Blog - Sally K. Norton

April 9, 2017 by Sally K Norton

Sloppiness of Standard Practices in Science

The public is unaware of many problems in how science is conducted and the ramifications for patient health.

For example, poor handling and significant time lapse before pathologists see the fragile and perishable tissues they examine can yield unreliable, meaningless data. Richard Harris discusses such problems in modern biomedical science in a new book, Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions. The book is long overdue! It is certainly an important topic in need of some light, and I’m looking forward to reading it. Thanks to Richard Harris for tackling this massive problem!

In a book excerpt on the NPR site, Harris describes how researchers finally revealed one of the hidden problems in pathology. While evaluating a breast cancer test, researchers in a lab at the University of Rochester let breast tissue biopsy samples sit out for an hour or two before testing them. They didn’t realize that at room temperature, the sample decays! Folks: dead tissues decay, and decay changes what a pathologist can detect. Harris writes:

“And that was enough to degrade the sample and turn a positive result into a negative one. The molecule detected by the HER2 test breaks down at room temperature. “You can have the best test in the world and still get the wrong answer if you bugger up what you are testing,” Compton said.”

Oxalate Detection is a Problem for These Same Reasons Too

This problem of tissue degeneration is certainly true for oxalate crystals. These crystals are known to disappear from tissue samples within 2 hours of death, especially from the thyroid gland. Surgeons and their assistants lack training in the best methods for preserving biopsy samples and do not prioritize a speedy passage to the microscope. These processes are not priorities for biomedical institutions. Science and the public both suffer as a result.

I will write more soon about problems in tissue sampling and examination, focusing on overlooked oxalate deposits. Unseen due to normal but faulty biomedical procedures, oxalate deposits in human tissues are more common than believed by researchers.

Link to NPR book excerpt:

http://www.npr.org/books/titles/522223284/rigor-mortis-how-sloppy-science-creates-worthless-cures-crushes-hope-and-wastes#excerpt

March 29, 2017 by Sally K Norton

Swiss Chard: Popular But Potentially Hazardous

I used to eat this stuff as a normal and healthy thing to do. Swiss chard and I go way back, ever since my mother told me to plant it in my first garden when I was 10 years old. It germinates easily and it isn’t bothered much by pests. The large leaves are easy to harvest and the plant looks great in the garden. And, most important to my mother, it is a cut-and-come-again plant that yields a continual and bountiful crop. It was good that it was so easy to grow, because grocery stores rarely carried it. All that has changed.

Mountains of Swiss Chard at the Store

Swiss chard has grown popular—very popular, if the amount of refrigerated space allotted to it in our local organic supermarket is an indicator. I was there last week on a hopeless quest for mustard greens. I asked the young man restocking the produce case if they had mustard greens, but like the other stores in town, he said they don’t carry them anymore.

Then I noticed that he was unloading swiss chard—at least 40 colorful bunches, fresh out of their shipping boxes into a 4’ 4’ section devoted solely to swiss chard. The greens looked marvelous, but I could only sigh and worry. In my astonishment at the amount of store space devoted just to swiss chard, I commented on it as he piled it up. He said that they sell a “crazy amount of it”, but he’s never tried it.

Hidden Danger: Oxalate

Swiss chard is a hot trend! It has joined the ranks of kale and spinach as top sellers in the fresh greens department. Too bad. Swiss chard is loaded with a natural toxin called oxalate. Just one half-cup of steamed white-stalked swiss chard has about 500 mg of oxalate and ½ cup of steamed red swiss chard has over 900 mg of oxalate. ^[1] Steamed spinach has about 700 mg per ½ cup. That is a lot of oxalate.

Doctors and researchers assume you only consume about 120 mg of oxalate per day! 120 mg is about the amount of oxalate in just one ounce of almonds. But, a ½ cup of swiss chard has 4 to 7 times that amount – far in excess of what is considered “typical” and “tolerable” on a routine basis. That half cup of spinach has about 6 times the daily expectation. Oxalates have enormous health consequences: If you happen to like nuts and swiss chard, spinach, or beet greens you could be heading for physical pain, poor sleep, or kidney stones.

Ignoring a Brain Toxin

Until 2009, I paid no attention oxalates in my foods. I did not know or care that I routinely ate foods loaded with oxalate. I never connected my weird symptoms of nightly hiccups, belching, restless legs, and poor sleep to my diet. Why would I suspect my diet? I was eating fresh, whole, healthy foods—all the time, every day. I served swiss chard about twice a week and sweet potatoes at least five days a week, believing they were good for me. My diet could not be blamed for my health problems.

So later, I was shocked when I accidentally cured my sleep problem by eliminating high oxalate foods like swiss chard (including my beloved sweet potatoes). I learned that oxalates are neurotoxic. That is, they bother the nerves and brain. I also learned from reading medical articles that hiccups are a sign of this neurotoxicity (which covers a spectrum of symptoms including hiccups, convulsions, and death). (Here are a few of those articles: Neto 1998; Chen, Chou et al 2002; Chang, Hwang, et al 2000). There must be a reason the bugs don’t mess with the swiss chard in the garden—it may be too toxic for them, too!

The Danger of Innocence

My ignorance about the oxalate content of foods and about the toxic potential of oxalate in foods left me at risk for self-inflicted poisoning. That turned out badly for me, and for my husband. As a last resort, I corrected this dietary mistake and was surprised at the results as we each recovered effortlessly from chronic health conditions.

Anyone can get into trouble from overdoing the high oxalate foods. This is especially relevant now when high-oxalate foods are growing in popularity and are available year round. The produce aisle has become a loaded gun, and we are the innocent kids who have no idea about the dangers lurking there.

Healthy, Safer Greens

If you want to avoid accidental harm from oxalate, drop the swiss chard, beet greens, and spinach. And tell the produce manager you would buy mustard greens (6 mg oxalate per ½ cup steamed) and other low-oxalate produce, if only they would stock them.

Indeed, there are other good options for cooked greens. For example:

Lacinato (aka Dino) kale (4 mg ox per ½ cup cooked),
green cabbage, cooked (4 mg ox per ½ cup),
arugula, cooked (7 mg ox per ½ cup),
turnip greens (10 mg ox per ½ cup steamed), or
dandelion greens (10 mg ox per ½ cup steamed).

Many raw salad greens are also safe:

romaine lettuce (0.5 – 2 mg per ½ C),
mache (corn salad) (0.4 mg per ½ C),
watercress (2 mg per ½ C), and
arugula (0.7 per ½ C).

Rest Well

What mustard greens and romaine lettuce lack in hipness and glamor, they make up for by letting you sleep at night!

The values of oxalate content presented here are based on testing performed at the University of Wyoming in Laramie on behalf of the VP Foundation. http://thevpfoundation.org/vpfcookbook.htm

February 23, 2017 by Sally K Norton

Arterial Plaque Contains Oxalate

Did you know that oxalates can damage your heart and circulatory system, contributing to heart disease?

Our kidneys clean the blood. All of the oxalate that kidneys excrete every day gets there by traveling in our blood stream. The job of delivering toxic oxalate to the kidneys puts the arteries in harm’s way.

Researchers Don’t Expect Oxalate in Tissues

When oxalate deposits are found in tissues (other than the kidneys) doctors and researchers are surprised that the kidneys are working just fine. They believe that before oxalate collects in our bodies, the oxalate must first ruin the kidneys. This passage, below, from UCLA Pathologists Fishbein and Fishbein illustrates this conventional belief.

In a review of coronary arteries from 80 patients, we found 4 cases in which there were prominent oxalate deposits within the atherosclerotic plaques in coronary arteries. Oxalate deposits were also present in the media of arteries, the thyroid gland, and other organs, but not the kidneys, and the patients surprisingly did not have renal failure. (Fishbein and Fishbein 2009, p. 1315)

This expectation is based on the long-standing but unproven assertion that detectable (non-renal) oxalate deposits are a product of poor kidney function. In a previous report published by the journal Cardiovascular Pathology in 2008 they propose the new term “atherosclerotic oxalosis” to describe arterial plaque containing oxalate crystals.

This report was part of a study of coronary atherosclerosis in HIV infected patients, using atherosclerotic plaque samples from the National Neurologic AIDS Bank.

Whenever oxalate flows into the kidneys and other tissues in amounts beyond what they can handle (exceeding a capacity threshold), oxalate overload can occur. This can trigger accumulation of oxalate in the body. For some people this shows up as kidney deposits and kidney stones. But oxalate can encounter, be stashed, and be left behind in any susceptible tissue in the body, not just the kidneys.

Other Forms of Oxalate are Usually Overlooked

Note the use of the term prominent in the comment quoted above. The researchers do not mention trace deposits, nano-crystals, ionic oxalate, and other chemical forms of oxalate in the examined tissues as a possibility. Unexplored, no doubt.

There is also no mention of the age of the specimens at the time of examination. We know that oxalate deposits rapidly fade in biopsied tissue and cadavers. (It would be interesting to see a study specific to arteries and arterial plaque to investigate the durability of less prominent oxalate deposits in plaque.) To reliably find oxalate, living tissues need to be examined within two hours of death or excision, but often are not. This may help to explain why oxalate in the arterial plaque is assumed to be rare, it can be hard to detect.

Calcium oxalate may be a factor in “hardening arteries”. And it may be more common than this research suggests, given the crude detection methods we use. Artery plaque oxalosis is most likely in people with metabolic stress such as HIV, metabolic syndrome, chronic inflammation, diabetes, insulin resistance, chemical injury, poly-pharmacy, auto-immune conditions, and so on. We don’t know how oxalate may harm “healthy” people with “perfect” arteries.

Over and over, science has demonstrated that oxalate can collect in any tissue in the body—and not necessarily due to kidney problems.

Reason enough to become oxalate aware!

Here is an update: an 2017 report of an Italian study looking at heart artery plaque in 229 people, obtained through a tissue bank. They did a special microanalysis in 41 plaque samples to differentiate between two types of calcifications: calcium oxalate vs hydroxapatite. 37% of the plaques were primarily calcium oxalate and 63% were hydroxyapatite. Oxalate calcifications were detected mainly in unstable plaques in 27% of cases, whereas HA tended to dominate unstable plaques 60% of the time.
Of course, unstable plaques are the ones that tend to break loose and block fine capillaries, restricting blood flow to brain or heart tissues thus causing non-hemorrhagic stroke or heart attacks . https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28739184

January 14, 2017 by Sally K Norton

Celebrating Life!

“I Like Feeling Good!”

In this short video, Cathy explains how the low-oxalate diet has improved her life: eliminating back pain, mouth tartar and cavities, brain fog, energy issues, and chemical sensitivity. Her enthusiasm for what she learned in my previous talks and support group is contagious. Cathy wants you to feel good too!

Celebrate Low-Oxalate Living: “Happy Birthday, Cathy!”

For her birthday celebration, Cathy organized a low-oxalate talk that I presented at Ellwood Thompson’s Local Grocery in Richmond, Virginia, on January 18, 2017.

July 2, 2016 by Sally K Norton

Vitamin D Lamp: This little light of mine, finding time to let it shine.

Healthy Sun Solution with a Sun Lamp

Here in this video you can see my “electronic sun”. This easy-to-use vitamin D lamp has specialized UVB emitting bulbs intended to emulate natural sun. For most of us, brief sessions with such a lamp may improve our vitamin D status and general health. Making time in your busy life can be a challenge, however. Check out my own solution in the video to see how I fit this practice into my own schedule.

Read on to learn more about vitamin D and the advantages of the lamp.

Vitamin D

Deficiency of vitamin D is not only terrible for bone health, it increases your risk of almost any disease and lowers your life expectancy. Low D levels are epidemic these days. It is common in every age group, and especially common among dark-skinned people. This is because the natural way to “get” vitamin D is to make it with your own skin, when the sun shines. The sun’s ultraviolet B (UVB) rays interact with cholesterol (7-DHC) in the skin to make precursors that your body can convert to vitamin D. Skin pigment blocks UV penetration, protecting skin from UV damage, but limiting vitamin D production. Other factors that limit D production in skin include aging and sunscreen use. The strength of the sun is also a factor, varying by time of day and season, and lower at higher latitudes.

Sunlight – We Need It.

Correcting vitamin D deficiency is an important aspect of health and healing. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with insulin disorders, autoimmune disorders, cancer, and even risk of infectious disease. Many experts recommend routine oral supplementation. But there is some evidence of short-comings and side effects to this approach that we still do not understand well.

For those with inefficient vitamin D absorption, oral supplements do not correct the deficiency. For others who do absorb oral vitamin D, there are still drawbacks. Some suspect that daily consumption of D3 may encourage excessive absorption of calcium from the intestinal tract or movement of calcium out of the bones, which can create other problems. To minimize these issues, it seems better to take D periodically in large doses, not in daily small doses. But not everyone can tolerate pills and supplements at all: such people especially need to generate vitamin D naturally from UVB rays (sunshine or sunlamp).

Practical Sun Exposure with a Lamp

Given the limitations of oral supplements, making the most of your skin’s ability to produce vitamin D is a good idea. But modern life makes it impractical to get regular sun exposure, even in the summer months. And UV radiation is insufficient in the northern U.S. during the winter months, November through February. Many other variables influence how much UV light your body needs to make adequate vitamin D.

For pale skinned folks five minutes a few days a week might be enough. The darker your skin the longer the exposure needed. You can’t necessarily force your skin to make a lot of vitamin D from UVB, however. There are biological limits. So keep in mind that more time in the sun or under the lamp may not be better for you. Remember to have you doctor measure your vitamin D levels with blood testing.

August 24, 2015 by Sally K Norton

Radio Program: Gut Health, Inflammation, and Oxalate in Foods

Check this out. I was recently interviewed about Oxalates and Health by Sunny Gardener on Lightly On The Ground Radio on 97.3 WRIR, in Richmond VA. This show aired on Aug. 12, 2015.

Sunny and I discussed the back bone of all disease: inflammation. We cover the connection between changes in the bacteria in our colons and increased susceptibility to inflammation. We touched on oxalates in foods as a possible contributor to gut health deterioration and inflammatory illnesses.

Thank you to WRIR’s Lightly On The Ground, produced in Richmond VA.

August 20, 2015 by Sally K Norton

Taking Vitamin C? Try a Salad Instead.

If you are taking 500 mg or more vitamin C daily, there is something you need to know. Vitamin C (in excess) can become a toxin that can lead to kidney stones, arthritis, other pain conditions, and perhaps, compromised brain function. For decades we have been told that vitamin C is good for us and may help prevent colds. But too much of a good thing can make trouble. (Research has not been able to confirm the theory that vitamin C supplements help to prevent colds unless you routinely engage in physically demanding work or endurance sports.) [Read more…]

June 4, 2015 by Sally K Norton

Standing on Steady Ground: Resisting New Ideas

Most people will find certainty and safety by subscribing to widely held ideas, regardless of the “truth” of those ideas. Likewise, institutions and the people that are governed by them resist new explanations for phenomena. A classic example of this is found in the dawn of two radical ideas that 1) the earth moves around in space, and 2) the earth revolves around the sun. [Read more…]

June 2, 2015 by Sally K Norton

Letting Patients Down

No one goes through medical training so they can disappoint people with lousy outcomes and grievous errors in performing dangerous procedures. Yet, this is happening as a regular course of business in American Medicine. In my post, The Cost of Too Much Spinach, we have a case in point. A young woman suffers from a painful aliment, kidney stones. When she turned to medicine for relief, she was granted a series of tests and surgery that were likely injurious. None of these procedures offered any benefit, not even an accurate diagnosis. Patients like tests, as they believe that a test offers them a definite understanding of their condition. This case shows that tests don’t always perform up to our expectations. Our reliance on technology and invasive procedures illustrate some serious failures in how American medicine is practiced.

In hindsight, we know that this young woman’s problem was kidney and urethral stones. She had terrible pain in her rib cage on both sides of her body. The local university medical clinic found a 110-degree fever and kidney infection. They performed many tests and also removed her healthy appendix. As Scott Miners wrote in the article I discussed in my previous blog post, the young woman “was very frustrated and still in pain when the clinic staff released her.”

Still in pain, she traveled across the border to Mexico where a naturopathic doctor performed an ultrasound test that found two kidney stones working their way out of her urinary tract. The naturopath’s herbal treatment may have assisted the stones passing and provided relief for the patient.

Many questions are raised by this case: Why did the doctors do so many expensive tests and surgery, yet not find the real problem? Are doctors unaware of kidney stones? Do they assume that only old men get kidney stones? Are they aware that kidney stones are becoming increasingly common in females and in children? Are they aware that extreme diets with very high oxalate foods can trigger kidney stones (not to mention other health conditions)? Will they ever consider a person’s diet when they’re trying to determine what’s wrong with their patient?

June 1, 2015 by Sally K Norton

The Cost of Too Much Spinach

In the July-August issue of Well Being Journal, Scott Miners¹ shared the story of a teenager who went through a series of expensive diagnostic tests and unnecessary surgery. She had extreme pain and difficulty urinating. Four MRIs, 2 CT scans, and x-rays failed to detect her kidney-urethra stones. Without a correct diagnosis, they removed her healthy appendix. None of these medical procedures offered any relief.

This young woman suffered a great deal of pain, underwent dangerous surgery, and must have missed out on normal life activities due to kidney stones. Kidney stones are becoming more common, especially in women and the young. Yet, in this case, the best tests of modern medicine failed to detect them. Still, there were bills to be paid.

The costs of these tests vary a lot, in the table below I roughly estimate the expenses generated by this medical “wild goose chase”. Her kidney stone trouble may have generated nearly $50,000 in medical expenses, and they did her no good at all.

Sadly, she was never told, until after Scott read my article, that eating too much oxalate from spinach could be a risk factor for kidney stones. Scott writes: “… she said she had become a vegetarian four years earlier and had been eating massive amounts of spinach in those years, prior to the kidney stone formation.” Her likely purpose in eating spinach was to support her health, and not to make her sick and broke!

Medical Procedure	Number Performed	Cost Range	Total Estimated Mean Cost
MRI $1,500 – $5,000	4	6,000 – 20,000	13,000
CT Scan $500 – $1,200	2	1,000 – 2,400	1,700
X-ray $300 – $600	1	300 – 600	450
Appendectomy Surgery median cost is $33,000²	1		33,000
TOTAL:			$48,150

References:

Miners, S. Kidney Stones and High-Oxalate Foods. Well Being Journal. 24:4, (2015).
Hsia RY, Kothari AH, Srebotnjak T & Maselli J. Health care as a ‘market good’? appendicitis as a case study. Intern. Med. 172, 818–819 (2012).