Henry was 43 years old when he signed up for Quantify, after struggling for years with knee pain, and not getting anywhere with physical therapy.
When his pain started, his doctor had ordered nearly every kind of imaging test out there, but all of his test results came back normal.
Without abnormal results, his doctor didn’t have anything to offer, so he referred Henry to a physical therapist, in case his pain was caused by a structural imbalance that wasn’t identified on imaging.
Henry was committed to resolving his knee pain, but after years of doing the same exercises over and over again, and experiencing only a slight decrease in pain, he ultimately threw in the towel and decided to take a different approach.
In his first appointment at Quantify, Henry’s health coach recommended an organic acids test, to evaluate exposure to toxic chemicals, accumulation of oxalate, vitamin and mineral levels, oxidative stress, and the presence of pathogenic bacteria and fungi.
Test results
His first time conducting such a comprehensive evaluation of his health, Henry’s organic acids test showed significantly elevated oxalic acid, indicating oxalate toxicity, or the condition of having too much oxalate in the body, which often causes chronic pain and inflammation.
An organic acid present to varying degrees in foods, produced by fungi, and a product of human metabolism, oxalate accumulates in the body in three ways: if your diet includes foods that are high in oxalate, if certain fungi, such as candida, are overgrown in your gastrointestinal tract and producing oxalate at high levels, or if oxalate is inadequately metabolized and excreted.
In Henry’s case, his health coach suspected it was his diet that primarily contributed to the accumulation of oxalate, given that the diet he had followed for years included foods with abnormally high oxalate content, such as kale, spinach, beets, sweet potatoes, quinoa, almonds, and cacao.
Recovery
Henry was understandably shocked to learn that the so-called “superfoods” he had so diligently consumed over the years were actually compromising his health.
He thought these foods were healthy—and to some extent, they are, but not if you eat them to excess, which is what Henry was doing, with the assumption that more is better.
To support excretion of oxalate, Henry’s health coach recommended that he drink at least 64 ounces of water per day, eliminate high-oxalate foods, processed foods, sugar, grains, and dairy from his diet, increase consumption of low-oxalate foods, such as beef, chicken, fish, and eggs, and take certain supplements, such as magnesium citrate, potassium citrate, and calcium citrate.
Following his health plan closely, Henry’s knee pain gradually improved, over the course of a year, and ultimately resolved.
It was a slow, incremental process, because just as oxalate takes a long time to accumulate in the body, it also takes a long time to excrete.
Looking back on the experience, Henry reported that although his years-long commitment to doing physical therapy didn’t actually produce any meaningful results, it did, perhaps, help him to cultivate the patience that would ultimately prove necessary to his recovery from oxalate toxicity.