I started the carnivore diet at the end of 2023 after being mostly plant based and a heavy spinach smoothy user for years. Two weeks in, my right eye started leaking, getting sore and itchy. I went to the doctor, but he wasn’t helpful. A few weeks later, the symptoms switched to the other eye. Around that time I learned about oxalate dumping and started getting itchy rashes in various places. This has been going on in cycles for 2 years now. The first 18 months were a nightmare, and starting to improve now over the last 6 months.

My oxalate dumping symptoms are: Sore, itchy, leaky gritty eyes, brain fog, fatigue, irritability, skin rashes, cloudy urine.

A sand like film of the stuff collects on the inside of my reading glasses when I’m in a flare. When it comes from my skin, it’s like small grains of sand work their way to the surface, at first causing intense itching, then as it penetrates the surface it becomes sore as it comes out. I have a collection of these little pieces that have come from the bumps on my stomach and chest. The rash looks like hives.

When my eyes are bad, I can’t tolerate bright light, or stay outside for long, I’ve had to stop driving for periods too when its been bad.

I know for most people, these symptoms are fairly mild and don’t last longer than a few weeks, but I was poisoning myself with raw spinach for about 5 years, handfulls of it every day, thinking I was doing something good for myself.

Anyway, I was wondering if any other ex-vegan spinach eaters went carnivore, and what your experience has been like.

Welcome.

I have read about long term bouts with oxalate dumping but only experienced a short bout, and not all that sure it was actually dumping.

I was about six months into carnivore, maybe fall of '24, and I had some dry skin and patch itch around my waist and love handles. it was hit and miss over several weeks. Just as it was noticeable it would go away.

If I had a vegetable crutch it was green beans/snap beans. I could eat them by the five-gallon bucket (and some of plates back then probably looked like a five-gallon bucket.

I didn't really do anything other than continue with carnivore. If it were oxalate dumping it sort of passed on its own. I have an autoimmune disease and had some skin issues with that and I could bever really tell if it were one or the other.

Welcome.

(and hit the search engine as there was a pretty long thread on the subject sometime back. It might be something more helpful than me in those exchanges).

Scott

Welcome to Carnivore Talk @Jen62!

As for oxalate dumping id look into Elliot Overton and Sally Norton:

Thanks for the replies, links and welcome. Yes, I will search threads. I’m very grateful for the work Sally Norton has done on this issue, if it weren’t for her, lots of people like me would be going crazy trying to figure out what was happening, and probably most likely giving up the best diet change of their lives.