Oxalates cause breast cancer... And oxalates are found in high amounts in ‘healthy’ plant foods such as spinach, sweet potatoes, cacao, almonds, and chia seeds, just to name just a few.
Do you know that multiple studies over the past few years show that oxalate induces both breast calcifications, and breast cancer? I’d never come across information on this before, and I’d never looked into it. That was, until an experience I had recently caused me to question whether oxalate might be linked to breast cancer, and then to go looking to see if there were any studies confirming this connection. I’d also hazard a guess that this is not something that most breast cancer sufferers have heard about either. So my next question is why is no one talking about it?
What spurred me to ask the question and go looking for the studies was because I had this bizarre experience, where an abundance of oxalate crystals exited my breasts, through my skin, and into my bra. I made the following video about it. It honestly felt really crazy to be sharing what I was sharing, but it was the truth and it did happen!
At the time I actually tried to think of any other reason that my bra would be filled with these tiny crystals, but there was no other explanation. It was as it appeared – oxalate crystals that had come through my skin, en masse.
I Consumed a VERY High Oxalate Diet for Years
At the time of writing this article, I’ve been eating a carnivore diet for just over a year. But prior to diving into this ‘crazy meat diet’, plants were my priority. I’d actually spent most of my adult life eating a very highly plant based, wholefood diet. I’ve read, listened, and researched nutrition and diet for decades in my quest for good health. However that good health not only eluded me, but seemed to move further, and further from my reality as the years went by.
I won’t go into too much detail in this post, but suffice it to say that I ate a strict vegan diet for two years in my mid thirties. I was a vegetarian for over a decade around that time as well, and I have drifted in and out of both raw vegan, and standard vegan diets regularly in the years since. My last vegan episode was in early 2022 just prior to going keto, and then carnivore. And although my diet became more and more ‘clean’ over the years, having removed all gluten, and only rarely consuming processed foods, not only did good health elude me, but my health continued to decline while my weight also climbed. I found myself in my fifties weighing in at over 100kg – a weight I’d not seen on the scales since I was thirty years old.
My ‘healthy’ diet in recent years consisted of loads of leafy greens such as spinach, chard, and beet greens; superfoods like cacao, chia seeds and nuts; herbs and spices; sweet potatoes and beets; and gluten free grains like buckwheat and rice.
But what I’ve now learned over the last year or so, is that I was literally poisoning my body. I was filling my body with oxalate by eating large quantities of these high oxalate foods. I was also causing chronic mineral deficiencies! Now I’ll likely spend years going through the process of eliminating this oxalate stockpile from my body.
We found that the chronic exposure of breast epithelial cells to oxalate promotes the transformation of breast cells from normal to tumor cells, inducing the expression of a proto-oncogen as c-fos and proliferation in breast cancer cells. Furthermore, oxalate has a carcinogenic effect when injected into the mammary fatpad in mice, generating highly malignant and undifferentiated tumors with the characteristics of fibrosarcomas of the breast. As oxalates seem to promote these differences, it is expected that a significant reduction in the incidence of breast cancer tumors could be reached if it were possible to control oxalate production or its carcinogenic activity.
Research Into the Role of Oxalate in Breast Cancer
The day after my bizarre experience with the oxalate crystals in my bra, a question formed in my mind. Could oxalate be associated with, or linked to, breast cancer in any way? It made sense to me that sharp little crystals made from a toxic substance, would irritate the tissues of the breast and cause cancer. So I started to search and it didn’t take long to realise that my question was valid.
Oxalate does indeed induce breast calcifications and breast cancer!
I read Sally Norton’s book about Oxalates a while back and highly recommend it. It’s a great resource if you’d like to learn more about the dangers of oxalate – you can out check her book here. Sally has spent years digging into research and available information on the subject of oxalate, and mentions that medical science has known about the dangers of oxalate for the past 200 years. In fact in days gone by, doctors were trained to understand that oxalate could affect patients in many ways. Unlike modern doctors, many of whom have little to no understanding of the dangers of oxalate. If they do have some knowledge, it’s usually only with regard to kidney stones.
So Let’s Talk About The Studies
While earlier studies seemed to show calcium oxalate as being associated with benign tumors in the breast, more recent studies indicate a connection between oxalate and malignancies. This study in 2005 showed that high levels of calcium oxalate calcifications could be associated with cancer, but you’ll see in both of these studies that it was presumed that calcium oxalate was mostly benign.
However by 2013, the tide was turning, and studies such as this one from 2013, and this 2015 study showed that oxalate was indeed associated with breast cancer risk.
Researchers have also shown that when our body is burdened with excess oxalate, that burden is associated with many chronic inflammatory states such as obesity, diabetes, chronic pain, autoimmunity, gout, neurodegenerative, and cardiovascular disorders. Oxalate has also been shown to play a role in autism, various other cancers, and kidney disease.
We found that the chronic exposure of breast epithelial cells to oxalate promotes the transformation of breast cells from normal to tumor cells, inducing the expression of a proto-oncogen as c-fos and proliferation in breast cancer cells. Furthermore, oxalate has a carcinogenic effect when injected into the mammary fatpad in mice, generating highly malignant and undifferentiated tumors with the characteristics of fibrosarcomas of the breast. As oxalates seem to promote these differences, it is expected that a significant reduction in the incidence of breast cancer tumors could be reached if it were possible to control oxalate production or its carcinogenic activity.
A search on Google or Google Scholar will bring up many other studies that now show association between excess oxalate consumption and breast cancer risk. Here are a couple more for you to check out:
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279324366_Oxalate_induces_breast_cancer
- https://ciquibic.fcq.unc.edu.ar/oxalate-induces-breast-cancer/
- https://bmccancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12885-015-1747-2
So Let’s Round It Up
Many studies appear to show inconclusively that dietary oxalate is a cause of breast calcifications, and breast cancer. So again I have to ask why no-one is talking about this? Why are oncologists not advising their breast cancer patients to eat a low oxalate diet? And why are mainstream media silent about this threat to women’s health?
Some clarity on this would be helpful…
Personally, after doing the research for this blog post I can say that this gives me another reason to be very thankful that I was open enough to try the carnivore diet. I’m also thankful that my amazing body knows how to remove the oxalate that I stuffed into it for decades, perfectly.
And considering this information, I have no doubt that I had a very real risk of becoming another breast cancer statistic judging by the amount of oxalate crystals that exited my body the other day. In fact the diagnosis possibly would have already happened IF I’d subjected myself to mammograms. But I don’t do mammograms or any cancer screening for that matter. I made that decision a long time ago. Perhaps that could be the subject of a future blog post…
Hi there, I was wondering if you actually had any studies showing dietary oxalates induce breast cancer. All the studies you present only show injected oxalates or high oxalate tissues around the breast but don’t prove that dietary oxalates caused this. I found a study showing eating more Spinach reduces breast cancer so I’m thinking there may be a disconnect here. It could be more a matter of other things in the diet that cause your body to accumulate oxalates rather than the amount you consume. Studies even show that people that get oxalate kidney stones more often don’t eat more oxalates than people who don’t.
Researchers even tried taking oxalate foods out of people’s diets and their kidney stone frequency went up after removing healthy foods.
I also seemed to find that the body produces oxalates as well so it’s not all from diet. Also more meat heavy diets cause more oxalate kidney stones so maybe its not the oxalate consumption itself but something in other foods that cause your body to not excrete them properly. The story of the breast oxalates seems strange. But maybe there’s something else going on that’s causing your body to develop them. It seems these calcium oxalates in breasts haven’t been found to have anything to do with diet so far (more study is needed) but instead can be caused more by past injuries, inflammation, or infections. Also that people that have a history of antibiotic use may have killed oxalobacter bacteria that aid in the excretion. For these people it seems they should limit beet greens, chard, and Spinach but other plant foods don’t seem to be an issue.
Also there’s some evidence that carnivore diets actually increase kidney stones. Endogenous oxalates meaning formed in your body has 2 pathways, 1 is from vitamin C so that is absent on a carnivore diet but the other comes from protein synthesis so from proline which is abundant in meat. This may be a pathway of why meat heavy diets have more calcium oxalate kidney stones despite eating less dietary oxalate.
I’ve been talking mostly kidney stones cause there’s so much more research on that but the assumption is that if meat causes more oxalate kidney stones that it would also cause more oxalates in breast tissue as well. Obviously we need more research but the fact we know that Spinach consumption reduces breast cancer and people that get kidney stones don’t consume more oxalates but people that get kidney stones do consume more meat. Put these together and one can assume that it’s not dietary oxalates that cause issues in the body but endogenous oxalates which form in the body naturally whether you consume them or not and they only cause issues when in the presence of something else like meat. Vegans do have lower rates of oxalate kidney stones but it’s not zero so meat isn’t the only thing that can cause your body to hold on to oxalates. That’s where we need more research. I mentioned antibiotic use killing oxalobacter which may be one other factor. There’s also some genes involved as well. And there’s probably other factors we haven’t discovered yet and these same principles probably apply to breast tissue as well.
I’m just wondering why you went into eating more of something that’s been proven to cause more oxalate problems along with a host of other chronic diseases instead of just maybe reducing the highest oxalate foods or upping your calcium intake which has been shown to reduce oxalates and helps the body expel them. Especially because theres no evidence that dietary oxalates are the issue, it’s probably endogenous instead, and with spinach reducing breast cancer rates that probably means oxalates aren’t an issue in this disease. Calcium citrate supplement can also help get rid of excess oxalates. Or just drinking more water.
Your interpretation of the studies is incorrect. This paragraph for example “we measured oxalate concentration in both human breast tumor tissues and adjoining non-pathological breast tissues. We found that all tested breast tumor tissues contain a higher concentration of oxalates than their counterpart non-pathological breast tissue.” is saying that they tested human breast tissue that was cancerous vs non-cancerous tissue. They did inject oxalate into mice to test carcinogenicity.
If dietary oxalate isn’t an issue, why a low oxalate diet for those with kidney stones? Just because kidney stones is the main area of research does not meant that dietary oxalate isn’t stored in other tissues of the body.
Also, you do realise that all these studies that are based on what people eat prove nothing, right? They don’t lock people up and feed them, but rather rely on subjects remembering what they ate and telling the truth about their diet.
I have spent most of my adult life on a predominantly plant based diet, with many years vegetarian and vegan, and which gradually undermined my health. Of course gut issues can cause more oxalate to accumulate, which would have been a big part of my problem. I’m fully aware that the microbiome can play a role as can endogenous oxylate. However there is plenty of research to show that dietary oxalate can also create a huge burden (and no, I’m not going to go find that for you. Check out Sally K Norton’s work).
The ‘proof’ that meat heavy diets cause kidney stones is lacking and unreliable due to the fact that those classed as eating a ‘meat heavy diet’, are usually eating ultra processed foods and takeaway foods such as McDonalds or Burger King, and then these are lumped in with ‘meat’ consumption. Studies on a purely carnivore diet don’t exist as far as I’m aware, so I’d be interested to see the study that showed a carnivore diet increases kidney stones. Also, after doing a quick Google search and finding your business, I see why you don’t want people knowing about the issues surrounding dietary oxalates and I get it. Three years ago, I’d have been your best customer!