Things it took you far to long to work out (or admit)

OOof. Almond milk is the mother and father of all oxalate riddled foods so you are getting it!.

If you go onto the FB page Trying Low Oxalate (I think) they have an adjunct FB page with a very very comprehensive and accurate list of the content of foods.

I was you. It's very confusing. Once you get it though, the difference is night and day. The dumping is utter and complete misery but this is your body heaving a sigh of relief as it starts to heal.

I was poisoning myself with so many things I thought was good for me. I cannot even smell tea now. I miss the citrus fruit and the berries etc. I sprout my own low ox beans and peas and the nutrition profile is off the scale so I'm doing OK. I eat meat heavy, low oxalate paleo basically. I've lost weight, my nails and hair are growing like crazy and my skin is amazing now. I have full use of all my joints. Even my plantar fasciitis has buggered off.

Sounds stressful! Glad to hear the cement mixer has long gone (and, presumably, renovations all finished)…

This is absolutely not true. I have gone through the menopause and at 56, all my bits are still very much exactly where they have always been!

You are so right! And also, HCPs talk such shite - 'it is normal for babies to have frequent colds and infections' - no, it it not, if you look after them properly and don't take them, scantily clothed, to browse the frozen or chilled sections for hours on end when they freeze, surrounded by coughing and sneezing individuals. Or, your tummy has been hurting for past so many years because you are anxious or suchlike. Aye, right.

1. It’s perfectly possible to lead a successful and fulfilled life without knowing your times-tables.
2. Not only are they not blood relatives, none of them is even called Doobie.
3. Most people who say they ‘like dogs more than they like people’ are less likeable than most dogs.

Oh my God, there is so much truth in this. Especially with regard to partners. Actually, I want to change my answer to this. This is what I wish I had known earlier.

That you should never befriend a conspiracy theorist. Their ideas are not just completely irrational but deeply pernicious and wildly anti-Semitic. And they are OBSESSED with these ideas.

@PoltergeistsStartLowKey
Thank you so much! I have fibromyalgia and control it best with low carb/ low sugar. I'm recently under investigation for Polymyalgia Rheumatica, but also I have made changes to my diet. I have cut out decaf coffee in favour of re, and changed to almond milk as it has no carbs... Both of these are high Oxalate and my PMR is definitely worse! (I had no idea about Oxalates).
So I will be changing things. Again, thank you so much!

That normal human emotions (fear, sadness, worry, stress) don't need to be medicated.

I got seriously pissed off when someone said I had health anxiety because my c section scar was bleeding! It's not normal and I was right to be worried. I've seen a few HCPs who've said nothing is wrong, so I think it was an ingrown hair that was causing the problem, because it seems to have sorted itself out.

That most people love to talk about themselves so if you're genuinely curious you can talk to anyone. And you'll both have a good time!

Took me 25 years to figure out I'm a classic introvert totally unsuited to large corporate work places.

My best friend taught me that if you show an interest in others, they will like you. Wish I'd known that as a gobshite undergrad, I might have had a better social life.

The traditional diet that my entire family ate for centuries is so good that Tim Spector and Chris Van Tulleken are making millions telling people to eat it.

I missed a trick not being a diet influencer.

God bless you! No additives. That would be right. You are like my dh, naive to the point of incapacity - "but darling, it is written here 'no additives'/organic cotton/responsibly sourced, etc." to which I invariably reply that in my great-grandmother's passport it was written 'British', yet she was more German than the Windsors and born in Berlin.

If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Or if you want to sound nobby posh, in Latin, qui cum canibus concumbunt cum pulicibus surgent. "He that lieth down with dogs shall rise up with fleas"

P.s it's fine to snuggle up with real dogs though as they are ace!

I actually did. It was a bad house. I sold it again for what I paid for it just desperate to ditch it. I had a house with my husband but it was being endlessly renovated and there was a cement mixer in the kitchen which just never stopped.

Start to finish of the transaction though was about a month - I offered full asking price (insanity) and went off to get the mortgage started - all in that lunch time. I wasn't in a good place. It snowballed from there.

I'm back in the original house now. Cement mixer has long gone.

Okay, @LyingWitchInTheWardrobe — I need to know more about this particular point…

• Never buy a house in your lunch break out of temper

'Falling in love' is a bad way to choose a partner, a house or a car.

That mothers don't in fact know everything.

That unless it's what you want for yourself the hight of achievement for a woman is not to raise kids and do all housework and childcare and also work. It's not a competition about how much you do and how little your husband does. If he's not pulling his weight you absolutely can leave and that's not your failure it's his.

That marriage brings financial security if you have children but also vulnerability if he's a cock lodging leech. To know and understand the value of marriage also doesn't make it ideal for everyone. Single mothers by choice are amazing people they haven't failed

Boys will be boys is a harmful way of thinking. Girls are not buffers for poor behaviour from boys and should not be corrected when they speak up

1, that it was so easy for me to stop drinking, I should have done it years ago. (I never drank regularly but felt awful when I did.)

2, that I deserve everything good in life. By that, I mean financial security, a sense of ease and a healthy lifestyle. All things in my power, through making better choices. I lived with a terrible situation for much of my life and it came to a tragic, devastating end a few months ago. Not something I'll 'get over' and it's still hard, but now I know I deserve a good life and I will put in the effort required to try to make it so.

What a great idea for a thread...

I wish I'd known:

• Smoking was something never to have started
• Saving money rather than spending it would have been a good idea
• Men are not that important
• Other people's opinions are just that - and they don't really matter
• Dogs are great, I would have had more of them, all rescues
• Never buy a house in your lunch break out of temper
• Don't fall in love with a car and stubbornly maintain it long beyond economic repair
• Sports and exercise are for everyone and twattish gym mistresses didn't get the final say on that

That was cathartic! Off to read everyone else's now.

I decided to 'improve my health' by adding in various vegetable powders, like you do.

I was suddenly in all body pain but my hands and arms were badly affected and I got instant cystitis.

I Googled, one of the possibilities was oxalates so I started to research. I started a low oxalate diet and started to dump oxalate from every orifice and it made a few of it's own! I thought I was going to die and the dumping brought a histamine release with it but this is normal apparently.

After a while I deliberately slowed the dumping a bit by going back to drinking some tea, just to give myself a break because I wanted to claw my skin off. After eight weeks it slowed and stopped and then has come in waves since then.

If you want to research it, Sally K Norton on YT is recognised as an expert in the field. She was bedbound as a child with it from living on home grown veg including Swiss chard, rhubarb and spinach (which is nothing but oxalates).

I get no joint pain and I no longer get cystitis all the time for no reason.

Absolutely you are right! Our poor parents, we blame them for everything!

Took me years to realise that i am an introvert, im a people person not a party person. Forcing myself to go out and not enjoying it, i couldnt work out why, and make plans then on the day not want to go and stay home but forcing myself to go out.

I used to look at my friend who has the most active social life, always out, always meeting big groups, i used to feel envious that i didnt have such an amazing social life. One day i suddenly realised i would hate it, being out all the time and socialising. I love my friend she is a warm and gregarious person but i find being in her company for too long draining.

" Shitty people say shitty things because they feel shit about themselves". It rarely has anything at all to do with you. Smile and walk away