Oxalate, histamine, and copper overload are common in people trying to eat a healthy diet and experiencing sensitivity to electromagnetic fields (EMFs), mold, or chemicals.

Oxalates

Oxalates are found naturally in foods, even healthy, organic foods, such as spinach, almonds, and beets, and can cause oxidative stress.

Oxalates are toxins with no known benefit to humans. They function as natural pesticides and help with mineral storage in the plants that make them. The amount of oxalates a person can handle depends on a number of factors including gut health, other components in the diet, nutritional status, and kidney function.

• Gut health: microorganisms in the gut can degrade oxalates and reduce absorption; leaky gut can increase absorption
• Other components in the diet: calcium binds oxalate to form an insoluble compound that is less readily absorbed
• Nutritional status: some vitamin and mineral deficiencies cause the body to produce oxalates
• Kidney function: oxalates that have been absorbed are excreted primarily in urine

If you absorb more oxalates than your body can excrete, your body stores the excess oxalates. Oxalates can cause oxidative stress when we absorb too much and when the body releases oxalates from storage to be excreted. Said another way, oxalates cause damage going in and coming out.

The good news is there are easy substitutions that you can make to lower your oxalate intake. For example, instead of a spinach salad with toasted almonds, you could have an arugula salad with pumpkin seeds.

Histamine

When your body feels threatened by an allergen, mast cells release histamine. If you are sensitive to mold or chemicals, your body may release histamine in response to an exposure. EMFs irritate mast cells and can cause them to release histamine. Thus, people with environmental sensitivities tend to have excess histamine in their body.

Histamine is also present in foods, especially fermented foods that many people add to their diet to try to improve gut health. Adding histamine from foods to already high levels of histamine in the body can result in symptoms.

Copper

Some copper is needed by the body for proper metabolism and immune system function. Too much copper can cause problems, though. Our bodies use specific proteins to safely transport copper. When we have more copper than these proteins can handle, that free copper can cause oxidative stress. There are foods that are high in copper, but copper overload can also be caused by other factors such as hormonal birth control or copper IUD (estrogen signals your body to hold onto copper and a copper IUD adds copper to your system), regularly drinking water from copper pipes, or excessive use of copper cookware. If your body is overloaded with copper, high copper foods can worsen your symptoms.

Some people with environmental sensitivities only need to reduce oxalates to see an improvement in symptoms while others who are overloaded with histamine or copper may need to lower intake of those compounds too.

I offer coaching to guide you through lowering oxalates in your diet, testing your sensitivity to histamine and copper, and considering other potential stressors that while not directly linked to environmental sensitivities, may still cause issues for you, such as gluten, dairy, and salicylates.