Alkaline Diet

[klrman]

Yep. almost in real time at least Midnight now, but I'll get this post in before I go to sleep. As per the course, I'm squeezing a quarter of a lemon and a pinch of baking soda in a tall glass of water - 500ml 4x a day and so far not a huge increase in ph as of yet, but my understanding is if we are over acidic, eventually our ph will rise if we stick to our diet and water over time. What I do find is that after drinking the baking soda and lemon I feel very relaxed. It has a soothing effect on my body. but to be honest with you, I never really understood how all this works as our stomach has HCL and why would I need to do this?...but here is a helpful link for you that may help both of us which I just found. http://www.healthy-communications.com/alkalizeyourbody.htm This is where the line gets fuzzy, but I feel calm drinking Dandelion tea as well and on the chart it is highly alkaline too so I am hoping it will not do any harm. That's scary with coral calcium, I never knew that, but then why are the people supposedly so healthy in Okinawa Japan as their water and food supply is saturated with coral calcium I think.

DavidD, you may also find this link very informative, but it does not agree with ACV and I'm not really sure about ACV either as I have equally heard good and bad things about it. http://www.earthclinic.com/Remedies/baking_soda.html

[DavidD]

Klrman, you must be on the West Coast as am I. Where do you live? I am in Vancouver, BC. The stomach has HCL (less when we get older, if you listen to the NDs, no difference if you listen to the MDs). The acid in your stomach is meant to be there. That is an acidic environment on purpose to digest food. The pH of the BLOOD, however, is apparently not supposed to be acidic: that is the entire point. So acid in one place is ok, not ok in the other. As for the baling soda, it is a base. If you recall from chemistry, acids and bases neutralize each other and form salt. If you swallowed a lot of baking soda (sodium hydroxide), you would neutralize your stomach acid (hydrogen chloride) and form salt (sodium chloride and water) and gas. You do not want that. I am not sure if the baking soda you swallow is being absorbed into your blood. It might be turned into salt in your stomach. More than likely it is becoming a salt in your glass when you combine it with lemon (acetic acid). Do you notice gas bubbles in your drink? Unless you measure the pH of your brew, you do not know if you are swallowing acidic or alkaline water, you just know you had both ingredients in the water. You do not know which "won". Do you measure the pH?

As for feeling calm, lemons have potassium. It is possible you this is slightly lowering your blood pressure, which you might experience as calming. Potassium is also diuretic so fluids leave the blood and enter the kidneys. That is how it lowers blood pressure. It also tends to cause cells to dump their fluids.

Coral calcium is contentious, as I said. I won't use it because it is so highly hyped and yet so controversial. I always distrust that kind of mix. People in Japan, if they are truly healthy and this is not an urban myth, is more likely due to the iodine in kelp. High amounts of iodine are good for the thyroid, prevent breast cancer, and improve a lot of bodily functions, according to research I have read recently. But more important, health is not the result of a single nutrient, calcium or iodine--they are all important. It is rash to attribute health to a single cause.

[klrman]

DavidD, thanks for the info. Will reply tomorrow again as my wife is tugging at me to go to bed, but please look at this link too and tell me what you think after you have read it, it is not long. http://www.earthclinic.com/Remedies/baking_soda.html

I'm in BC in the Okanagan so same time zone as you!

[DavidD]

I read "it", which means the entire page. I think we all need to recall our high school chemistry and, more than that, we all need to talk to a biochemist. I agree the acid-base and weak-acid-strong-acid commentaries make sense according to the chemistry I recall. Having too much HCL in the stomach and neutralizing some of it by a weak acid or a base will cause gas and relieve burning. Reflux is NOT caused only by too much acid. It is usually related to kyphosis in the upper spine (round-shoulders) which brings the hole in the diaphragm through which the esophagus passes closer to the entrance to the stomach. The pressure causes some stomach acid to reflux or eject upwards into the esophagus, hence the burning. Bending backwards over the arm of a sofa or over an exercise ball or simply sitting up very straight, perhaps arms over head will immediately relieve the reflux (not the burning if it has already begun, but the ejection of more acid). If this works, you know that the problem is postural. If it is, then you do not want to kill your stomach acid! You want to see a chiropractor and strengthen your back after it is adjusted. I agree that calcium might be leached by prolonged use of baking soda combining with calcium and leaving the body. The result would be osteoporosis. The reason we need a biochemist is because sodium, potassium, calcium, hydrochloric acid--all these fundamental ions and compounds--have multiple and very fundamental actions in thousands of processes in the body. Manipulating even one of them, say, potassium, can have effects on blood pressure, fluid retention, heart condition, brain function, for example. We are tinkering with symptoms and not understanding the total balance of the body. We are, frankly, messing around. This is exactly what doctors do with drugs--treat symptoms, often single symptoms--without addressing causes.

I did address cause in one instance above. You can always do that if you can understand the relationship between structure and function. I said kyphosis may cause reflux. The function of the stomach was not right. The structure of the spine was not right in this example. I suggested fixing the structure (straightening up, getting adjusted so that is possible), which would mechanically and neurologically alter function in the right direction.

The problem with the chemical questions we are asking is we are looking at functions, basically (how does an acid function with a base, etc.?) but do not know how to relate these functions to structures of any kind. What structure would one modify to raise pH in the body or lower it?