28. Oxalates, Adrenal Fatigue & Blood Sugar Imbalance: Tracy’s Journey to Healing

In this episode of The Histamine Well Podcast, Joanne is joined by colleague Melanie and patient Tracy, who shares her powerful story of navigating the challenges of oxalates, histamine intolerance, adrenal fatigue, and blood sugar imbalances.

Tracy’s journey highlights the complex relationship between oxalates, adrenal and blood sugar imbalances, and oxalate dumping symptoms. With support from Melanie, she has worked through paradoxical reactions to magnesium and B6, learned strategies for managing sulfur metabolism, and discovered the importance of patience and persistence in recovery.

Melanie provides expert insights into identifying oxalate issues, tailoring dietary strategies, and supporting detoxification pathways. Together, the conversation emphasizes the importance of professional guidance, careful supplementation, and tracking progress when addressing oxalates.

Whether you’re a practitioner seeking functional medicine insights or someone personally struggling with oxalates, histamine intolerance, or methylation challenges, this episode offers practical advice and encouragement to support your healing journey.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How oxalates affect adrenal health and blood sugar balance
• What to know about oxalate dumping symptoms and how to manage them
• The role of sulfur metabolism and detox pathways in oxalate sensitivity
• Why do some people experience paradoxical reactions to magnesium and B6
• Dietary and lifestyle strategies for long-term oxalate management
• The link between oxalates, histamine levels, and methylation
• Why professional support is crucial for navigating complex health issues

Why This Episode Matters

Oxalates are often overlooked in discussions about chronic health, but they can play a major role in gut health, nutrient absorption, adrenal function, and histamine intolerance. Tracy’s story shows how challenging—but also how rewarding—it can be to address these issues with the right support and strategies.

If you’ve been struggling with fatigue, blood sugar swings, or unexplained reactions to supplements, this conversation offers valuable guidance.

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Transcript

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Hi, it's Joanne. Oxalates and oxalate dumping don't just cause pain inflammation. They can wreak havoc on your adrenals, your blood sugar, your hormones, and your gut. And the tricky part, they can go undetected for years until something tips the balance. Something like a COVID infection. If you've ever wondered whether oxalates are playing a role in your health, stick around. You'll hear from our lovely patient, Tracy, about how she faced this condition with both curiosity and courage and how with the guidance of my colleague Melanie, she was able to reclaim her health. This episode is about the power of understanding what's happening in your body and how the right support can make that knowledge truly empowering. 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 bridges the gap between cutting edge research and practical understanding to empower you with the tools to thrive. Before we get started, I just wanna say thank you so much to all of you who've been tuning in. I've loved hearing from so many of my loyal listeners, and even from my patients about how much this podcast is helping you understand your health and giving you extra knowledge about your condition. It honestly means so much to know these episodes are making a difference. If you can just take a minute to leave a quick review. It helps the show so much. It gives us extra traction so more people can find this information, learn and start healing too. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Histamine well. In today's episode, I'm joined by my colleague Melanie, and her patient Tracy, who is here to share her powerful story of navigating life with oxalates. We'll explore Tracy's health journey from the symptoms that first pointed her towards oxalates to what happened when she began addressing them. You'll hear about the surprising challenges of oxalate dumping, how her adrenal and blood sugar issues began to shift. And what unfolded as deeper layers of her health picture were revealed. Tracy also shares the very real side of being sensitive to supplements, how she managed and tackled her oxalate intake, and the strategies that helped her cope with symptoms along the way. Most importantly, she reflects on the lessons she's learned and the encouragement she'd offer to anyone just starting down this path with oxalates. So whether you are a practitioner looking for insight into the clinical impacts of oxalates, or you are personally navigating sensitivities and wondering if oxalates might be playing a role, this conversation is full of practical wisdom and lived experience. So Tracy, thank you so much for your time today. You're welcome. Happy to be here. Thank you so much. Guys, i've got Melanie here as well. So we are just gonna be chatting with Tracy about her joining. Tracy came to see me originally, wasn't it like how long ago Tracy? April of last year. Yeah. Yeah. I think I just picked up oxalates pretty much straight away. Did I? You did, you did? Yeah. I was really surprised. I'd had COVID in January. My husband and I both had COVID. I immediately got a lot of candida associated with that COVID. And then for about three months afterwards, my bowels were not normal and I just assumed that my body was having trouble breaking down food a little bit after having had COVID. Which I got through fine, but it was, you know, like a bad flu. And then things started to get really bad. One night I had a panic attack, which I'd never had before. And I was lying there and I could feel my heart racing. And yeah, mostly my heart racing I think was kind of scaring me. And we went on during the night, the more scared I got. And then I realized after ringing you.'Cause I'd been always been quite interested in your hormonal kind of histamine. You know, area of expertise. And I thought mysteriously need some extra help here to understand what's going on. And you were just like, you were so welcoming. And within you listened to what I was saying and you had me nailed within about half an hour of talking to me. And it was just brilliant. Because knowing what is going on is half the battle. And I had been dealing with some quite serious adrenal issues for the past five years. I'd gone down that path and understood some of the weird symptoms you get with that. And then suddenly to have this thing come out of the blue on top of it was really hit me hard. So knowing that I was incapable hands and you passing me to Mel who had mentored so many people through it, just, it was a lifesaver really. Yeah. Well, Mel's gone through this a whole lot like journey. I've got a whole lot of questions and it's interesting. I actually want to jump to the, like this adrenal picture. You'd been seeing someone for your adrenals for a long time. I have.. Again, a gentleman in the States who specializes in looking after people with adrenal issues right around the world. So he's very competent and he had been through the adrenal issue himself. I think that's always quite interesting to have a practitioner who's experienced what you've gone through. He was on holiday in Mexico with his family and jumped into the pool and then just about drowned.'cause his adrenals gave away. He was very frightened and he couldn't actually leave Mexico for three months. He is a trained doctor. And so then he had to relearn how to look after his adrenals through his nutritionist wife. Yeah. Yeah. So when with in hindsight, Like do you think that there was an oxalate driver or component to your.. Yeah, I don't, I don't. It's really interesting because they have been very good to me and, guiding me through the adrenal journey. And a lot of that is to do with the congested liver. And I also have the MTHFR Snp and the COMT combos. So I understand that has implications for my detoxification circuit. But the interesting thing was that of all this sort of detoxing that I'd done over that last five years, very, very gentle. I always felt really awful after doing it. And no matter how gentle and slowly we went, but the one I did, the protocol I did just before I got COVID was the first time I sort of felt like, wow, that felt really good. After I'd finished that. I almost sort of wonder now, was my body ready to get rid of the oxalates? You know, like was it not strong enough before? And then it was almost like a light switched on and I just do think that the body went right. Mel, can you speak to this. Do you recall what happened with Tracy and her adrenals with oxalate? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like looking back at her history, I think adrenal fatigue or burnout, or whatever you wanna call it, is still a symptom. And Tracy had dealt with a lot of the underlying factors. She'd done a heavy metal detox and but if you're not getting to the root cause, the adrenal issues are gonna persist. And that's what she was finding. She did, felt she got on top of them and then she would have a crash again. And oxalates are very, very taxing on the adrenals. And the unfortunate thing is when we even start dealing with the oxalates and the dumping, that's very taxing on the body. So you do need to have somewhat of a level of resilience and depending on your level of resilience is how aggressively you wanna tackle the oxalates. So yeah, the oxalates very much were keeping the adrenal picture going. Right. Do you know exactly How the mechanism of that Mel? You mean it depletes your minerals? So your electrolyte balances out your blood glucose dysregulation that comes with that, which is a bit of a chicken and egg with adrenal issues. It can drive the adrenal issues or the adrenal issues can drive the blood glucose issues, the implication it has on the mitochondria for energy production. So it's just, it's that whole body systemic inflammation. The stress on the body and the adrenals obviously take the burden of that. But yeah, I think everything that Tracy had been doing was all the right things to do for adrenals, but oxalates was that extra layer that was keeping her stuck. And I would say, Jo, that I was eating on reflection. What I thought was a very healthy diet, but it was too high in oxalates. Particularly almonds, was my kind of poison of choice. And I didn't realize that they were having potentially such a impact on my health.'cause. I never had any, any, I've always had hormonal issues, but I'd never had anything that I would've thought was oxalates. I've known about oxalates. I've seen them in my dietary books that I'd read over the last five years. I knew that people had. But I never, ever thought that it had anything to do with me. Yeah, it's interesting because it didn't really show up until you got COVID and your adrenals just really started to tank, would you? Yeah. And but also I just do feel that my body wasn't ready to eject them and I'd got to a place of healing, I think, where my body was able to get rid of them. That's just sort of in the back of my mind. My body had got quite strong still was having some adrenal issues, but I just felt with that last detox, something changed and it was almost like my body switched on a light and it went right now we are ready to get rid of that. Yeah. What do you think drove up your oxalate issues? Do you think it was actually just diet? No, I think it's a combination of diet and I think the candida has played a role as well. That was very obvious, and apparent during COVID. And I do take natural progesterone cream and I was on quite a heavy dose and at about the same time we also have the dose. I've also sort of, Mel's been working with me to make sure there is some mold showing up. It's always mold. There's always mold. Yeah, there's always mold. So I think it was probably a combination of things. But yeah. I do think that diet played a part, but the body being really to eject them. And the candida, I would say is probably the three things. Yeah. Mel, what do you think? What was the main drivers? Yeah, so again, like it's really hard to know what came first. It's a collection of symptoms. Some things lead onto other things, but there was definitely yes, some aspergillus that we identified in the organic acid test which potentially was from previous exposure because the home was quite clear of mold. Candida, bile flow issues, and nutrient deficiencies. So, we'll probably talk about this a little bit later in the interview about the progression and unpeeling like Tracy and I talk about the layers of her anion that we've been peeling back where you deal with one thing and that calms down and then you realize that there are other things also going on that you need to address. No. Let's just start talking about this now, because this is so important. When we've got this, the sort of the mold, bile flow, candida oxalate issue. I do have patients say to me, what's the timeframe? What's the plan, Jo? How long is it gonna take and what's the protocol look like? It's like it changes. And healing is not linear. So I think Mel, we can have a chat about that now, or do you wanna start with what actually happened with how it was like a layers of anions with Tracy. Yeah, initially we really did have to focus on the blood glucose regulation and the adrenal. I think Tracy, you are probably one person who has had the most disruption to their blood glucose levels that I've ever seen because Tracy was having breakfast. And between breakfast and lunch she was having to have two snacks. And after lunch and between lunch and dinner having two snacks and waking at 3:00 AM and 6:00 AM to snack. She was having to have food by the bed because she was happy. She identified that it was blood glucose dysregulation and she was needing to constantly eat to maintain her level. So calming that down was really, really important because we were building a little bit more resilience in the body to be able to cope with it. So that improved sleep. But as Tracy will probably attest to, it was very up and down. One appointment, her energy would be much, much better and her brain fog would be clear and she'd be feeling good. And then the next time it might be back a little bit. It does kind of come and go with oxalates and with the dumping process. So yeah, we started there. Then we have been working on bile flow, hormones getting her to tolerate supplements, which has been a very slow process. She is what we call like a pixie dust. Where you have to give her the tiniest little bit. And we also uncovered some sulfur issues. So we've been working on the sulfur metabolism now. Is that a consequence of the oxalates depleting the sulfur? Is it the mold depleting the sulfur through glut fly? And we don't know, but we have come to realize that part of her problem was sulfur metabolism. So we are correcting that. So as one problem fixes, as I said, something else becomes apparent and we just work on things as we go. Yeah. Tracy, have you found that sort of the way you've been working with Mel is like peeling and layers of an Anion back and back and back and then new symptoms kind of arise or things change over time? Yeah. I understand from my adrenal journey that the body is kind of a moving target. So I always knew that sometimes something will improve and then something might get worse. The bile issue, I think is connected to the sulfur. And that's something we've been dealing with, which is quite challenging. I really appreciated the handouts that Mel gave me at the beginning. And I have a wee list of kind of like, what are the sulfur issues? How does it manifest? What are the histamine issues? How do they manifest? What are the dumping symptoms look like? I have to be kind of cognizant of really listening to my own body and trying to figure out what's happening at the moment to then be able to focus on that because I don't have nearly as much histamine as I used to have. And that was interesting because my adrenal practitioner would have me test my histamine about every three, six weeks, every three months kind of thing as a eye test, contrast test that you can do to do that. And we were always hitting a kind of a stealing on it and he kept wondering why can't we go up? I know now why we could be going up because there was too much histamine going on. And the other thing I really noticed is I used to do a lot of adrenal breathing to calm down my sympathetic dominance. And right before I had the panic attack. nothing was calming my body down and I was quite good at actually calming my body down in that way. But once those oxalates appeared, nothing would calm the body down. Really. It was very hard. So I like to have those wee lists, and I put everything in a wee plastic folder in the beginning because it was so rough. I would take that wee folder with me if I traveled anywhere and refer to it so that I didn't feel so alone. Because you do. There's so much going on. You're trying to figure out what is going on. And I'd have to say to myself, okay, this looks like a histamine pattern, or This looks like sulfur now more recently. Or this is just dumping. And in fact, probably the best tip I could give people. I don't really drink tea. I gave up all caffeine once I hit my adrenal issue because obviously caffeine stimulates that part of your system that you're actually trying to calm down if you've got adrenal issues. And so I gave up everything including black tea. And one of the best ways to actually calm down the dumping is to actually have a cup of, dark tea, which I normally have in the morning. but it's also a really handy little thing to use if you're not sure what's going on. Is it dumping, is it just high histamine on its own? What is going on? Sometimes you can just take that cup of tea. And if it calms down within 20 minutes and you're feeling better, you know it's dumping that's going on. And that I found that really helpful. It's like a little test. Yeah. And Mel has guided me through all these little tips and that because of course having gone through it herself, she's fully aware of, some of the little hacks you can use to work through. What were your oxalate dumping symptoms? Oh God. Everything on your list. Everything, yeah. Because again, that's the other thing I've learned. You can have a list of symptoms but your body is different to everybody else's body. So it's going to do things in a certain way. My dumping symptoms would be anxiety. And I don't really suffer very much from anxiety, but extreme anxiety often in the middle of the night. Hunger. Yeah. electrolyte imbalance, insomnia. Extreme insomnia. Like, you know, not being able to go to sleep till like four in the morning kind of thing. Some vulvodynia, bloating and the glycemic control and some coldness. And then all the histamine symptoms that you would normally see well as part of that pattern. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Tracy, I wanna ask Mel. Mel was Tracy's adrenal's. The chicken and egg situation with the adrenals and the oxalates and the hypoglycemia that drove up that nighttime insomnia and the anxiety. Is that what you would you think? Yeah. When you very first start with me and Tracy was brilliant at this is there's a really big element of trust that people have to put in us as their practitioner because there is so much going on. It's really hard to see the forest for the trees. What's histamine. What's oxalates. And I do say to people, please trust me for the first one to two months following this. You'll start to see the pattern and understand what's what. And Tracy did initially was dumping very heavily at the beginning, but as the dumping lessened, we were seeing that the hypoglycemia was improving. So it was very much part of that picture. And see when you are eating oxalates without knowing you have a problem, you can be fluctuating between excess and dumping. Without really realizing it. You know, you might have a day where you eat quite a high oxalate intake, you might get the joint pain, or you might get a lot of histamine symptoms. And then if you don't, or if you did a fast or you reduce your intake and then you go into dumping, and so you could be flipping and flopping between dumping and accumulation on for months on end and not understanding what's happening. When people start on the diet, the dumping usually goes for quite a long time. So it might be several weeks of continuous dumping, which is why those hacks are important to help reduce the dumping. But then you get these little breaks and then the dumping becomes less and less and that's as we saw the dumping reduced. That's where we saw the reduction in the blood glucose dysregulation. And she was able to sleep a little bit better, not needing to wake up and have a snack by the bed several times a night. So it did have a really big impact. So yeah, I do think the adrenal issues were there. I think the oxalates were really exacerbating them. Yeah. Tracy, do you think that the hypoglycemic pitch part of it was also an anxiety trigger, or do you think that was something different or was it histamine as well? I do think it was to do with the dumping. It only happened when I had that panic attack. People do who have adrenal issues often do need to eat balanced meals every three to four hours because your blood sugar and your cortisol are kind of inversely related. So the stronger your cortisol normally the better control you have over your blood sugar. But when I had that panic attack and so obviously my oxalate dumping was at its highest at that point. It really did alter my blood sugar. It altered my thyroid. I have a thyroid issue as well. And that got worse. And then it has gradually improved a lot and I'm pretty much back to what most people would consider a normal kind of eating, although I don't like eating very much anymore because you just kind of well I enjoy food, but, you know, I get tired of having to eat, to maintain a blood sugar. And I would like to be one of those people that are only eating breakfast, lunch and tea kind of thing. The other thing I found useful was I do a little calendar because I'm quite a visual person and I color code the dumping and how bad it is. So I can look at that calendar monthly and then sort of track is it getting worse? How many days have I had a break? And that's quite good because you can sort of see your progress and also you can track if anything's getting worse. I found that really useful. And the other thing was really useful. I did Irene Lyons 21 day course recently. And that was really fascinating because it helped me to understand basically the oxalates, I think were putting my body into a extreme stress state. And so obviously everything internally was kind of going a bit haywire while it was dealing with that. So now that I've learned a lot more, the dumping has got a lot less. I'm still struggling a wee bit with the sulfur issue, but my body can relax a wee bit more because it's feeling more safe basically. Yeah. And that's so interesting. We talk about Irene Lyon's course on our podcast all the time. Did you do that from listening to the podcast or did Melanie tell you to do it? No, from listening to the podcast. Okay, good. And said, oh, you know, it's a really good thing to do. So, yeah, no, it was great. Really, really good learning. Yeah, I get it. I'm getting everyone to do it. That's interesting. I wanna go back to the thyroid, Mel. What goes on with oxalates in the thyroid? Well, oxalates can accumulate in the thyroid for sure. But the thyroid's just very sensitive to everything that's going on in the environment. All the huge stress response that's going on in the body, the huge amounts of inflammation that are going on in the body because of the oxalates are going to impact the thyroid. It's really sensitive organ and just backtracking a little bit to histamine that you were getting at before. Quite often we find a lot of people who think they've got a really significant histamine issue. Once we deal with the oxalates, they realize a lot of the symptoms were actually oxalates. Now oxalate can drive histamine and we do sometimes see a surge in histamine symptoms, maybe just before dumping, but they're starting to realize, oh, there's an overlap with a lot of symptoms here. And now that I understand the symptoms and the pattern that happens with oxalates and oxalate dumping. I can see actually a lot of this is just dumping. Right. So the dumping just driving up the actual dumping causing inflammation, driving up histamine or something different? Yes, the oxalates drive up histamine, but also just some of the dumping symptoms can mimic some of the same symptoms of histamine. Okay. For example, what are they Like, so the insomnia, the heart palpitations, you know, that can very much be the blood glucose dysregulation, energy issues. The anxiety is probably one of the bigger ones. And look, the reality is we're not testing the person in that moment to know is the histamine levels high. But what we know is as part of the oxalate dumping picture, you can get a lot of symptoms that look like histamine. But with histamine, they tend to be a lot more consistent. With oxalates. They'll come and go and come and go. And that's how we associate it more with the oxalates rather than a generalized histamine issue coming from the gut or poor methylation. Love it. That's great. Oxalate people are always up and down, up and down. They don't make any sense. If you don't know what oxalates are, you don't understand how the pattern works. It doesn't make sense. Yeah. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's worse. Sometimes it's better. Sometimes you can tolerate that food, sometimes you can't. Whereas histamine is generally pretty consistent. Yeah, it's more consistent. Definitely. Interesting. The other thing, Joe, you asked about my symptoms. You know, obviously inflammation is a big part of oxalate. After the crystals have sort of been ejected, then you can feel the areas of the body where they're coming out of. You know, a lot of people talk about inflammation with adrenal fatigue, but I didn't have any idea what inflammation was really until I hit oxalates. And then it was just huge. The inflammation that was happening in the body. And Mel taught me how to use very practical and I really appreciated that. How to use ginger to each day and I just have a wee drink of lemon and ginger and a little bit of honey and that just helps to calm the inflammation down. But the other interesting thing, you sort of think back, one of my key kind of tells from the inflammation is often like in inflammation in my thumb joint. Just one of my thumb joints. And that's very peculiar because when I was a student studying in Wellington, I had a very inflamed. We'd call it inflammation now. a joint in my thumb. That particular thumb. And that's going way back 35 years ago when I was a student. And so that's interesting to me like, has this issue been around all those years and I didn't know it. And was it affecting my hormones and all of the menstrual issues I had all those years. Like you start to peel back the anion and you think, Hmm, when did it happen? What has it been there my whole life? You know? Did I not know? Wow. Mel, would you suspect Tracy's had it for a long, long time? Considering the severity of it, or what do you think? It's really hard to tell, but I would say anyone who's long-term been eating, you know, what's considered a very healthy whole foods diet potentially is going to be overloading it because of our access to these foods. You know, a whole foods diet might look like a lot of spinach and turmeric and a lot of the really high foods and nut flowers are one that really kind of comes in'cause people are trying to lower their sugar and not use regular flour. That's someone who I might think it's just, it is really hard to tell. There's no way to test for it. We can look back, but the here and now is probably what's really more important. Before we go any further, I want to speak directly to the practitioners and students listening. If you're intrigued by histamine and methylation and eager to expand your knowledge in this fascinating area, 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. We cover sibo, hormonal imbalances, oxalates, M-T-H-F-R, the four pathways of methylation, including the folate pathway, methionine pathway, tetra hydro biopterin pathway, and the all important transsulfuration pathway and much more. The program is delivered by detailed online webinars and handouts for you to keep. And for 8-weeks you'll meet with me for live coaching calls in a private community space with other practitioners from all over the world dealing with histamine and methylation issues in their patients every day. Together we learn so much. To learn more and apply, visit joannekennedynaturopathy.com Tracy, another question. Did you find that once you got your oxalates under control more that your histamines just came down overall? Yeah, absolutely. So much so that I'm now having bone broth each week. You know, make bone broth myself in the Instant Pot because it's nice and fast. It's not sort of there for ages. And I would never have even attempted to do that four or five months ago. But now I actually think, oh no, I actually feel like a wee bit. And so I have a wee hot cup of bone broth sort of three or four times a week. Right. That's good. That's good. What were your histamine symptoms? Do you remember? Pretty, pretty much everything on your list? I don't really get headaches, which is great. But insomnia, anxiety, reflux, heartburn. Actually I get a lot of eye issues, sore eyes, red eyes, heart palpitations and hormonal. That's the other thing that has improved a lot actually, is that even though I'm while into menopause, that feeling of kind of having that estrogen dominance has improved a lot. A lot. So you're feeling estrogen dominant in menopause? Yes. Wow. So my type of adrenal fatigue according to my previous practitioner you often get people who are thyroid because of the ovarian thyroid adrenal axis. And so people tend to have a sort of dominance. And mine has always been the ovarian dominance. And so whatever the question is, the answer has always estrogen dominance my whole life. And i've been on natural progesterone cream, which helps a lot. But there's still if particularly if I get very stressed because of that cortisol steel thing going on With the progesterone. So I don't think my body makes progesterone. It either uses it up really quickly or it doesn't make it very well. Yeah. Interesting. So you've never taken hormone replacement? No, no, no. Interesting. Wow. That's interesting. Cool. So I wanna go back to the sulfur issue. And actually before I ask you, Tracy, Melanie, can you explain to listeners how this starts to occur? The thing with the sulfur, I mean, Melanie's so good at deciphering, like, is it histamine driven from sibo or methylation or estrogen, or if it's oxalates from diet or is it from yeast or is it from mold? And then she's really knows all about the sulfur symptoms. But Mel sometimes the sulfur issue just isn't there at the beginning, it starts to appear. Is this what I'm kind of seeing from with the work you're doing? No, it's kind of, it's always there, but as I said, the symptoms are so hectic you can't see the forest for the trees. Right. You know, there's, they're erratic and there's so many, and you know, even sulfur, some of the symptoms overlap with histamine and oxalates and so it can be really tricky. And so what happens is the further you go through the oxalate journey, as I said at the beginning, you generally have a lot of dumping and as that eases off, then you can start to notice these symptoms a little bit more because you have this much better baseline where things are a lot more settled and then you go, oh actually I ate this and I started to feel that. And it's not necessarily an oxalate symptoms. So yeah. What are classic sulfur symptoms? Brain fog is classic, but it's a very, like, extreme type of brain fog where you really just cannot think whatsoever. A lot of physical fatigue as well. You can have your general gut symptoms, your bloating, your loose stools. You can have the sulf free gas, but generally, yeah, we can see. And there's joint pain, it's not joint pain, it's more of an aching. So oxalates is very, it's more sharp. It's a joint pain. This might feel a little bit more muscular or more of an joint achiness to it. But extreme bloating, the extreme fatigue, nausea is another one. Tracy, how are you going with the sulfur treatment? It's challenging. It's not quite as challenging as the oxalates themselves, but it's still challenging because it affects your diet. And I'm the sort of person who craves meat. I like meat and so I really had to taper back off on beef and cheese and, dairy. Although I do try and sneak a wee bit of dairy in during the week.'cause obviously you're losing it when with the oxalates, the calcium. I have to say generally I've always enjoyed sulfur foods and I have never really felt like I've reacted to them. In fact, I'm quite lucky. Touch wood, I don't really react to food too badly at all. But I do probably three or four months ago the sulfur became an issue. The ability to metabolize the sulfur, which I guess is to do with the detoxification circuit and the body upregulating the sulfur, is that the term? I was definitely having much more bloating and reactions. And as Mel said, like that sort of sore. Sort of like, it feels like your body can handle so much. And then if you go over that level and that level changes from week to week, some weeks it might be, you don't need very much to hit the mark and suddenly you're feeling really awful. For me, a classic sign for the sulfur is falling asleep. Feeling really tired and just falling asleep. Or really sore joints. As Mel said, it is a different feeling to the oxalates. And it's funny that you can actually tell difference. You know, hence me having my little charts with kind of writing down what the symptoms are. I eliminate things and then have a little card, like a little cheat sheet and I can say, okay, it's not me. It must be this, but what am I doing? Is it too much oxalate? You do have to do that. So Mel where was Tracy Sulfur coming from? The gut microbiome or what was her homocysteine levels? She tested the homocysteine. I've tried, tried here in New Zealand to get it tested. But it is a fasting blood tests and I would never be able to fast. Mel, did you think it's the gut microbiome up regulating the sulfur? No, I actually think for Tracy, I think the sulfur depletion from oxalates certainly is playing a part because she's particularly sensitive to Epsom salts. Much more so than the actual foods. It may not feel like that way to Tracy, but she does have a somewhat decent tolerance to the sulfur because she can eat some of those foods. But she is responding really well to nutritional supplementation to support metabolism Molybdenum is helping with silk enzyme B12, replenishing B12 to help break down sulfide in the bloodstream. The challenge we've had with Tracy is she's so sensitive to supplements. So she's tolerated the molybdenum quite well actually. B12 has had to be quite slow. So we haven't been able to give her the levels that we would like to, to get things moving more quickly. Although I started out on half a tablet and I did that for probably a good six months and I'm well on it. And I feel that's about right. Just at the moment, I feel that's okay. Mel gives me my supplement list and she's really understanding. She shouldn't try to rush me through it. She'll go just try a sprinkle. I've got a little tiny spoon and I decant every most of things into little glass jars. And then I just work my way up. And then if I find that I'm having any reactions, I just pause and either talk to Mel about it next time or just go back down a level kind of thing. But magnesium's the thing that I struggle with the most. I can't even really take magnesium. And as Mel said, I can't take like even a teaspoon of epsom salts can have quite varying effects on my body. Why the magnesium? Why magnesium's so bad? It's just having a paradoxical reaction. And my daughter I think is the same. So I dunno if it's a genetic. It's weird how it does things. Supplements do that. They can do that. Mel, you're nodding. What do you think about that? It's so weird. Yeah. I don't know. when people have adverse reactions to supplements, it causes the thing that it's meant to fix. Sometimes we know why it's happening and other times we don't. If you supplement something, you are changing the balance with other nutrients. I am a little bit stumped with Tracy and the magnesium. I'm not sure why, because we've tried, usually my answer with magnesium is B6, getting it into the cell. But she's super sensitive to B6. We have to be really careful with that as well. So yeah, she's got me stumped on the magnesium. I think we've done tissue salts with that, haven't we? And we've just done really Yep, yep. And low dose, the tissue salts that, Mel recommended.'cause that was my big worry. I couldn't just take electrolyte powders to help with my electrolyte balance early on because of the magnesium in them. And anything, obviously when you've got an adrenal issue, anything can be quite stimulating. You have to be quite careful not to just push because that's actually how my adrenal fatigue started was my thyroid was low, it was picked up on a blood test. The doctor said, here I have this levothyroxine. And within about six months it had just, it's like pouring fat on a fire kind of thing. You're basically, or you're pouring more energy into the body at a time when the body's actually trying to deescalate everything and try and to get you to do very little. Yeah. Which is what you work in Irene Lyons course. No doubt. Yeah. Although I have to say my Adrenal Protect, practitioner, help me to understand that with a body that's weak and constitutionally kind of sensitive, you can't just throw a whole lot of stuff at it. And you've got to really titrate everything to the level that your body is able to handle. And I've been quite pleasantly surprised with Mel. She's given me the courage to try some things and I'm on quite a few different things now, and feel good on them actually. And I'm just really careful if we introduce any, like I've got some selenium to take. I'll probably have that dosage and I might only take it two or three times a week. And then once I feel o okay with it, I'll move up another level. You know, everything I, I do, it's kind of in levels. Yeah. And I think that's the advice you'd give to anyone listening that was sensitive to supplements is you start with a sprinkle and you sort of Yeah. One and see any, any other advice regarding that? No. Just to be, and again, I, this is probably your advice to patients anyway, but not to try too many things at once. Yeah. Because when you do that, you cloud the picture and you can really miss something. So yeah, it's hard because, you know, when you, when your health's at stake, you're desperate to get well and you're writing things down and you, that itself can be quite sort of, you become fixated. And that's not a healthy thing either. Like fixating on your diet and fixating on, you know, all your reactions and that. But it isn't. That's why I find the little calendar, the monthly calendar and I just highlight what's going on is quite a good way for me to go. And then the other thing I do is in the morning, just I just take five minutes to write down what are my issues I'm dealing with. And I'll say, just monitor that and then I can go back a couple of weeks and see, oh, okay, I introduced something there. And maybe that's having that effect. And I hadn't noticed it for a couple of weeks. Yeah. I like that advice, Tracy.'cause you mark it down at the time, but then you assess it in a couple of weeks'cause you can.. And then, so you don't fixate on it and you can go back in some time and say, oh, actually I introduced that I am actually, my energy's lifted a bit, or you know, my histamine's down or you can assess overtime. Yeah. Yeah. Look, people know when they have a massive adverse reaction to something that's very obvious. Sometimes it's it insidious kind of reaction that's going on. Yeah. Kind of. And you look back three months after and you go, oh, actually what has happened yet? Like, one of the things I've noticed just with my recent blood test for my thyroid is my T3 is just in range, but my T4 has gone down about, and my TSH has gone up. And I think with the solve for issue. I get most of my iodine, actually probably from the two eggs I used to have for breakfast every morning. But with the sulfur issue, I cut them back to one. And now I think you see,'cause you've gotta have those raw materials for the thyroid to actually make tyrosine Yeah. Iodine tyrosine. Yeah. Yeah. That's very interesting. It just shows you how powerful nutritional medicine is. Yeah. People don't realize, it's like when we are dealing with chronic health issues, like small adjustments can make a huge impact good and bad. That's right. And because my body is sensitive, it can get a lot of, it sort of works both ways really because actually it's quite good. It can get a lot of what it needs outta food without a lot of supplements. And so I'll always try and start with the food of possible like with the magnesium. I do try and incorporate magnesium rich foods into my diet because like I pumpkin seeds ground every day as a way of trying to get that in into my diet every day'cause I know I can't take it really as a supplement. Yeah, yeah, that's good advice. So people that are sensitive to supplements, it's trying to get it from food is a really good idea, it, but I know I can hear listeners like it, people that are sensitive to supplements are often very sensitive to foods that does. Yeah. Yeah. And thankfully that's what I'm not really. That is good. Mel, any advice for listeners regarding not being able to tolerate supplements?'cause this is something you're way better at than me. Yeah. It really depends on the person. So someone like Tracy, it is just a case of slowly introducing things and being very deliberate in what you're doing, making sure you know why you're doing it. She's taking quite a few different things because unfortunately we can't just give her a multi, supplement. We have to give her everything individually. Yeah. So with the electrolytes, we gave her the potassium and she was taking the sodium in salt, for example, so that overrode the issue with the electrolytes, the tiny doses. So I always give Tracy the optimal dose that we're aiming for, but she knows everything that I prescribe is taking with a sprinkle. If I'm prescribing two things, she starts with one thing and builds up slowly. But yeah, you have to do it slowly, meticulously, and just make sure what you're doing, you know what you're doing and why you're doing it. What are the pathways? You could be stimulating that That might be the reason that you're reacting. Yeah, exactly. And it's just, as Tracy was saying, write it down, check it in a couple of weeks. Yeah, absolutely. Because especially with something like oxalates, the symptoms will fluctuate and you will get a flare in a symptom that has resolved previously. So you might be sleeping really well, your energy might be really good, and then you might have a few days of insomnia and people will sometimes freak out and email me, I'm not sleeping. But then, you know, you catch up at the next appointment and that has resolved. Yes. Because it's just a little bit of a blip in the, as you said, healing's not linear. Yes. You do have these little, and as I said, the dumping reduces and so you start to feel good and you start to feel somewhat normal again. Yeah. And then the dumping happens again. And a lot of these symptoms come back. And I think with a lot of that, there's fear, I'm getting worse. It's coming back. And I have to often reassure people, this is part of the process. You're not getting worse. You're here with someone who knows what's going on, and I'm guiding you through it. And try and take some of that stress and anxiety away from them because you can get in your head a lot trying to make sense of it. Yeah, that's really good advice. It's so interesting when I see a patient on like the fourth or fifth consult, potentially months after our first consult, and I'll ask them about their energy or their sleep or their gut, and I'll go back to the original appointment and their energy was like two outta 10. And now it's like eight outta 10, and they don't realize. It's part of my job to sort of really assess it at the initial. And this is why it's so important to track how you're going yourself, because I think that will give you a lot of encouragement to keep going. But you just don't track it day to day. It's week or weekly or monthly. It's like when you're Looking at your phone, waiting for someone to call it just, no, they never call. But you just walk away and over time it will adjust. Hopefully in the right direction. Because that is actually very stressful. And we talk about the nervous system stuff with the people. You have to track in a way that's not as Tracy and not too obsessive. But it's so common. The amount of times I've had someone say, my energy's not any better, and you have a look and their energy may be the same. So it might still be a five out of 10. But now they're doing Pilates three times a week and they're walking the dogs on the other days, and so they're doing much more and the energy's the same. Because it's it really easy to forget those symptoms once they're gone. Yeah. Because you start seeing the finishing line and you start seeing where you want to be. Yeah.'cause you are getting a taste of feeling good and so you really wanna be there and you're not quite where you wanna be yet, and you don't realize how far you've come. Yeah. This takes me back to what I said about healing, not being linear. But it still doesn't mean it doesn't track forwards and better over time. It just can go back a bit. Like the stock market. It's like the stock market. That's what happens. Over time and it will start to track up. But you just can have days whereby, you know, there's especially histamine people. You could have a bad pollen day or there can be a lot of stress. Stress drives up histamine and then oxalate dumping. There's so many variables with that hormones, my goodness. So many variables with that. It can shift, particularly with women's hormones every two weeks, the ovulation and menstruation, but it's just tracking it over time. So get a calendar out and mark it down and just a diary. And at the end of the month you can just have a good, like you can assess your symptoms, food reactions, and I think supplement reactions is a really good'cause a lot of people are really not clear if a supplement is helping them or not. I see patients with 20 supplements all the time. I'm like, I ask them, does this help? Don't know, does this help? Don't dunno. Same does, don't know, don't know, don't know. And then there's a whole list of things that completely contradict each other. And they dunno. They have no idea. And so it's actually good practice to write down the supplements and then track over time. Especially with methyl, you put some methyl in there if you're over methylating and you might see yourself developing an anxiety disorder within three weeks of doing that. Yeah. That's why we follow up every four weeks and not every one week because you need to have that time for those ups and downs to see where you are averaging out. And as you said, you're heading in the right direction. There is just gonna be some setbacks along the way. Yeah. And sometimes people inadvertently eat something that they don't realize is high oxalate, or they get unwell and they miss a meal and that triggers dumping. There's all sorts of little things that they're not realizing that they're doing, that we pick up on the follow up. Yeah. I should say, Jo, that the hardest thing for me with the oxalate journey. I don't eat gluten generally. Not because I find that it really interferes with me, but I just figure to give myself the best chance of healing through my adrenal journey. And that I shouldn't really. Thyroid. Thyroid. Yeah. Yeah. And with the thyroid. And so with gluten, it's quite simple. You just, well, relatively simple. You read everything and you take it outta your diet and you're good to go. But by far, the hardest part of the journey for me with oxalates has been keeping enough oxalates in the diet I spend my whole time trying to actually keep enough in there so it's not actually triggering the dumping all the time. And I'm not always successful at slowing it down or certainly stopping it. But Mel held my hand and assured me at the start. Like to begin with, it was so bad. I would just sit on the sofa most of the day and I thought, this is it. I'm gonna die. You know, it was just so bad with oxalate. Awful. Yeah. People don't understand how bad oxalates are, do they? Like they have, no, they're not. No. And then, and Mel said, no, look, trust me, it will get better. You will feel better. You've gotta listen to your body and figure out, okay, how does it feel when the dumping occur? Because then you can try and pull some levers to stop it or slow it down when it does occur. And that's where the cup of tea's really useful. And sometimes they use the chocolate as well, but for me the tea works pretty well. And then slowly, after about three or four months, you could breathe again. You could do things. You were sort of semi-normal again. You could go places and without worrying constantly about this'Cause it can leave you when you're about to have a dumping episode. It's not even the really strange symptoms you get with the oxalates coming outta your body, sometimes it can just leave you feeling like really fearful and anxious and just really horrible. It's a feeling I haven't really experienced before. And then Mel and I always laugh about some of the times when you see little holes opening up on your skin and it's like something out of like an alien movie or something. And then within a back couple of hours they'll just close up again. Wow. So, wow. So it opens up and can you see them coming outta the skin or you just see No. Well, I, I think Mel might've been able to see this. But for me, I haven't really been able to see them coming out, but I can definitely see the wee holes opening up. And I'll say to my husband, look at that one. And I was at my chiropractors a couple of weeks ago and she said, did you burn yourself? And I said, no, it's just some oxalates coming outta my skin. You know, they show up in all different sorts of ways. Did She understand or she, yeah. And I've introduced it to Irene Lyon and she's like, oh, she's just such a convert. And she's pointing all her patients to Irene Lyon's website. And she's just, yeah, it's very well. She's doing very well for herself, Irene ly gr like, rightly so.'cause yeah, so we're changing the world. We are just spreading the word. Everyone's learning nervous system. I just don't think, Melanie, I, Mel you and I had no idea. Just the nervous system impact before, I don't know. When we were studying. Definitely. When we were studying. Oh, def no, no idea. Like we just, it's just not, it's just not prac. We're just not trained. How to deal with nervous system dysfunction other than give some herbs and magnesium. It's just, it's so much more complicated than that. And with our work with mold in particular and the damaged vagus nerve and then sort of the fact that trauma causes chronic illness really Yeah, much. It's quite really, when you think about it, it so does, it's like there is next to no patient that doesn't get referred for nervous system work that I see and are in line being at the top of list that I, we send to and Gupta program if it's mold. Yeah, yeah. Or primal trust, but yeah. But yeah, just back to the dumping. I always say to pretty much every one of my Oxalates clients, I'm like, oxalates are no joke. They are hectic and can be really painful, which is why you have to go slow and, you know, you've gotta have the cup of tea or the chocolate to slow things down, but Absolutely. Yeah. I had crystals coming out of my hands outta my knuckles when I very first started. I could see them. They were, I could pull them out. Wow. And it is really funny because you do have this little open wound where they've come out and it's red and normally something like that would take a few days to heal, but you can have a look at your hand three hours later and it's gone. Oh. I'm like, how is, I don't know how that happens. Wow. But literally pops through it's little red little opening and then bang, it's gone. No sign that it was ever there. Wow. So guys, I can hear listeners thinking, wow, like this is, like it is hectic. I won't deny that. It's scary to go through all of this. And like Tracy's been at it for a while. But, so I think I should ask you, Mel, so Tracy is still dumping. Mm-hmm. So how long does it take really? Can some people just have an oxalate issue that will remain and needs to be managed for the rest of their life? It, how long is a piece of string is the answer to dumping? You know, I haven't been doing this for 10 years yet. Sally Norton talks about some people it can take up to 10 years. I haven't seen anyone get through it in less than six months. Okay. Six to 12 months would, so if you just go on a low oxalate diet, you slowly reduce it down. You go through the dumping, but you don't correct the underlying issues. Chemistry, whether it's mold. Then you're always going to have to be really careful about oxalates. You correct the underlying problems. Oxalates are always gonna be part of your life once you learn about them. Like I say to people, I will never eat a spinach salad ever again. I will never bake with almond flour ever again. But, you know, I can eat something with a few spinach leaves in it when I'm out, or might have, I still put some cacao in a smoothie every few a few times a week. It's about how much you have and your body deals with it a lot quicker. Like you will have a dumping episode if you go too much, but your body will dump it and you'll go back to normal. Yeah. So it's something to always be mindful of. We were never meant to eat nuts in those quantities. And that's the thing. Be mindful about what is actually realistic. If you had to grow your own food. What is realistic in how much you can consume? You know, berries in nature aren't that readily available. No. Things aren't available 12 months of the year. They're seasonal. Mm-hmm. So it's, it's keeping that in mind and just, yeah, as I said, those really high foods, you'll never eat them in high quantities again. But you can have that piece of chocolate cake at a birthday party or a cup of tea every so often and whatnot. Yeah. And you get to choose where you spend your oxalate points. I always say to people, so when I was going through my oxalate journey, you better believe the last thing that I cut out was my almond cappuccino.'cause I really enjoyed it. I couldn't tolerate dairy at the time, so I was having almond milk in my cappuccino. So I removed all the foods that I needed to before I stopped that. Yeah. I think what Mel's saying is that with modern day food processing and just like the health movement, we have almond milk instead of dairy milk, we have almond flour to bake with, and then paleo breads, now we have chia pudding, everything. And I know this. I've been just asking Chat GPT some interesting like high protein breakfast for weight training. And it's just chia seeds, chia seeds, chia seeds. So you end up eating so many chia seeds and then like, just juicing bunches of spinach. And just the copious amounts and like raspberries, right? So like going and putting a whole punt of raspberries into a smoothie, et cetera. This is what people do. Then nice foods and they healthy foods. And then we have buckwheat. So we can't have any grains. So you just have pseudograins like quinoa and buckwheat. Both all very high oxalate, aren't they? So it's so easy to do when you are wheat intolerant, dairy intolerant, and you're trying to get your protein intake up. You can just push these very high oxalates to a point where your gut microbiome just does not have the microbiome available to break it down. Because it's the gut microbiome that breaks down oxalate. But once you get that under control, having spinach in a salad is, is fine. You know, like having a bit of some almonds now and then is fine. Like having some buckwheat noodles now and then is fine. But it's just people tend to get these foods as staples and just hit it hard. Every day in high doses. And yeah, I think what's happened with the health movement is we really, science is great. I love science. I love doing like all the experiments that have been done and the research, but sometimes we go in with our blinkers on, oh my gosh, this food is so high in antioxidants, it's amazing. Let's start incorporating into our diet. We're not looking at it as a whole, as you know, spinach. Oh, amazing. It's got great levels of calcium in it. Great for people who are dairy free. They've actually been able to induce osteoporosis in rats by feeding them spinach with calcium supplementation. There is so much oxalate in spinach. It not only binds up to what is in the spinach, but any other calcium that you're consuming with that meal, it will bind up to it. Wow. So significant. So you know, we're not looking at the whole food and all of the components we're going, oh, great. Really high calcium in spinach or lots of, you know, folate in it or whatever. And it's kind of like what we've done to the body. Modern medicine is looking at one part of the body in isolation. We're doing the same thing with food. That's so interesting, Mel, that, that is really interesting.'cause foods have thousands of constituents in them. Mm-hmm. Like herbs as well. Yeah. It's so interesting. So yeah. And it's really, people always say to me, oh, I, I can't eat garlic'cause it's high FODMAP. Well, it's actually hard, it's really high and sulfur. Or it's just broad spectrum antimicrobial. So what's it actually doing to your gut microbiome? You know, that's very interesting. But listeners, it just comes back to moderation in all things. And also we are meant to swap our foods around. We are meant to swap. We are meant to have different foods, different plant foods, different animal proteins. We're just not meant to be eating the same thing all the time. And I know it, it's so hard with food prep, but it's important. I had a young girl this morning. She's on a SIBO diet. I can't tell you how much effort and these elaborate beautiful recipes that she's made up for herself. Guys Chat GPT is also really helpful for like getting some ideas, right? If you've got the right foods that you need to eat. She puts so much time and effort into creating different meals for herself and was eating different things. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner all the time. And she's doing really well. A lot of people will come back to me and they are eating the same things consistently and it's not great. We need to rotate, right? So we need to be rotating our animal protein with fish, with chicken, organic grass fed beef. We need to be rotating the vegetables and not just relying on like the same things. Because plant foods have antinutrients in them. Like they really do, don't they? Mel? Yes. All right. So I just wanna ask Tracy one more thing. For listeners who suspect they have oxalate issues, what are your top lessons or words of encouragement? I think words of encouragement.'cause I think we've had our lessons or maybe top lessons that you'd share with anyone with an oxalate issue listening. Well, I would say number one is make sure you get really good professional support. I think that is really key because it's not something you wanna navigate by yourself. Mel's support for me early on and yourself, Jo diagnosing what I had, like it was key and then morally holding my hand for those first three months where it was, I've had a couple of cesareans. I know what pain is and I had two colicky babies, but this is by far the hardest thing I've ever had to go through. And so you need someone who really knows what they're doing to guide you through it. And then I would say, have faith that you will get through it because you definitely will. Once you become aware of what your body is doing, you'll be able to lower the burden on your body by slowing down the oxalates, eating enough oxalate to kind of keep that threshold in your blood levels so that you're not dumping constantly.'Cause initially I was dumping quite large crystals. And I was thinking, where is that coming from? And then now I'm at sort of like sand level. I know that probably it's the last kind of, and it may be around for a while. But it's still, it's not because every time the body has to dig up those little crystals from somewhere, no wonder your body was inflamed. It's actually digging them out from soft tissue from somewhere and you can feel it once they've been ejected. So once you get to the stage where you kind of, you know, the dumping is much less intense and less often. And then sure there are gonna be issues probably around maybe some other things, sulfur, methylation to kind of deal with. But you're at the kind of you're on the back nine at that stage I think. And just be kind to yourself because it is a really difficult thing to go through. I mean, I'm sure my poor husband was wonder I was, but now I show him when I've got one of those we holes turning up on my hands in there. We kind of have a bit of a laugh about it. But there was no laughing for the first three months about it.'Cause it affects your whole family, it's a very stressful thing to go through. But with the right support and the right information like the handouts and things you guys gave me, which just invaluable. And as I say, I keep them in a folder and I will refer to them. And occasionally I think, oh, like I've understood everything. And then I'll go back and go, oh no, I've missed that point. Now I'm missing that I need to keep doing that because that was actually really important to keep doing. And you definitely will get through it. It's sort of, I don't know, I personally feel my body has been detoxifying the oxalate crystal, but I sort of feel that's what's been doing. It had got to the stage where it's was strong enough to do it. I don't know what part COVID played that certainly affected my microbiome. And then whether or not that gave me a leaky gut, because I know that there are other issues then around fat male absorption and things that can also play a part. But no, I definitely feel, I'm well on the way to recovery and I'm just so grateful for the support that you guys gave me because given the amount of patients I know that Mel personally is looked after, I mean, you see patterns and when you have a large enough group of people come through, it really helps you to work out what to do for your next patient because you're seeing it on a bigger scale, aren't you? You know? That's exactly right, Tracy. That it's just, it's numbers. It bums on set. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's just the numbers. And I think I've been doing this now for 12 years, pretty much three or four days a week. Eight patients a day often. That's why I can pick up mold and oxalates in a in one minute. Now I'm just pick it up. Yeah. I can just see it. And that's why it's, people ask me, oh, how do you know? It's like, I just know I've been doing, no, we can see it on the intake form, can't we? I can see it. My intake form is for my practice, and so I know and it's for what we do, so I can see it straight up. Mm. Just see it straight away. What, what, um, and You did, so you saw it absolutely straight away in me. And then I was, I feel like I've got a degree and oxalates now, you know, you read everything and you're trying to assimilate everything but you picked it up so quickly and it was funny because I think I downloaded one of your eBooks at one stage and to do with hormones because I've always felt like, why does my body always struggle in the area? And I made some notes. And so when I was trying to decide where to go to get some help, I went back through your notes and I think I'd made a note about you mentioning oxalates in my book, in my histamine ebundle or ebook. Yeah. And I didn't realize that's what my issue was. But then when I read you, you instantly identified. Look, I will say this, two practitioners listening and students, like, it's so vital to pick up an oxalate issue in your patients because it can go unmissed forever. I'm not exaggerating forever. And people will never get better because they're just not very well known and they're really, really common. So I just encourage practitioners like it's just so important to understand oxalates. And if you are interested in the histamine and methylation online group coaching course, we do go into oxalates as a whole module on oxalates and how it disrupts methylation, how it drives up histamine, how it disrupts sulfur and sulfation, how it's linked to mold, et cetera. So it is an area of clinical practice that is really rewarding and I think really important. And with the movement towards this sort of the pseudo grains and the almond milk, the almond meal, the spinach smoothies, et cetera, you will see patients with oxalate issues all the time. And the numbers are growing and growing and growing. And I've had them globally. Had two patients from the US this morning with massive oxalate issues. It is an area of clinical practice whereby you can really specialize in and have a lot of success in. From a business perspective, but also from a really a perspective of really helping people that really need it. So Tracy, thank you so much for your time. Oh, you're most welcome. And thank you for all your help that you and Mel given me because it's changed my life and I have a dad who's got some health issues and I often say to Mel, I couldn't help my parents the way I had been able to help unless you had helped me. You've given me so much by actually helping me to regain my health. Well that's Melanie. Melanie's my secret weapon. I always tell. No, I do, I do.'cause I don't advertise it too much on my website. About how good she's,'cause I keep it for patients like yourself that need to see her. So yeah. So Mel is a gem. All right, ladies, Mel, thank you so much again. Thank you. And thank you Tracy. You trusted me. You did what I said you kept the faith and that's really important. Like, it, it's wild, it's weird. It sounds made up. You know, people think there's no way. But when you persist and you're consistent, as you said, that first couple of months are rough, but there is light at the end of the tunnel, and that's where the real magic happens. Yeah. And thank you now for everything you've done. I know we've got a wee bit further to go, but you've just been a godsend, the peer of you. So thank you so much. Thanks. Thanks, Tracy. So thank you for joining me. I hope you found this episode beneficial. Be sure to subscribe to the histamine well so you don't miss an episode. Leave a review and you can also share this episode with someone who could benefit. If you have any questions you'd like answered or have a topic you'd like me to discuss, please go to my website, joanne kennedy naturopathy.com, where you can provide us with that information. Until next time, take care and be well.