Jeffrey Jeffries
New Member
Greetings fellow tortophiles!
Peace with you and your "pet" or zookeepee.
While I realize the ultimate answer to this question will be:
"Just don't feed your tort too much food high in oxalic acid"
or,
"Just vary the diet like you're supposed to, some oalates are expected and normal",
as is the best policy...
I was also wondering if any experienced nutritionists or long-term herpetology people knew --
Humans seeking maximum, natural calcium absorption (optimized bioavailability of their serving of Ca) have developed some ways of eating certain foods, along with their oxalate-high course (in the same sitting or meal) by combining certain foods to mix in the gut which can partly defeat some of the oxalates by either neutralizing them or, at least, more safely binding or reacting with Ca before the oxalic acid does.
Two methods I have seen are:
1) Dairy (not for torts)
and
2) Citric acid
The citric acid thing will certainly, already be a thought since it's so present in so many great tort foods so, even if it doesn't help, it certainly can't hurt.
Kidney stones are probably due to oxalates, commonly in torts, but here's something very unexpected:
Whats even more bizarre and been lesser-knownis that too little Ca can cause kidney stones in humans and pigs because when you reabsorb your tissues' Ca it sticks in your kidneys! :
Not to go on a tangent, but contrasting the phenomenon of poo'ing out unused calcium when oxalic acid binds with Ca (so it doesn't get utilized by you, yet it still goes into the bloodstream and has o be filtered by the kidneys) is an almost opposite phenomenon of forming kidney stones from having too little Ca in the diet chronically.
I was in communication with a Dr. Kennedy who got an MD PhD after being a doctor of veterinary medicine (because of the following). He was a vet that did multitudes of farm animals. People don't get hip or knee replacements for cows or pigs, so the conflicts of interests are different. Nutrition is way more pushed in veterinary medicine than humans'. So he noticed two things: one was that pigs lost weight when they switched from cooked potatoes to raw (an enzyme revelation).
The other was -- pigs kept getting kidney stones. First they tried lowering the Ca levels. It got worse. Then they raised the Ca levels and the kidney stones went away completely at a certain, large farm. It turned out --
when pigs are too low in Ca they need to leech it from their tissues to survive. So they (and we) release a secretion into the blood stream that releases the Ca from existing tissues and/or bone so muscles and nerves can operate without cramping etc. This recycled Ca form is so incredibly bioavailable it is too much so, and sticks in the kidneys when it cycles through them without, yet, being used. This is how Ca deficiency can actually give someone kidney stones and wrongly convince them to "stop taking Tums" even though they're slowly eating themselves from lack of calcium intake (and probably eating spinach on top of it to exacerbate things).
Peace with you and your "pet" or zookeepee.
While I realize the ultimate answer to this question will be:
"Just don't feed your tort too much food high in oxalic acid"
or,
"Just vary the diet like you're supposed to, some oalates are expected and normal",
as is the best policy...
I was also wondering if any experienced nutritionists or long-term herpetology people knew --
Humans seeking maximum, natural calcium absorption (optimized bioavailability of their serving of Ca) have developed some ways of eating certain foods, along with their oxalate-high course (in the same sitting or meal) by combining certain foods to mix in the gut which can partly defeat some of the oxalates by either neutralizing them or, at least, more safely binding or reacting with Ca before the oxalic acid does.
Two methods I have seen are:
1) Dairy (not for torts)
and
2) Citric acid
The citric acid thing will certainly, already be a thought since it's so present in so many great tort foods so, even if it doesn't help, it certainly can't hurt.
Kidney stones are probably due to oxalates, commonly in torts, but here's something very unexpected:
Whats even more bizarre and been lesser-knownis that too little Ca can cause kidney stones in humans and pigs because when you reabsorb your tissues' Ca it sticks in your kidneys! :
Not to go on a tangent, but contrasting the phenomenon of poo'ing out unused calcium when oxalic acid binds with Ca (so it doesn't get utilized by you, yet it still goes into the bloodstream and has o be filtered by the kidneys) is an almost opposite phenomenon of forming kidney stones from having too little Ca in the diet chronically.
I was in communication with a Dr. Kennedy who got an MD PhD after being a doctor of veterinary medicine (because of the following). He was a vet that did multitudes of farm animals. People don't get hip or knee replacements for cows or pigs, so the conflicts of interests are different. Nutrition is way more pushed in veterinary medicine than humans'. So he noticed two things: one was that pigs lost weight when they switched from cooked potatoes to raw (an enzyme revelation).
The other was -- pigs kept getting kidney stones. First they tried lowering the Ca levels. It got worse. Then they raised the Ca levels and the kidney stones went away completely at a certain, large farm. It turned out --
when pigs are too low in Ca they need to leech it from their tissues to survive. So they (and we) release a secretion into the blood stream that releases the Ca from existing tissues and/or bone so muscles and nerves can operate without cramping etc. This recycled Ca form is so incredibly bioavailable it is too much so, and sticks in the kidneys when it cycles through them without, yet, being used. This is how Ca deficiency can actually give someone kidney stones and wrongly convince them to "stop taking Tums" even though they're slowly eating themselves from lack of calcium intake (and probably eating spinach on top of it to exacerbate things).
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