Oxalate & Breast Cancer: Why Is Nobody Talking About This?

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.

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 about 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.

Photo by Angiola Harry on Unsplash

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.

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 article…