Alkalize or Die!

[saterraji]

This forum is for widening the scope of our knowledge of natural medicine. It does not discount the value of the western medical model but more importantly offers time-honored, practical therapies which have not been "double-blind" tested. This does not invalidate the efficacy of the therapy or it's usefulness and success in placing the body back in balance and thus health.

I welcome any and all views on natural healing methods, offering greater insight and knowledge for those who participate...including myself!

Like any good sparing match, we must first honor our opponent for what they bring and if we are open enough, garner and incorporate items from the experience, making us more effective practitioners and humans.

It is said: "The superior physician heals while the true physician teaches".

[IJ]

Saterraji, I'm having a hard time getting behind your statement that:

"95% of all degenerative diseases represent an overall acidic condition in the blood and fluids. This can be easily tested by the use of litmus paper with a ph range of 6.0 to 8.5."

Working in internal medicine I can guarantee you that almost all of our patients have a pH controlled within a very narrow range (7.4 plus or minus .04), even while they are sick enough to be in the hospital, often on the verge of ICU transfer. Patients with common degenerative concerns like low back pain and arthritis will not have any detectable pH issues. Why is this? If your body is exposed to large amounts of acid (or base), the kidneys can compensate. They push out extra amounts of NH4(+) to remove the extra acid (in the form of protons). Even if the kidneys have failed, your pH is balanced quite well by your lungs. Carbon dioxide is produced from metabolism and excreted by the lungs. In solution in water, it is in equilibrium and contributes to acidity. Luckily CO2 can be tightly controlled and easily exhaled. When you double your ventilation, you halve your CO2, thereby removing acid and balancing your pH. Thus even people with unusual acid loads in their blood have a very normal pH which they accomplish by breathing a bit faster, often not noticing the difference. When you measure the pH of the URINE, you are getting a picture of acid excretion but not current blood pH.

Many issues effect the urine pH; for example, if you have to excrete X amount of acid daily from metabolizing proteins and whatnot, and you make a liter of urine, it will contain X amount of acid per liter. If you merely double your urine output by doubling your fluid intake, you will HALVE the concentration of acid in the urine without changing either your blood pH or your acid excretion overall.

We also EXPECT acid urine because the body makes acid as a waste product. This is normal. One can consume an equal and opposite amount of alkali to neutralize this acid, but there is no proven benefit and the kidney is adapted to remove acid waste. Potential side effects besides cost include lack of effectiveness of the acid barrier to infection in the stomach, and such conditions as the milk alkali syndrome, in which alkali diets high in calcium (eg CaCO3, or "tums") causes high calcium levels which can be dangerous.

Incidentally, soft drinks and sports drinks' high fructose corn syrup and carbonation do not turn into phosphoric acid. Fructose is C6H12O6; carbonation is CO2. The carbonation one breathes off immediately (although before that happens, it can theoretically damage teeth, so...). Fructose is metabolized into CO2 and water. Obviously one cannot create the element phosphorous from carbon, hydrogen, or water. Unless you have a star handy. The phosphoric acid is added as an ingredient, instead, and it's purpose is to produce a pleasingly acid (tangy sour) taste. This is only done with colas, and other acids are used in citrus drinks.

On Bill's forum we were warned the excess phosphoric acid may damage bones by leaching calcium, preventing calcium absorption, and replacing healthier foods. It may also promote chronic kidney disease. I have therefore moved to severely limit my cola intake and I take two tums with each now (calcium and phosphorous bind in the gut and are excreted; the carbonate in tums neutralizes the extra acid). And I don't consume much corn syrup, either, as I make most of my food and don't buy stuff with it in there. I use diet sodas instead. A "real sugar" soda is not a solution; it has sucrose which is 50% fructose which is nearly the same content and have plenty of calories.

There are real reasons to avoid these products but "alkalizing" isn't one.

[gmattson]

Working in internal medicine I can guarantee you that almost all of our patients have a pH controlled within a very narrow range (7.4 plus or minus .04),

I believe (based on info in the book) that the tests with the litmus paper must be done when you get up in the morning as the reading later will not be accurate.

[mhosea]

Working in internal medicine I can guarantee you that almost all of our patients have a pH controlled within a very narrow range (7.4 plus or minus .04),

I believe (based on info in the book) that the tests with the litmus paper must be done when you get up in the morning as the reading later will not be accurate.

I suspect the dietary advice is better for your body than the theory behind it is good for the mind, but as to the point of when to measure, I can see that measuring in the morning would be a sort of "necessary condition", since fluid intake during the day will cause the acidity of the urine to vary. If you sleep through the night and urinate first thing after awakening, your urine will be more concentrated (hence more acidic) than it will be, say, a few hours after drinking a quart of water.

[IJ]

The first morning urine is indeed more concentrated, but will also vary in acidity based on fluid intake (and dietary intake of acid). Beyond that, sure, one can calculate the amount of acidity removed by the urine daily. This would represent all of the acid created through one day's metabolism. If one consumes more base, then the urine will come out more alkaline, but all of the stuff will still be there. For example, we eat protein with sulfur groups that function as acid (ie sulfuric acid). They contribute to the acidic urine we make. If you still eat that protein but you take base, then instead of dilute H2SO4 or whatever other acid equivalents come out, you'll have Na-SO4 and HO-H (water). How does this help, particularly if one's blood pH is totally unaffected the whole time? Perhaps there is less work done by the kidneys in excreting the acid, but we certainly aren't adapted to eating extra base and I don't know it helps the kidneys to rest their acid excretion. If you're taking extra base, well, then you're also substantially increasing your sodium load, and we don't think that's very good for your BP or blood vessels.

However, if one eats a healthy diet composed mostly of vegetables, that protein load will go down, and you're left with less acid to excrete in the first place. Plus we already know there are lots of reasons to hit the veggies already. If one drastically cut one's citrus and tomato intake, that would reduce acid load too, but I'm not aware of any reason why this would be healthier.

[saterraji]

Does it seem correct to state that the "intelligence" of the body is to "push" excess acids away from the vital organs towards less vital areas where less damage to the organism can occur? This perhaps can explain the variation in the acid levels and offer some creedance to one of the tennents of homeopathic therapy:

Dr. Hering's Law of Cure
+FROM VITAL ORGANS AND PARTS OF THE BODY TO THE LESS IMPORTANT ONES
+FROM THE INSIDE TOWARD THE OUTSIDE
+FROM THE TOP TO THE BOTTOM
+IN REVERSE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER (I.E. SYMPTOMS THAT APPEARED LAST DISAPPEAR FIRST)

The book "Rediscovering Real Medicine" written by an MD homeopath from europe offers fine case histories representing this theory, in is over 35 year professional carrier utilizing homeopathic meds to trace back to the "original insult" and thus rid the body of chronic disease.

[IJ]

"Does it seem correct to state that the "intelligence" of the body is to "push" excess acids away from the vital organs towards less vital areas where less damage to the organism can occur?"

Sadly it does not seem correct. First, waste is circulated in the blood, to the whole body, so there is no compartmentalization of acid exposure in less important organs.

Second, the process is continuous, and there is never any "acidity," because the lungs and kidneys work together to keep the pH VERY close to 7.4; the blood is always alkaline, and even if there is an exception to this rule in a severely ill person, we are still almost always talking about degrees of alkalinity rather than acidity. A pH below 7 occurs only in the worst critical illness, near death, or transiently, as with a seizure during which no breathing occurred and much energy was expended anaerobically, generating lactate.

The only thing that changes is the rate at which acid is excreted--by the lungs as CO2 and by the kidney as various electrolytes such as NH4+.

[IJ]

A couple post back I commented on protein's role in contributing to metabolic acid, and noted that the more protein one eats (the more citrus, too), the more acid one excretes. My point then was that your pH doesn't budge, and this is true. However, I just finished working thru the China Study book on a flight, and thought I'd present some interesting points from that book.

He links animal protein to osteoporosis thru the generation of metabolic acid, which he says leach calcium from bones. Some of the argument makes perfect sense and is convincing (first, that increasing animal protein leads promptly to more calcium in the urine) and some does not (that animal protein increases acid load but vegetable does not. Are they or are they not the same amino acids and if yes what explains the difference?). He also brushes over some distinctions, for example noting the 99% lower hip fracture rate in Nigeria, but failing to mention the other differences there: black race, more sun, and more labor that is weight bearing.

The observations, however, are impressive--including a graph showing a high dependence of fracture rate on the animal to vegetable protein ratio and a 3.7 fold higher fracture rate in the highest quintile of animal intake vs the lowest. While one might argue that frail white people live in northern europe, america, russia, and austrailia and that's where both dairy / animal protein and fractures are concentrated, or that there are holes in his theory that increasing calcium intake correlates with more hip fracture (again, dairy confounds with race, and studies on calcium support the idea that supplementation reduces fracture risk at least somewhat), it's still worth thinking about.

Long story short: there may be something to the idea that reducing acid load is worthwhile, although I am not aware of any logic that supports the claims that the alkalizers make.