Too healthy diet
Passion for antioxidants almost deprived the American of kidneys
Polina Loseva, N+1
American doctors described a rare type of kidney damage in an 81-year-old man. The reason for this was the unusual diet of the patient: he tried to consume as many antioxidants as possible, so he ate nuts and wheat germ every day. There is a lot of oxalic acid in this food – 10 times more than the daily norm. It formed crystals that damaged the patient's renal tubules. The case history is published in the journal BMJ Case Reports (Clark et al., Diet-induced oxalate nephropathy).
Eating fast food, semi-finished products and monotonous food can lead to various diseases: from obesity to vision loss. This is due not only to the excessive calorie content of such food, but also to the lack of vitamins and minerals in it. But the hobby of "proper nutrition" is not always safe – on the contrary, there may be too many minerals in "healthy food".
Barbara Clark from Allegheny Health Network and her colleagues described the case of an 81-year-old American. He has been in good health all his life and, despite a thirty-year history of type 2 diabetes, he has never been in the hospital in his entire life, has not undergone serious examinations and has not received intravenous injections.
Once in his blood test, doctors found elevated creatinine, 2 times higher than normal. This is a byproduct of muscle work, which is normally excreted from the body by the kidneys. If there is too much creatinine in the blood, this indicates that the kidneys are not coping with their task. However, the doctors did not find any obvious causes of kidney failure: the patient did not smoke and rarely drank alcohol, he had no signs of inflammation or poisoning, all other tests were normal.
A few weeks later, other symptoms appeared: nausea, anorexia and lethargy. Creatinine in the man's blood was already 8 times higher than normal, and his kidneys almost did not excrete urine. In the urine analysis, doctors found signs of acute tubular necrosis, that is, destruction of renal tissue. However, the cause could not be found immediately: doctors ruled out viral infection, cancer and autoimmune diseases.
After repeated urine analysis, doctors found crystals of calcium oxalate – oxalic acid salts in it. After that, they performed a biopsy of the patient's kidneys and confirmed their diagnosis: nephropathy caused by the accumulation of oxalate.
A patient's kidney biopsy: calcium oxalate crystals in the renal tubules (from an article in BMJ Case Reports).
The amount of oxalic acid salts in the body can be increased for several reasons. This may be a congenital genetic defect, as a result of which liver cells secrete more oxalate than usual. This may be a side effect of taking medications – for example, weight loss products that block the absorption of fats in the intestine, and oxalic acid is absorbed instead.
But in the case of an 81-year-old American, eating habits became the cause of nephropathy. It turned out that he was an adherent of a healthy diet and tried to get as many antioxidants from food as possible. Every day he drank at least a liter of almond milk, and also ate several spoonfuls of tomato paste, wheat sprouts, peanuts, Brazil nuts, hazelnuts, pistachios, almonds and cocoa powder. According to the researchers, this diet brought the patient 1,500 mg of oxalic acid per day, which is more than 10 times the daily norm.
After the final diagnosis, most of the symptoms were removed. Despite the fact that the patient's relatives note that he literally aged in a few days spent in a serious condition, he returned to active life. The amount of creatinine in his blood decreased, although it did not reach normal values.
Doctors note that patients who are passionate about a healthy lifestyle may not realize how much and what substances they receive with food. At the same time, even a varied diet can lead to serious consequences. Therefore, the authors recommend colleagues to pay more attention to patient surveys about food preferences.
Despite the fact that many people tend to consume more antioxidants, there is not much direct evidence of their benefits for a healthy person. On the contrary, there are studies that many vitamins and dietary supplements do not benefit, and in some cases weaken the immune system – at least in mice.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru