celery, a lot of grains, buckwheat, quinoa, those pseudo grains that are really popular with paleo. Some spices like turmeric. A lot of people are using turmeric. The anti-inflammatory benefits, that's really, really high in oxalates as well.

Joanne Kennedy:

They are all the popular sort of super food, don't they?

Melanie Peers:

Yes. Oh, and don't forget dark chocolate and tea. Especially, lots of people are turning into dark chocolate and quite interestingly, another reason to turn off dark chocolate is they're finding heavy metals in it at the moment as well. High levels of lead that they uncovered recently. So another reason to maybe not have.

Joanne Kennedy:

Wow, that's crazy. Wow. Okay, so we have dietary sources of oxalate. Now what else can go on? Why else can people have high oxalate?

Melanie Peers:

So we can have what's called endogenous production. So within the body, so the liver does naturally make some oxalate. So in certain circumstances our liver might start making a little bit more oxalate. So B1 and B6 deficiency, specifically, you'll start doing that. If we're having a lot of certain supplements where as the body breaks those down, it creates some oxalate in the body. So collagen, vitamin C. So high dose vitamin C, it's not the oxalate content in the vitamin C, it's just as the body is processing it and recycling it. It generates oxalate and xylitol is another one where it's problematic, so the body's making it. You can also see people who've got mold issues. In particularly, you know, aspergillus. It's possible that there are other mold species as well that they create oxalate as part of their natural metabolism. Which means if you have exposure to aspergillus, you have any colonization in your body. Your natural level of oxalate in the body is gonna be higher before you've even consumed any foods.

Joanne Kennedy:

Wow, interesting. So the body makes oxalate.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. This is where the concept of like the poison is in the dose. We generally make a small amount of oxalate. It's not a problem. It's when the numbers become too large whether it's intake. All these other factors we're creating more or we're absorbing more so oxalate is actually very, very tiny. It can slip through the tight junctions of the gut. But if you have like what we call like leaky gut or you're absorbing more into the bloodstream. More's getting through, because those junctions are not quite so tight. So there's more room for more to get through. If you're not absorbing your fat well, that can be another factor that's going to increase your absorption. If you're not eating any of the minerals. When people go dairy free, for example, oxalate will bind up to calcium, but oxalic acid binds up to the calcium that makes it a slightly bigger molecule. So you tend to not absorb it quite so readily through the gut, and you might excrete it through the stool. But if you don't have that binding, that oxalate stays really tiny and it gets in through those type junctions.

Joanne Kennedy:

So oxalates are bound to calcium,

Melanie Peers:

they bind to minerals. Calcium's one of them. Calcium, magnesium are the probably the two most common one. They're what we call like positively charged ions and cause oxalates leggy that can cause like magnet effect

Joanne Kennedy:

So if people are deficient in calcium, magnesium, they can have issues with free oxalate. Is that right?

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. So then it'll absorb much more quickly. But on the flip side, if you are taking calcium and magnesium in your diet, you may not be absorbing it because it is binding up to the oxalate and then it's not readily available. So many factors.

Joanne Kennedy:

Interesting. Can you explain to listeners what goes on with fat malabsorption, fat issues and oxalate?

Melanie Peers:

Yeah, so fat malabsorption, it's mainly to do with the calcium. It means that the calcium's not available to bind up to those oxalates because of the fat malabsorption. And as you said before, the more free oxalate is available to be absorbed. So it's, I don't see fat malabsorption that often is a huge factor in oxalate issues. But quite often if someone's showing signs of fat malabsorption, we wanna deal with that as well because that will be a contributing factor. I don't see it as largely a really big part of the problem.

Joanne Kennedy:

Mm-hmm. I've seen clinically some patients just put themselves on a super high fat diet and then end up with an oxalate problem.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. Well, if you're going keto some of those ketogenic plant foods that are considered safe. You know, something like celery, which is really low carb. They're gonna up the celery. I've seen lots of people come. Um, they've done the medical medium, celery juice. Yeah. Seen a few of those, haven't we? They've

Joanne Kennedy:

yeah, that's, I've seen that in clinic throughout the years. It's really bad.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. So a lot of them have gotten themselves into trouble after doing the celery juicing. It's again, it just all comes down to excess.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yes.

Melanie Peers:

It's just all this excess we get. Really, I think when people get quite unwell, they wanna do everything they can to try and feel better and they will do anything. And you end up with these really extreme diets and if oxalates your problem, then you're gonna end up exacerbating it by trying your best. we had that one European client, do you remember? We saw him together and he was eating bags and bags of spinach and the more he ate, the worse he was feeling. You know, he is trying everything he can to, to heal his gut and improve his health and unknowingly was poisoning himself with these really high oxalate foods.

Joanne Kennedy:

It's a warning to people when they go on a health kick and they're told, just keep going. Push through the bad symptoms you're getting, it's often not right for you.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah

Joanne Kennedy:

it's not a one size fits all.

Melanie Peers:

No, I see this all the time. People, oh, I just need to push through. I just need to push through. And sometimes you can push through like a detox or a herx reaction, but generally speaking, if you are having those reactions, it's too intense.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah.

Melanie Peers:

Even if it's a small detox, like, you know, even taking like a small anti-microbial, if that's creating a significant herx, then your body is struggling to remove the waste and you, you need to slow down. So I'm really not a fan of pushing through. Especially because the more unwell you are, the less resilience your body has to kind of push through.

Joanne Kennedy:

I think if you remove processed foods and sugar from your diet and caffeine and you having a headache and you feel fatigued, this is normal. It's when people, it's when your neighbor tells you, oh, I feel amazing on keto. Or your neighbor tells you I'm vegan, I feel great. Or I'm gonna do lots of intermittent fasting. I'm gonna do celery reducing. When people are doing more sort of extreme things and you are not feeling good on it, it's a warning sign.

Melanie Peers:

Mm-hmm.

Joanne Kennedy:

It's not right for you.

Melanie Peers:

A little bit of a headache. Maybe some flu-like symptoms, a bit of fatigue, some diary that lasts a couple of days is one thing, but these people are struggling to even get out of bed. Yes. They can't even function, and yet they're still pushing through and it's, it's really not.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. Yeah. There's something else going on. Yeah. Before we go any further, Mel, we have to tell our listeners what the common signs and symptoms of oxalate are.

Melanie Peers:

Okay. So there is a huge laundry list of what it could be. It affects many body systems. Oxalate can get into any organ system in the body, any tissue. So they can be really far reaching. And I like to stick with the most common ones because some of these other ones, it could be, it couldn't be, it might be something else. But the main things you wanna look for is anything to do with the gut. Anything to do with gut pain, especially. It's gonna be a sharp pain. It's not gonna be a dull nausea. It's gonna be a sharp pain. Might get loose stools. Sometimes it feels like you're getting a stomach bug. You know when you get a stomach bag and get this sharp cramps. Look, get that. Sometimes they go a very yellow color. They might be quite acidic. So you might get a little bit of burning when you are emptying your bowels. Sandy grittiness in the stool, or black or white, flex. That's when you see it. Now the thing about oxalate, we can talk about it later. It's a bit cyclic, so it's not gonna be necessarily every day. Depends on how much you're having and if you don't even know what an oxalate is, you wouldn't know what your intake is. So there's that. Urinary. So someone who has frequent UTIs, interstitial cystitis, even thrush. Especially, I'll get a lot of women coming to me say I have recurrent UTIs or recurrent thrush, but they're not getting tested. So they're basing it just on the symptoms. It's the discomfort. It can be anything from quite intense sharp pain to just mild discomfort in anywhere in the urinary tract.

Joanne Kennedy:

Do you see the women that go and have swabs start and then never have an infection? It's just inflammation coming from oxalate for UTIs. That's classic.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. Quite often. Sometimes it can be like an embedded infection. But yes, if you are finding that you are either not testing or you're getting a test done and there's nothing coming up, I would really strongly suspect oxalate. So anything to do with the kidneys, the bladder, urethra, vaginal or any sort of discomfort you might have discomfort during intercourse, burning urination, frothy urine. You might actually even see little flex in the toilet bowl after you've um, did your bladder and then you might see musculoskeletal stuff. So joint pain's a really big one. So people might get really tight sore joints to the point that they think they've got arthritis. But it might not follow that pattern of arthritis. It'll be very relapsing remitting. Sometimes it's really bad. Sometimes it's not too bad. It'll move from joint to joint. Muscle pain or stiffness. You might get grittiness or irritation. The eyes, rashes, even osteoporosis, because the impact it has on the minerals. You might see early onset osteoporosis. But you just have to think that when this oxalic acid combines with the minerals and performs these crystals, it's like shards of glass. So anything that you can imagine that would feel like shards of glass in your body, then you can assume that it's due with oxalate. I have seen a lot of people with things like cysts that have cleared up. So potentially having things like cysts in the body.'cause when you think a cyst is just the immune system surrounding something that it doesn't like to try and protect the body. So quite often you could have an oxalates in those cysts, which includes like ovarian cysts and things like that. Wow. Yeah, it, it can really affect any part headaches, the most common ones. And if someone came to me with those, I would really suspect oxalates. The other ones I would only really kind of tie together if I'm seeing those main three categories of symptoms. Fatigue's also really common and exercise intolerance because the mitochondria gets affected. So, you know, you, you get a lot of fatigue. Maybe one day you, you've got a burst of energy. You go and do a workout and then you're bedridden for two days. You can't recover that's really common as well.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah, interesting. And Mel, what are all the histamine symptoms?

Melanie Peers:

Histamine symptoms. So yeah. You know, your hives, your headaches. Whenever I talk about histamine, I say to people, you ever think about getting a mosquito bite or having hay fever? That's histamine. Anything kind of itchy or irritable, you'll see that. So yeah, you also get the neurological symptoms that can come with histamine in the central nervous system. As you said, the headaches, the migraines, dizziness.

Joanne Kennedy:

Mm. Yeah, that's it's. It's so interesting when I speak to our patients about it, they're sharp crystals and they're causing chronic inflammation.

Melanie Peers:

Oh, absolutely. Most of the time, I would say people who, once we've figured out it's an oxalate issue, who initially. I think they've got a histamine issue. They do have a histamine issue too. They find the histamine symptoms are lesser, so they might go, I still can't have fermented foods or red meat, but I actually can have pumpkin and banana. Whereas previously they couldn't have any of the histamine foods and they were still symptomatic. It's kind of like the histamine's more of a secondary.

Joanne Kennedy:

That's right. It's a symptom presentation. It's a symptom of the oxalate. Yeah. Histamine's always a symptom. When I'm looking at organic acid tests, or if patients come to me with a whole bundle of tests and they've done organic acids and I see high oxalate, so we stop. I say to them, you got like little knives in your body. That's like bad. They are causing havoc with inflammation, havoc with histamine. And you know mel, this is where we should lead into how they cause havoc with sulfur. So can you explain to our listeners what happens with oxalates and sulfur and why this is a really important link with why you can't get on top of this chronic inflammation?

Melanie Peers:

Yep. Okay. So like already discussed with minerals binding to the oxalates, and so you can end up with deficiencies that way. Sulfur works a little bit differently. So sulfate is the active form of sulfur that the body uses in the body. And oxalate and sulfate, they share the same transporter on the cell. And a transporter is just literally the way things get in and out of the cell. And so what happens is oxalate is in the bloodstream. The body is like, this is so dangerous. You know, we don't want shards of glass in the blood. So what it does is it will just put it into tissue. I used the example with a lot of clients. It's like having a junk drawer or like that spare bedroom where when people are coming over, you just shove things in there and you deal with it later. So the body goes, need to get this oxalate out of the bloodstream, put it into tissue. So as it goes in on those transporters, it's pushing sulfate out. There's a lot of things in our body. It's all about balance and osmosis. And so as the oxalate goes in, the sulfate gets pushed out. Sulfate doesn't belong on its own in the bloodstream. It's supposed to be bound up to things like a hormones. So when the body goes why, if you've got this sulfate in the bloodstream, we must have too much and it waste it into the urine. So mistakenly thinks that we've got too much sulfur when actually it's depleting it so the sulfur becomes depleted in the body. Some people say that they can smell a little bit of a sulfur smell to their urine when they start to identify the whole offs, late picture. But that's not necessarily something that people come saying, I've got this smelling urine. It's usually so. They realize after the fact.

Joanne Kennedy:

Mm. And what's the big problem with having low sulfur?

Melanie Peers:

Oh, sulfur is one of the most abundant molecules in the body. It's needed to activate all of your hormones. As I said, it transports your hormones in the body. It transports in everything in the body. Really important for detoxification. We have one pathway called sulfation, which relies entirely on sulfur. There's so many things that we need sulfur for in the body that we haven't even discovered yet. Whenever we see something that's present in the body in high quantities, we know that it's important.

Joanne Kennedy:

It does Everything. It makes glutathione. Yeah. And you just can't get on top of the inflammation without it. So listeners, if you've got low homocysteine, that is actually a red flag that you've got a oxalate problem. Because homocysteine is actually a storage molecule for sulfur. And when the body is deplete of sulfur and oxalates can deplete the body of sulfur. One place it can get it from is from homocysteine. And so the body will chop up homocysteine to get the sulfur, which is a common reason why it's low. So Mel and I are often testing patients for homocysteine. Because if it's low, it's like, wow, this is a big red flag for an oxalate problem.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah, absolutely. It's homocysteine is such a good test, isn't it? Because if it's high, it's methylation. If it's low, it's sulfur, or at the very minimum, just general toxicity.

Joanne Kennedy:

As I was saying, like people email me just so many tests throughout the years and if they've done homocysteine and if they've done organic acids and oxalate, I look at those first. And if they're outta whack, we start there. Low is methylation disruption. High is methylation disruption. Low Is sulfur problems. Probably oxalate or Could be mold. That these patients have had these issues for years and it hasn't been picked up. So I just need to flag this. Listeners, if you've done an organic acid test and you can see that there's high oxalate and it's been ignored or not treated properly, this needs to be fixed.

Melanie Peers:

Absolutely. And how often is it happening?

Joanne Kennedy:

It happens all this time.

Melanie Peers:

Now we're seeing so many, and we say to them, what did your previous practitioner say about the oxalates? And they said, oh, I don't have kidney stones. It's fine. Or they didn't really say anything or.

Joanne Kennedy:

No, it's a big problem. And when we see organic acids, and it's like they've got mitochondrial dysfunction as well, oxidative stress to the mitochondria. Well, How inflammatory and how much does oxidative stress is caused from oxalates? It's Huge.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. Oh, massive. Huge. To the mitochondria, which is why people get that exercise intolerance. It's again, you're taking shards of glass to this little organelle that's supposed to be creating energy for the body. It's really damaging and yeah, people just have no idea.

Joanne Kennedy:

They have no idea. It's really common. Because mel and I specialize in histamine and methylation things. We see a subset of patients that have huge histamine symptoms. Okay? And if it's not a simple I gluten intolerance, your hormones are out of whack. You've got sibo. If it's a more, usually a more serious presentation and they're presenting to us with these issues. Then 99% of the time it's mold and with or without oxalate. Oxalates with mold or mold without oxalates or with, and it's because this is the patient base that we see. They're seeking help from us cause they've got all the histamine symptoms so they can identify that. They know they can't have high histamine foods. They know it'll cause a rash or a migraine, but it's just a symptom. And then we absolutely need to be understanding that oxalates are, as I was saying before. One of those absolute hidden causes that just go mist and then it just disrupts your sulfation pathway. It disrupts your methylation pathway. Don't think one of the classic signs is also these people end up with multiple food intolerances.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. Because when you don't know what oxalate is and you don't know the foods, there's a lot of crossover. Like there's actually a lot of high oxalate foods that are high histamine. Like your spinach and your dark chocolate. Yeah. So people quite often they've, they've gone low histamine. It's touching the sides, but it's not fixing the problems. Then they start looking elsewhere. Yeah. And they're like, oh, maybe it's salicylate. Because you know, they identify some of the really high salicylate foods. It could be all of them because there's such dysfunction. But you don't get on top of the oxalate, you won't get on top of anything else.

Joanne Kennedy:

That's right. With oxalates, you're gonna have be intolerant to oxalates. You're gonna be intolerant to histamine, and you need sulfur to break down salicylate so you can end up being intolerant to salicylates.

Melanie Peers:

Absolutely. Yeah. And the thing about, like other food intolerances like currently. You know, like gluten or dairy or salicylates and things like that. Generally it's restricted to giving you gut symptoms. Whereas oxalate is like so far reaching it's brain, it's the kidneys, it's the liver. Like it's affecting everything. It's very gotta stop there.

Joanne Kennedy:

When I'm also chatting to my patients around, working out what's going on. When classic oxalate people to me, they are inconsistent. There's inconsistency in their symptoms and they really find it hard to answer questions and they find it hard to work out what's going on with their food.

Melanie Peers:

I'm not sure. Can you tolerate this? I don'y know I tried histamine, it felt like it was working okay. But then I had this massive flare. Or I went carnivore and I got lots worse. Yeah. Which is a flare. Please don't go carnivore. If you have an oxalate problem.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. Can you explain to patients why,mel?

Melanie Peers:

Okay, so, well, I guess this is what we called dumping, oxalate dumping. So what happens is when we're consuming a high oxalate diet, or we have these factors that are creating more oxalate in the body. High vitamin C is really classic one too because people are trying to help detox and you go, oh, that's my problem. I'm just gonna remove all of that outta my diet. Because that's what you do with histamine. That's what you do with salicylate. You cut them outta your diet. Problem being. Remember that junk draw that I was telling you about? Well, even in your junk drawer, even hidden away in tissue outta the bloodstream. The oxalates are still causing problems. They're causing tissue damage, they're causing issues with the mitochondria. The body wants to get rid of it. So as soon as you lower your oxalate intake, it creates this window where the body goes, okay, I've got some wiggle room. Now I can start clearing some of this out because we're not bringing so much in. And so it puts it into the bloodstream. Quite often when it's coming outta tissue and going into the bloodstream, you'll get a really high histamine picture outta nowhere. You'll get heart palpitations, insomnia, or whatever your main histamine symptom is. And then you'll go, it'll try and get rid of it through the three main systems, which is through the skin, through the kidneys, or through the bowel. So some of those symptoms that I was talking about before of high oxalate can also look like dumping. So you get gut pain, you'll get the loose stools. This is the body trying to get rid of it, whether it's too high or too low, the body's trying to get rid of this excess oxalate as much as it can. But the more you reduce the oxalate intake, the more oxalate we're gonna remove out of the storage. And the worst symptoms are gonna be, and it's not pleasant.

Joanne Kennedy:

No, it's not. Mel. And what do you do with patients that have done that when they come to you and they've already dumped?

Melanie Peers:

We bring oxalate back in, so the antidote to heavy dumping is bringing oxalate back in. This very delicate balance of not having too much coming in. You don't wanna keep accumulating, but we wanna reduce it just enough to release the pressure because oxalate dumping can actually be just mildly inconvenient, if you do it right. It can be hell on earth if you do it wrong. Yeah, and I know from personal experience, I did it quite slowly, but I did slip up once, was feeling really bad and thought. Am I gonna have to go to the hospital here because I'm really feeling like I'm in trouble. And then thought to myself, what the hell would I tell a doctor. If I go to the emergency room? Can be unpleasant, but it can also be made quite easily. The first month or two is usually pretty intense, but usually by the second or third month things really settle down. But you can definitely do it the easy way or the hard way. And the easy way is to do it very slowly. So that you might get a little bit of diarrhea or loose stools. You might get a little bit of painful urination or discomfort. But it's not painful. It's not causing you to be bedridden, it's not causing too much.

Joanne Kennedy:

I just really caution people against doing it themselves, like I really do. Because you can go way too fast and it's very hard to pull back. Yeah. And

Melanie Peers:

because there's so many different symptoms, there's so many body systems that can be affected. Symptoms, chop and change as well. So one month your primary symptoms might be the joint pain. But another time it might move and be more like gut pain so it gets really noisy. Symptom picture gets very noisy and people get very confused and they don't know where they're at. And so that's where, when I work with them. We sit down and I go, What are you consuming? And then I can usually go, you've cut things out too quickly. Like you were having a bag of spinach every day and you're having half a bag of spinach. Like that's too much. Or someone was having a thousand milligrams of vitamin C and they've stopped it. We don't cut it out that quickly. We titrate down.

Joanne Kennedy:

Absolutely. I had a patient last night, she's in Israel and she is full of oxalate and taking huge amounts of vitamin C and it was, she's really smart young girl and she worked it out. It was part of the, how she worked out, how she found me and how she worked out. She had an oxalate problem. From all the vitamin C. Well, why she was taking vitamin C. She's high in histamine. To stabilize muscle cells. But she's high in histamine'cause of the oxalate. Before we go any further, I want to speak directly to the practitioners and students listening. If you are intrigued by histamine intolerance and eager to expand your knowledge, particularly around methylation and how to apply this understanding in clinical practice. We offer the histamine and methylation online group coaching course. The only program of its kind. It covers everything you need to know about histamine and methylation, providing both the theory and guidance you need to treat these issues effectively in clinical practice. To learn more and apply, visit joannekennedynaturopathy.com. So Mel, we need to also talk about gut microbiome. And what can happen with dysbiosis and disrupted that low levels of good bacteria, particularly Oxalobacter formigenes, what can happen due to dysbiosis in the gut?

Melanie Peers:

Yeah, so dysbiosis. Obviously, a lot of people probably know the term just mean imbalance in the good, in the bad microbiome, even though it's not good and bad. But like that's the simplistic term we can do. The ones that give us good health and not, but quite often oxalobacter is literally the only way we can digest oxalate. So to speak, is certain gut bacteria. So oxalobacter is one of them. We're starting to see that the lactobacillus, some of the lactobacillus as well have the oxalate degrading ability. So having reduction in those is going to reduce your ability to tolerate what's coming in. Now interestingly, if you're having a super high oxalate diet, you're gonna decrease those numbers because they're going to be bombarded and they're gonna struggle. So a super high oxalate diet, especially oxalobacter can affect that. If you have no oxalate and oxalate is this bacteria's food source. Then you're gonna starve them out as well. So you need to have some, and so as far as lactobacillus. There are a lot of, there's a lot of health benefits around the different species of lactobacillus. If you have any just general dysbiosis and them in lower numbers, it's gonna affect your ability to degrade oxalate. Again, I see that as part of the picture. It's never the only reason. To have issues people come to me, they're like, oh look, my oxalobacter is good. I must be okay. Or Look, I don't have my oxalobacter in my stool test. And I'm like, okay, that's a consideration. But it's not usually a big part of the picture.

Joanne Kennedy:

So Mel when you think you've got an oxalate case or when you see a patient. And you first see them and they're full of histamine, right. As they always are when they come to us. What are the things that you are looking for when it comes to, is this an oxalate patient, when it comes to testing?'cause sometimes their organic acid test can come back with no high oxalate. Yeah. They've got low homocysteine and the symptoms are so obvious because it's actually about gathering all the data and then just having a really good critical, think about it.

Melanie Peers:

Absolutely. So my organic acid test back in the day showed in range. There's reasons behind that. But I went on a lower off weight diet and it was like finally this neck pain that I've been dealing with my whole life, drinking my almond lattes has gone away. I always wondered why I reacted to turmeric because it wasn't in any of my food lists. That was always something that struck me as odd. I was like, why am I reacting to turmeric? You need to get a really good case history. So the things that jump, obviously, if someone has an organic acid test that comes back with the three markers, we know.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah, but just sometimes it comes back and it's in range.

Melanie Peers:

Again. Like you can't ignore good old fashioned trial and error when it comes to diet. Like pull a little bit out. See how you feel, and if you feel an improvement, and even if you pull out too much. You will feel an improvement in the first few days, but then the dumping will come and that's when you'll feel awful again. So. There's a honeymoon period about three days to three weeks when you reduce your oxalate intake. The headache's gone. That joint pain's gone. You feel so good. I've got energy again. That's when you'll know. Or if you know, we're talking about all of the high oxalate foods and you're going in your head. Ding, ding, ding. Like, yes, I eat that. I eat that. I eat that. I eat that. There's nothing better than a good symptom picture and a case history.

Joanne Kennedy:

You know, I'm mindful of when I'm doing a case and I've got all these test results for an initial, but I don't wanna jump the gun. I don't wanna just look at the tests and get my prescription in my head ready.

Melanie Peers:

Mm-hmm.

Joanne Kennedy:

Because so often you can look at a test and think, oh, that's definitely your problem, when it's actually a false negative. And it's not actually the problem. It's really true. We just need to take that functional medicine testing with a grain of salt. It can be helpful, but it's not the whole picture. So, Mel, when you're putting a case together for oxalate, just with testing, when you're looking at organic acids test, I kind know that there are three different markers. When it comes to oxalate, there's glyceric, glycolic, and oxalic. So what do they mean and what's the difference between them?

Melanie Peers:

Okay, so the gylceric, that's the first one that you'll see in that section generally is more of a genetic issue. There's an issue with certain enzymes dealing with that. They're usually the people that get kidney stones. Now, funnily enough, people talk to me. Oh, oxalates, kidney stones. I hardly ever see kidney stones. Yeah, we don't enough.'cause the people that we're dealing with don't get kidney stones. They're not that glycemic type person. Normally the glycolic acid or the oxalic acid that you see elevated. Not to say that the glyceric won't be elevated, but I see that least commonly. Generally it's just to do with genetics and your enzymes. They're the families that get kidney stones.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah.

Melanie Peers:

And doctors normally know about them.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. It's a medical problem. A medical emergency.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. My colleague tends to be more of that endogenous production that I talked about. So if you've got yeast or mold overgrowth. They might be creating some extra oxalate in your body and then the oxalic may be to do with your food intake. Or it could be some of the endogenous, they're the two that are generally elevated when we see it on a test. Obviously, when it's food intake related, it will very much depend on how what you've eaten recently.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah, absolutely. That's why you can have a false negative. It comes back. You haven't eaten oxalates. Yeah, eat that up. They'd be oxalic.

Melanie Peers:

Because an organic acid test, it's testing metabolites and a metabolite is just the process of everything in our body is happening as a chemical reaction. Metabolites are the end products of those chemical reactions. And we can know by these metabolites what that means. So if you're not metabolizing oxalate at that moment in time, you might not actually. You might it. Yeah.

Joanne Kennedy:

So Mel, in organic acids tests, what other common markers do you see in that test when someone has an oxalate problem?

Melanie Peers:

that would be the main one I'd look at. But the other things I would look for is yeast or fungal overgrowth. So in that first section there's like aspergillus. Arabinose which is high for candida. Then you can also look at some of the methylation toxic exposure marker might tell us that there's disruption there, glutathione production. You can also look and see, like we often see low B6 in these people. So that's a pretty common one that I see. But yeah, and this is the thing. This is why we love doing the test even though it's not always going to show oxalate. Most of the time it does. It's very rare we don't see it. I guess I'm just special in that way that mine didn't show it. But it just shows us so much, so many other things, and it can tell us. Well, looking at you, we know you've got an absolute problem. We can. You and I can pick it pretty quickly. It's going Okay. Is it a yeast problem as well? Is it a mold problem? Is it a B6 deficiency? Do we need support for glutathione? Do you potentially have to solve a problem because of that?

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah, it's just great. It's just so much better than just doing oxalate testing on its own.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah, because it just, organic acid just shows there's so many different parts of the body. Yeah. And processes in the body.

Joanne Kennedy:

It's amazing test and it's really right.

Melanie Peers:

I always say it's good bang for your buck because as I said, you're not just testing hormones. For example, you're not just looking at just the gut. This is looking at the gut. This is looking neurotransmitters, this is looking at toxicity, looking at so many factors.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah its great. So, Mel, tell us about B6. Why are you going on about B6 so much?

Melanie Peers:

So B6 deficiency can mean that the liver will create more oxalate. So in a B6 deficient state, liver will create more oxalic acid. So, oh, okay. That's why it's one of the treatment that we use is replenishing the levels. But you can't do everything at once either because everything at once is going to change your oxalate levels, which is gonna affect dumping. So you have to be very systematic about how you do it. Okay? Because you don't wanna be in that water of pain.

Joanne Kennedy:

If you're curious to learn more about oxalate toxicity and its impact on histamine and methylation, I've got a 45 minute webinar covering exactly what oxalates are, why they accumulate their symptoms. How they deplete sulfur lowering homocysteine. Plus, I'll share safe strategies for removing oxalates from the body. This is a must know for practitioners, students, and anyone suffering with oxalate issues. You can find the webinar at joannekennedynaturopathy.com. Just go to shop webinars and you can use the discount code OXALATES to enjoy 20% off. So if I'm a patient and I do have significant dysbiosis. Like we know, like I've taken a lot of antibiotics. I've had a lot of stress addicted to sugar, especially when I was younger. I have SIBO and I've also got vaginal thrush. I've got a lot of mouth candida, and my hormones are all over the place. My absolute histamine bucket. Okay? And I've done an organic acid test, and I come to you and I'm like. Look at this. I've got high oxalate. So all this picture going on, like where would you start with a patient like that?

Melanie Peers:

Definitely oxalate. And I like to just get the ball rolling a little bit on gut repair. So you can't necessarily do a lot.'cause unfortunately in the process of going through oxalate dumping, you are creating a lot of inflammation. So it is going to be very difficult to heal in that state. But we can start feeding some of the beneficial bacteria, some prebiotic food.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. But Mel, I've got SIBO

Melanie Peers:

PHGG, which is pretty SIBO safe.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah, that's partially hydrolyze guar gum.

Melanie Peers:

Yes. That's a good one. Yeah. You've gotta get the inflammation down and deal with that. And as I said, once that happens the histamine tends to settle down.

Joanne Kennedy:

Mm. So you're dealing with the oxalates. What other supplements are you using for reduced inflammation in the gut?

Melanie Peers:

This is a bit of a hard question'cause everyone's so different. I start everyone.

Joanne Kennedy:

I know you've got a favorite one.

Melanie Peers:

Quite really. Yes. I do love Sulforaphane. But that really depends on the person. Like some people, I don't start them on that straightaway. Honestly, most of the time we just really tackle oxalate reduction. Because you don't want too many variables either. In some people the other thing that can happen is it really affects their adrenals and their blood glucose regulation. So especially people have come in really stressed, like you said, this person's had a lot of stress. If they've got really dysregulated blood glucose levels, we really need to support that. So I've got one client who we've been working on. She was waking three times a night needing to eat overnight because she was so dysregulated. So our primary focus was reducing the oxalates. Managing the dumping, but also supporting her blood glucose levels and trying to keep her adrenals from freaking out too much. That was the priority.

Joanne Kennedy:

And Mel, how did you do that?

Melanie Peers:

So really focusing on your macronutrients. Having making sure a lot of people wanna go on a low carb diet. In this instance that really didn't suit this person. She really needed her carbohydrates, eating regularly, supporting digestion, stomach acid, production. Stress. These people have been in such a state of chronic stress that they don't realize that awkward conversation that they had with their family member is actually now presenting as intensifying of their gut symptoms. Yeah, like they don't realize that it's having such an impact because they're in such a state with their nervous system and dysregulation. So it's really hard to say it could be different for everybody. You might wanna look at doing some antifungals and working on the fungus at that point. But it really depends on so many factors, what is like really driving things a lot for them. And it's sometimes it's just a matter of, well look, let's reduce some of the factors that might be causing things. Like if someone's getting thrush regularly, are you using the bathroom after intercourse? What are you doing with regards to what kind of underwear you're wearing? These kind of things can help things while we try and address the other things at the same time. Does that make sense?

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. So if there is on Oats test, the Arabinose and some of those other yeast markers driving up oxalate, that's one of your priorities too, isn't it?

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. Yeah. But I do tend to like to spend kind of like the most first month or two just getting the oxalates down. I just love my clients because they're so trusting of me. Because they'll say, how do I know if I'm dumping? And I'm like, it does take time because accumulation and dumping can look similar. But within a month or two, you'll know. And they trust me. Which is really great because they come back and they go, oh yes, I know now this happened. And I realized, oh my goodness, I didn't eat my carrots today and I'm dumping too much. And I brought some back in, or, you know, I went out for coffee with a friend and I had some cake that was actually made from almond flour and now I'm feeling terrible. And so it takes time to get on because it's, it fluctuates so much. The first month is wild. It's confusing. But usually by month two they go, I get it now. I understand now. And it's really about managing and keeping the oxalates at the right level, making sure we're not dropping too quickly, making sure we're not staying at the same level and not encouraging the dumping. Because as much as it is driving inflammation, we've got the end goal inside. Is that we've gotta get them out because they're causing inflammation anyway.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yep. So Mel, on average, how long does it take to get them out?

Melanie Peers:

Uh, how long's a piece of string? I say at least six months. When people hear that, they're like, oh my God, I can't do this for six months. It's not six months of intense dumping. It is six months of, you've gotta think about like a set of steps. We gradually going down, down, down. So when someone starts on their oxalate journey and they're reducing their oxalates, they might reduce their oxalates and get some dumping and they have pretty intense dumping. They've got headaches, they've got got loose stools and that goes for three weeks straight. And I think I can't do this for six months. It's not like that for six months. What will then happen is the body will, then you might have a day of relief and the dumping might start again. And then the dumping gets milder and milder and the length of time that you dump for decreases and those days where you feel good increases. So you get these golden days where you feel really, really good. And that's what you have to attach yourself to remember that that's That's where we're heading.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. So has someone gone through like a month of dumping and they understand they're dumping symptoms and how to manage them. Then what would you be doing next with regards to replenishing nutrient deficiencies, gut microbiome, candida? What would you then be doing next?

Melanie Peers:

So quite often after the first one, we look at replenishing with minerals, electrolytes especially, a lot of people have issues with urination, like quite frequent urination, whether that's driven by the histamine, quite often it's an electrolyte imbalance. So electrolytes are really important. So starting to bring some of those things back in. Then looking as said. Until the dumping really calms down, you can't really do a lot of the, the gut repair. We can bring in, as I said, some antifungals when things settle down a little bit. But it's really about supporting the body through this process because when you come out of a dumping cycle, you can feel quite fatigued and you need to kind of replenish and rebuild. Quite often some people will have a day or two after dumping it where they're like, Mel, I don't know what happened, but I'm eating like twice as much as I normally eat. I'm ravenous. I can't stop eating. That's the body really just trying to replenish. It's kind of, you know, you run a marathon, you need to replenish. So it's really important along the way to be replenishing a lot of these things. And that's where people kind of forget and they miss that step. You wanna try and keep the body as resilient as possible. So that's what I do. I said that that repairs a little bit further down the track. But a lot of the symptoms have already gotten better. That's what people need to understand. Like you don't come out of it and go, I'm still really bloated, I'm still really reactive to food. You might have very mild gut symptoms. Now it's like, okay, now do we need to do some repair of the gut lining? Do we need to support the dysbiosis and encourage healthy activity? That's where you do.

Joanne Kennedy:

It's a long term.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. It's kind of like, do the oxalates and see what's left. Because a lot of things improve along the way. We've had some wacky wild symptoms just disappear along the way.

Joanne Kennedy:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It is the wacky wild symptoms that I train my practitioners on in the course. Like, how do you know it's oxalates? I'm like wacky, wild symptoms and inconsistent.

Melanie Peers:

Mm-hmm. That's it.

Joanne Kennedy:

Inconsistent symptoms.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. People say, oh that cyst is gone. Like, I had this like cyst on my leg and it's gone. I'm not feeling so lightheaded anymore. Or they just get really weird symptoms and they're like, what is that? And I'm just like, honestly, like it could be the oxalates. It's just one of those. You don't get taught these things at uni. Like I've got vibrations on. I can feel internal vibrations. Now if you ask a doctor that you shouldn't be able to feel that. They feel weird vibrations. They feel all sorts of weird symptoms that you've never heard. I've heard people talk about feeling, very disconnected from their body. I've heard people feel like they're skeleton feels like it's made of concrete.

Joanne Kennedy:

What I just remember when I first started practicing, I was like, they're so strange. Strange symptoms.

Melanie Peers:

Thing I say about Oxalates, it's strange than fiction though. You couldn't write this. It's so weird.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. So listeners, if you do have symptoms that are really strange along with the classic pain symptoms. When you say Mel, those pain symptoms and like high histamine then oxalates are just a big red flag.

Melanie Peers:

Absolutely.

Joanne Kennedy:

So Mel, we can't end a conversation with oxalates without kind of touching on mold. Mel is a mold guru and we're gonna do a whole episode on mold. But mold is a big driver of oxalate as well. Tell our listeners about the connection between mold and oxalate.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah, so as I said earlier in the episode, a lot of mold species, aspergillus in particular, we know primarily creates oxalate as part of its metabolism. So you've gotta think of oxalates a little bit like histamine with threshold. You're not intolerant to histamine. You're also not really intolerant to oxalate. There's just a capacity that the body has and when you've reached that capacity now by having this mold create oxalate in your body. Your capacity to tolerate what's coming in in the diet is reduced, and so you get symptoms more easily. A lot of the symptoms of mold toxicity can be very similar to oxalate. I always say you can have an oxalate problem without a mold issue. You can have a mold issue without an oxalate problem. Quite often we see them together, so it can be any one of those kind of three options. So they get a lot of fatigue. A lot of neurological stuff, brain fog, like just memory issues cognition again. Some pretty wild symptoms there as well. But yeah. Really if someone's got identify that there's a mold issue. I quite often look for oxalates and usually there's relation.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. I always say to anyone who has suspected mold in their house, or they do have mold illness or they had mold illness, they need to do an organic acid test. I can't tell you how many Americans I've seen who have gone through mold protocols who are still have terrible symptoms and they haven't been investigated for oxalate. And it was really the oxalates making them feel worse in the first place. It really is making them feel, so they had some mold, they got other mold, they did binders, they dealt with the mold, and then they have these chronic inflammation in their body.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. And they can't get their gut right.

Joanne Kennedy:

It won't fix. So any mold people out there, it's just you. If you're the beginning of your mold journey, then you definitely need to get a practitioner on board that knows about oxalates for sure. Because if they can go mist and you'll end up having worse symptoms from the oxalate than the mold.

Melanie Peers:

And this is the thing. Like we always wanna get the body back to balance but more important than anything else. The person needs to feel good.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah.

Melanie Peers:

You know what I mean? They might have a mold problem, but if the oxalates are driving most of the symptoms, you can't always deal with the mold straight away. You can't necessarily just move outta your house like a drop of a hat or do the renovations or whatever that's required. But you can certainly feel a lot, lot better. And that's what we're in the business of doing right. Just helping minimize those symptoms by addressing the underlying factors.

Joanne Kennedy:

Exactly.

Melanie Peers:

If you share with oxalates symptoms, I will always ask you about mould in your house or your environment and vice versa. If you come showing signs of mold, I'll always ask you about oxalates and sulfur.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. What about with low homocysteine, Mel? Are you asking people about mold?

Melanie Peers:

Yeah, I would. I would flag it. I'd see how the conversation transpires. But here's one for everyone. That this is one of the things I generally start with. Or if someone's come to see you first and you say. Actually no, you need to go on to Mel. They teach you this in uni. Like never well since. I always say to people, is there a moment in time if I could say, go back in time where everything started or maybe you had some mild symptoms through childhood, early twenties, but like ever since that moment things just haven't been right. Like since that holiday or since that job or since that relationship breakdown or since you moved. Like that always generates a lot of information because something has happened in that period of time. And then you can start asking all the questions. Did you move house? Have you done this? Another great one is, do you feel good when you go on holidays?

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. I see that all the time.

Melanie Peers:

Oh yes, but I'm just not stressed. Well, maybe you're not exposed to the mold that's making you sick.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. I see that a lot. All the time in fact.

Melanie Peers:

To go on holidays and eat and eat anything and I'm fine. And then I came back and I, and they think it's just. They dont know that it's mold and that can happen. And everyone seems, do you feel better on holidays? They're two really big ones that to ask yourself.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. So Mel, what about women's hormones and oxalates? Do you just see women have really bad hormonal issues and irregular cycles, bad PMS with issues with oxalate?

Melanie Peers:

Yeah, they can do. Not everybody does. Some of them. It can just be the histamine component. So we know they have issues in that week or two before their bleed. When estrogen gets a little bit higher. We know the relationship between estrogen, histamine, so you can have that. But there's also the inability to detox well. Because what people don't know is we need to detoxify our hormones. But people don't realize that. So they just keep building up and building up. And then on top of all the other factors that we've got that increase estrogen from the environment.

Joanne Kennedy:

Just causing havoc. I think it's because oxalates disrupt both sulfation and methylation. Both 2 big pathways for detoxification.

Melanie Peers:

Like don't you find like just inflammation on its own? Someone can just have a really inflamed month and their period is wacky.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. Just virus. Just getting sick with the virus will cause massive inflammation.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. We can see really great, improvements in the menstrual cycle and the symptoms there. And then you'll have a wacky month and quite often we'll go, okay, we'll take note of that. But quite often it just goes back to normal where it persists. That's when we have to look deeper.

Joanne Kennedy:

It's so common. I can't tell you when I start working with oxalates or gut and the cycle will shift and change. It moves.

Melanie Peers:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Early on in the oxalate journey actually, the period goes pretty wacky.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. Does it?

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. They're like, I had a really horrendous period this month, or I haven't bled very much. Or it came early, or it came late or. But it just, it's a blip. It doesn't affect.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. We don't go in and try and work on hormones. We work on the Cause. The inflammation.

Melanie Peers:

If it's coming month in month out, then we bring in menstrual.

Joanne Kennedy:

But I think I just want our listeners to know. Practice students, listeners, we see this often. I see it often whereby a woman's menstrual cycle will just go out short or long and they're concerned, but it's like it's actually really common.

Melanie Peers:

Mm-hmm. Is it normal?

Joanne Kennedy:

Well, it's kind of normal. It does happen just due to the amount of inflammation that is being impacted. Even if they're reducing the inflammation, it can cause the cycle to go out. It's just the body needs to get back to its normal. But as Mel said, if it's happening over three or four, five months, then we can definetily support the hormone balancing and getting the cycle regular.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah, because it just hormones can make you feel terrible. Like they can be so disruptive. But again, like a lot of people will come to me, they'll say, yeah, but what about this? And what about that? It's like, yeah, but like you are trying to dry your clothes when it's raining.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yes. Yes. I like that.

Melanie Peers:

Stop the rain first, and then the clothes will drop. Do you know what I mean?

Joanne Kennedy:

That's right. That's often what happens with that's hormones is a big classic issue with that, Mel. So it's a yes, we can absolutely support symptom management with detoxifying, estrogen and getting progesterone up. But you don't go in and try and regulate a menstrual cycle when you're doing an oxalate dumping. Because it's not gonna work very well. And there'll be, there's too many supplements and too much confusion.

Melanie Peers:

Exactly. And the thing is, you think about the menstrual cycle. We're all it's designed because we're preparing to carry a baby. If the body deems it, it's not appropriate. It's not safe to carry a baby in that month. It's gonna do weird things with the menstrual cycle. It might stop you from ovulating because it's not conducive to the body. Get pregnant at that time.

Joanne Kennedy:

So it's true.

Melanie Peers:

That's why I'll respond. Again, I think the thing people have an issue with is,'cause they've seen other practitioners before. And generally these like, oh, it's your thyroid, or, oh yes, it's your hormones. And there might be some gut stuff but they're generally just treating the hormones because that's really the main thing. And maybe a bit of inflammation. Maybe a bit of stress and some gut, but that's it. So people come in with this mindset of, okay, fix my hormones, hit my gut, fix my thyroid, fix my

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah, yeah. It's not, it's very all allopathic treatment.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. You've gotta stop the firestorm in your body first.

Joanne Kennedy:

And this is why oxalates are such a firestorm. Because of the systemic havoc and the mitochondrial dysfunction and the sulfur wasting and the sulfation pathway disruption. The methylation disruption. And so the knock on effect is huge.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. And people really wanna tackle the mitochondria too. Like they wanna take all the mitochondria supplements the cracky tan and Yeah. But when your mitochondria is constantly being damaged.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. It damages it. that's the thing.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. You gotta stop the damage happening first and then you come in and you do the cleanup.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah.

Melanie Peers:

And as I said, like by the time we get to the end. A lot of symptoms have gradually fallen away. And the cleanup, that's why you don't tackle everything all at once.'cause you can spend$500 a month on supplements. You're gonna do that right ahead. But A lot of it can just be done with diet. A few mineral supplements.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah, oxalate patients are tricky. But they don't get many supplements.

Melanie Peers:

No.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah, it's the dumping. I'm constantly pulling people off that they come with 20 supplements. And it's like, does that help you? don't know? No, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. And then just pulling them off all of these supplements because it's not helping them. It's costly. It's confusing to them. It's confusing to me. So it is true. I'm often sending my patients with oxalate issues off with just the dietary changes. Maybe some electrolytes and just seeing how they go first.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah, you're right. It's confusing to us as well. And again, they're like,"yeah, but I'm taking that for my hormones and that for detox. Yeah. But like, that's five steps away.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yep. Yes.

Melanie Peers:

Hormones aren't going to regulate while this firestorm is going on. I know we wanna fix everything now, but we can't.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. Yeah.

Melanie Peers:

The body has this incredible innate ability to heal. So you find a lot of what we do. It's removing the things that are causing the problem.

Joanne Kennedy:

Sadly.

Melanie Peers:

We don't always have to put stuff in. You remove the stuff that's causing.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. Like I never treat a leaky gut. I never test for leaky gut. I never treat a leaky gut. We removing the causes of a leaky gut. Oxalate obviously being a major one.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. If you keep banging your head against the wall and say. Can you give me something for my headache? Well, yeah we can. But why don't you stop banging your head against the wall and see like that's where people are at.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah.

Melanie Peers:

You know?

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. totally.

Melanie Peers:

You've gotta remove what's causing the problem.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah, totally. So listeners, I just hope you understand that it's just like when we're dealing with priorities of things. Whether it be gut hormones, thyroid, sex hormones, liver issues, detoxification issues. If your methylation pathway and your transsulfuration pathway is out of whack due to oxalates. There is nothing you more causative of that. You need to start there.

Melanie Peers:

Absolutely.

Joanne Kennedy:

And look. Doesn't the oxalate skins are thyroid too, don't they Mel?

Melanie Peers:

Absolutely. They can get anywhere. Yeah. I've had people with teeth issues, gums, they've had them coming outta the gut gums.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. So when we are looking at the priority of things, it's up there as one of the number one things that we need to sort out first.

Melanie Peers:

And a thyroid, just like the female repro hormones. The thyroid is very responsive. Like it responds quite quickly to what's going on in the environment. They get thrown out very quickly, very easily.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah.

Melanie Peers:

They're quite sensitive to these things. That's right. So again, like it's just not gonna make a difference. Until you get rid of the oxalate.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. So Mel, one of is dealing with patients that not only have multiple food intolerances, but are super sensitive to supplements and can't take a lot of supplements.

Melanie Peers:

Mm-hmm.

Joanne Kennedy:

So what's your advice for other practitioners listening or students listening around how you tackle a case like that? And also, obviously advice to our listeners who are dealing with these multiple food intolerances and not tolerating supplements.

Melanie Peers:

Okay. So when we get people that are super sensitive. I'm talking like every little thing they tolerate without excipients. And it's usually a lot of it's nervous system issue. So the nervous system is. I use the example as like the nervous system almost has PTSD because it doesn't trust anything coming in anymore. So that's setting off. So you really need to work with nervous system. They need to really calm that down. People don't realize how stressed they are. And these people in particular, I talk about things like we have our autonomic nervous system. That's the part of the nervous system that our heart beats and we breathe and we don't think about these things. But they become reactive to something as simple as standing up or going outside and to the cold air and things like that. That's an autonomic nervous system thing. So that's what I was talking about before, like that awkward phone conversation with somebody. And then when you get'em to start paying attention, they'll realize, oh, my symptoms flare up. So really paying attention to that. People become incredibly reactive. The nervous system becomes incredibly reactive. Calming that down. Introducing things one at a time. People need microdosing sometimes, so like a tiny little sprinkle or something, and then they can bring it in slowly, but kind of creep in. Making sure your elimination pathways are open, like if you're constipated or you know you can't sweat or you're not urinating properly. You don't have good electrolytes and so you just peeing all the time. Your keep aren't filtering that well then that's gonna have an impact. These people that you think are really complex. You actually have to go even more basic.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah, exactly. And Mel, where are you sending people off for nervous system work?

Melanie Peers:

There's lots of different things. I try and see what resonates with people. Sometimes I just give them a list of different things like going out in nature, deep breathing, whatever resonates with them. Some people like meditation, other people can't meditate. The first step is actually being aware. They don't realize it until I tell them. And I say pay attention. Pay attention because they're used to functioning in that fight or flight state so often that they don't realize that they're in it. So there's that. I love Somatic exercises, the workout, which an Irene Lyon. I really encourage people to go and have a look at those. That's a more active form of meditation. We removing stress from the body, Pilates, yoga, limbic retraining, something like Primal Trust or the Gupta program. There's lots of different, and I just try and tailor it to the person. But if you don't recognize it as a problem, you can't do anything to fix it. So the first step is going, oh, the door slammed and I jump and it's taken me 10 minutes to calm down your nervous system. A bit wrecked. You need to calm that down.

Joanne Kennedy:

I'm constantly thinking and ask and think. When I have a patient, I'm thinking, where is the stress and trauma coming from, and who am I going to refer them to for extra support?

Melanie Peers:

So a lot of these people I find are actually already seeing some sort of a counselor.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. But they need the body work.

Melanie Peers:

And you're right. The really sensitive people. Nine times out of 10, there's a traumatic event. There's a trauma in their early adulthood. There's some issues in childhood. Something pretty soon has happened.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. So these resources listeners, I'm gonna put links in the show notes. A lot of them are online programs to program Primal Trust, the Workout Witch and Irene Lyon. I've been using Irene Lyon a lot with my patients. They love her work.

Melanie Peers:

I love her because she talks about her nervous system dysfunction coming from toxicity.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yep. Yeah.

Melanie Peers:

Which most people just think about it as long-term stress, like emotional stress. And I just think, well, if she fell into this nervous system dysfunction, for anyone doesn't know her, it was her parents. Well they were vet.

Joanne Kennedy:

I think Vet, yeah. She was working in a vet clinic as a child exposed to a lot of toxins

Melanie Peers:

and chemicals and I think. Well, mold's gotta be in that realm too.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah.

Melanie Peers:

We already know that the Gupta program works around a lot with mold as well because it just the toxicity constantly. It affects our safety. The nervous system is responsible for our sense of safety.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. It's so simple. Isn't that when the nervous system's dysregulated, the immune system gets involved.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. The nervous system tells the immune system, this isn't safe. And then the reaction happens.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yep. We see that all the time. Classic was skin patients. Really interesting. Yeah know. So it's opened my eyes listening to Irene Lyon's work. Trauma can just be like a car accident. Surgery. And obviously car accidents traumatic. Like surgery. It's traumatic.

Melanie Peers:

Well, a head injury can trigger sibo. They've found that in the research. So it doesn't have to be what's traditionally considered trauma. If it's traumatic to you. You know what I mean?

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. Mel, I have to bring up a patient. I remember her lovely, lovely lady. I think she's done in Victoria. And she's got MA, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia. And I saw her and we did all this testing for oxalates and mold. It came back full of oxalate and mold. I told her to start doing Irene Lyons course. And it was over Christmas. So she started that well before she did the organic acid test.And then was Christmas and we got it back and she ended up seeing you like a month later. And she was just doing Irene Lyon's Course and was significantly better with nervous symptom system support. Can you just tell our listeners about this lady?

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. And we also dealt with blood glucose regulation because stress triggers the adrenals. Then you're on this rollercoaster of needing glucose. The body can't process and take energy from fats and protein. It really just wants carbs because it's in that fight or fly response. So we regulated blood glucose levels. We had food by the bed all the time. And just working on this'cause unfortunately, when you get to this point where you really unwell, you can really focus on the symptoms and you get scared of the symptoms coming back and you start research. And so we just talked about releasing the emotion associated with these things and yeah, I think she said I gotta walk my dog today. I will put dog for a walk. And generally she can't even get out of bed.

Joanne Kennedy:

Uh, so this is doing Irene Lyons Course and starting with blood sugar regulation with you before you even touch the mold and oxalate arabinose problem. Fascinating. I remember when you called me and told me that so many of my patients are doing it. Lovely patient in the US. Lots of childhood trauma and she's doing Irene Lyon's work alongside me. It's a slow process for her and things are really improving. I'm just trying to get my head around how it all works. It's fascinating. So I'm gonna get a lot of nervous system practitioners on this course because once you see it, you can't unsee it. And Mel and I have been doing this for ages now. I mean, God, 12 years for me, about five years for Mel. And she's had her chronic health issues. It's like once you get good at the tools of your trade, you can then sit back and go, okay, what else are we missing? And for me it's just that nervous system. Nervous system. Nervous system. Nervous system. I actually had a patient recently. Eczema patient. He went to Greece and sort of drive over there. His eczema went away. This is a thing. Is it mold? Is it environment that his father, who is a bully, turned up in Greece and his eczema fled up. Okay. So stress, nervous system dysfunction. So we see a lot with skin patients.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. Well I fell in love with somatics. I love to Guinea pig everything on myself. All my family first. And I tried, I was exposed to the workout, which first? And after the first exercise the next day, I felt different. I just felt a little bit more energetic. I felt more resilient to stress. I remember I was due to go to this business breakfast and I woke up late. And ordinarily when I'm driving, I'm very good at consciously knowing don't get stress mill because the brain perceives you running late as the same as, you know, life or death. It's fine. So I was very good at that part of it, but my body used to still react and I'd be in that kind of that rushy mode. And I was driving to this meeting knowing I was gonna be about 15 minutes late. Consciously knowing it's fine, they'll be fine with it. But my body wasn't reacting and I thought, yeah, is this what other people feel like all the time?

Joanne Kennedy:

Relax.

Melanie Peers:

I didn't know any different because that's always been me. I've always been someone that kind of, that rushing syndrome. And so that just didn't kick in and I went, oh. Okay. And just little things like that. And so as I said, I knew a lot on a conscious level, but I think this was tapping into the subconscious. This was removing stress from the tissues.'cause I had a lot of tight muscles and so I think I was just carrying a lot of stress in there. And then subsequently through my obsession with somatics and I learned about Irene Lyon and that. And when I heard about her story with the toxicity, I went wow. This is just whole another level that we can add to support these people. Because again, like when you're chronically ill, it takes a really big toll on your mental health. You have to be incredibly strong mentally.

Joanne Kennedy:

It is really hard. One of the things that I've learned from Irene Lyon,'cause I'm constantly listening to her podcasts, is that, well, she doesn't go in with meditation and breath work because that's actually often not the right thing for people with this chronic trauma. Because that's more of an advanced practice. It's not that these things are good. They're great. You need to start even with simple orientating yourself in your present environment. Things like that. So meditation's hard. I get it. I do in the morning and I'm just thinking about my coffee. I get it. But if you can't do it because it's making you anxious, you really can't. It's making you worse. It's too much. And so with a lot of my patience, it's what she talks about is you don't actually need to sit there and breathe and calm. You need to mobilize, you need to do this exercise that where you're moving to help move out the stored stress and trauma. They're very basic, but so for anyone, if you have doing a lot of breath work and meditation and it's not really helping you, it's actually too advanced. The advanced practices. So it's going back to real basics.

Melanie Peers:

But I don't know about Irene's exercises that she does, but with the work at which you do it in bed, and I like her. I lay my bed. I lay on my bed and it's super comfy and I put on this crystal lie that I've got and it's just really nice. And as you said, you don't have to meditate and worry about your thoughts. One client who did a specific exercise, it's supposed to release trauma'cause a lot of it's in the hips and you move your legs together and if they shake and she goes, Mel, I was shaking like nothing else. You can leave it. She was just releasing the stored trauma out of the body.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. It's really, really interesting.

Melanie Peers:

We've got so much more to learn about it.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah, it's my new thing. I'm really quite obsessed about it and I do find it hard to explain it properly. You're better explaining it. Mel knows a lot about this stuff from herself. But also our mold patients because of the way mold disrupts the nervous system. And you were exposed to Gupta program and then I think just from seeing patients and understanding somatics, you've come across these other people. When I speak to Mel about these cases, you know, she's always got such positive things to say about these courses, which is why I've started getting a lot of my patients to do them. And I'm sort of reading up on it. It's fascinating. Sounds a bit woo woo, but when you understand that the nervous system is disrupting the immune system and poor people are getting immune reactions and histamine reactions and not tolerating their food, and not tolerating supplements.'cause the body sees everything as a threat.

Melanie Peers:

It can be very simple though, that the primary objective of our body, of our nervous system is to keep us alive and keep us safety.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. And the immune system too.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. The reactions are trying to keep you safe because it's been so bombarded with toxins or. It doesn't perceive things as being safe. It's one of our core needs as humans is safety. And so we don't, intellectually we might have that concept, but that primal brain, which is why the primal trust and limbic system and anything that you do is gonna be beneficial. That's why I said I use so many different things. It needs to resonate with the person. Some people aren't ready for Gupta. Some people aren't ready for meditation. Some people need to just walk outside and feed on the grass. Or patting a dog is meditation. Or looking at a baby.

Joanne Kennedy:

Calms and nervous system.

Melanie Peers:

Sometimes I've some clients who I always say like, laughter is the antidote to stress. They actually can't laugh too much because it triggers a histamine.

Joanne Kennedy:

Oh goodness me. Really?

Melanie Peers:

You know what I mean? So like one person, laughter might be the best thing for them, but they can't do that. They can't. Any sort of extreme emotion, anger, fear, laughter is setting off the histamine.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. That's interesting. I do see a lot of patients have emotional triggers of histamine reactions.

Melanie Peers:

And you, unless you see it, you don't understand. Like you've gotta be aware of it to be able to fix it. And people just, they're in survival mode. They're not, they're just trying to get better. And these people come to us because they've research, they've figured out histamine or they've figured out oxalate. They've had to be in their own research, their own doctor. And so by the time they get to us, they've got a lot of, they're used to writing down symptom diaries. They're always looking out for what's the trigger? Not realizing that they're actually triggering their nervous system. So we have to doing a lot of unlearning around. You need to kind of hand over to me as your practitioner. A lot of that research, beacuse the overthinking is stressing them out. I'm like, you're actually not allowed to research anymore.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. No, I love that Mel.

Melanie Peers:

Trying to move on to the next thing before...

Joanne Kennedy:

health anxiety is a real thing. And so understandably, and then you can over research. You get very confused. And that also just popping supplements and ordering supplements for this and that, and essentially your nervous system just needs a lot of support. Oxalates are a big problem. But what the question remember Mel, was why don't people tolerate supplements? And it is like, there is sort of biochemical gut dysbiosis reasons for food intolerances. But when there are multiple food intolerances, so the nervous system is triggering the immune system to overreact. And see every single thing as a threat.

Melanie Peers:

Yeah. And so some people come and I give them nervous system support and they're thinking, what am I gonna take? Well, we're not taking anything at the moment. Because the point is that if you can't tolerate, then we'll need to pair back so that you can. And it's such a mindset shift for them to think because they're thinking we're gonna have the next thing that they can.

Joanne Kennedy:

No, you can't. You can't fix supplement intolerance with more supplements. That's good. Well Mel, it's so interesting. We got into this nervous system.

Melanie Peers:

I know. Wasn't even on this.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. I just want my patients to understand. Listeners, students and practitioners. Obviously, a lot of you have looked into this already. But as from the histamine standpoint that Mel and I see every day. And also just the severity of our cases and the severity of these multiple food intolerances and then the patients that can't tolerate supplements. And we see so many people like that and use the nervous system that we need to really support alongside with what we are doing. So we are constantly referring people off to Irene Lyon's course. I haven't looked at the workout, which yet, I'm sure it's so great. I've just sort of listened to a lot of her podcasts, liked her story, liked her experience, her professionalism. So if you do have nervous system issues, or I should say if you do have multiple food intolerances and you can't tolerate supplements, then the resources for these courses will be in the show notes on this episode. So Mel, thank you so much. Absolute world of knowledge. And guys, I'm gonna get Mel back on. We're gonna do a whole episode of on mold. We're also gonna do a whole episode on sulfur intolerance, which Mel is also very aware of due to her own health issues.

Melanie Peers:

Name a food intolerance. I've had it, guys.

Joanne Kennedy:

Yeah. Well, it makes you a great practitioner. All right, Mel, thanks so much. I'll speak to you soon.

Melanie Peers:

All right, thanks. Bye.

Joanne Kennedy:

If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to The Histamine Well Podcast. Leave a review or share it with someone who could benefit. If you have any questions you'd like answered or have a topic that you'd like me to discuss on future episodes, please get on our website. It's joannekennedynaturopathy.com where you can provide us with that information. I'll see you next time. Until then, take care and be well.