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How do you feel about an Alkaline diet?

So I read that adding more alkaline-forming foods will help slow down the leech of calcium from your bones, helping maintain your bone health for years to come. Also, that it will help fight free-radical damage and inflammation while supporting healthy cellular regeneration. Is it worth the extra effort? Are you a believer?

Replies

  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 9,312 Member
    I agree that eating somefoods probably does help with reducing osteoporosis - high calcium foods.
    There is a dietary component.

    Alkaline foods - No, I dont think so.
  • KosmosKitten
    KosmosKitten Posts: 10,476 Member
    ccrdragon wrote: »
    One of the big proponents of the alkaline diets is Gwyneth Paltrow of GOOP. If that isn't enough to turn you off of the diet, this should. She advocates drinking alkaline water every morning, but she also advocates squeezing fresh, organic lemon juice (an acid) into the alkaline water. Know what happens when you mix an acid and a base? You get a neutral result... thus eliminating any so called benefit from drinking what is now, expensive non-alkaline lemon flavored water.

    Tells me everything I need to know. It's a woo diet being peddled by a woo proponent.

    Also, the human body has various organs to maintain your pH balance on its own. Usually, when it can't regulate it on its own, that means there is a serious problem that you need medical intervention for, not a weird diet featuring alkaline water.

    Sounds an awful lot like a panacea... and all of those are snake oil being peddled by charlatans.
  • MargaretYakoda
    MargaretYakoda Posts: 2,998 Member
    kshama2001 wrote: »
    ccrdragon wrote: »
    One of the big proponents of the alkaline diets is Gwyneth Paltrow of GOOP. If that isn't enough to turn you off of the diet, this should. She advocates drinking alkaline water every morning, but she also advocates squeezing fresh, organic lemon juice (an acid) into the alkaline water. Know what happens when you mix an acid and a base? You get a neutral result... thus eliminating any so called benefit from drinking what is now, expensive non-alkaline lemon flavored water.

    I just love when Stephen Colbert satirizes Gwyneth Paltrow / GOOP!

    (Beginning is a little NSFW.)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg0HCStAYMA

    I’ll just leave this here and walk away giggling to myself.


    https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/01/gwyneth-paltrow-goop-vagina-candle-exploded-inferno-sparks
  • nooshi713
    nooshi713 Posts: 4,877 Member
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    I'm a big believer in people eating more fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, etc as these things provide a ton of awesome nutrition (vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, probiotics, etc) are consumed in pretty low quantities in what is often referred to as the SAD. I think it's definitely worth it to eat more of these things...but the notion of controlling your body's PH with food is a bunch of nonsense.

    Regardless of what you eat, the human body maintains a PH balance within a very narrow range all on it's own and that can't be manipulated with food.

    main-qimg-cc72aed2893a1fc83682c6a54ca92c96.webp

    Yep!!
  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 49,051 Member
    All in all it's just wasted money on some pseudoscience.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

    9285851.png
  • nooshi713
    nooshi713 Posts: 4,877 Member
    Total woo
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 10,300 Member
    The acidic environment in the stomach is not a friendly place for food regardless of it's acidic or alkaline properties. Everything that journey's from the stomach to the intestines will be alkaline anyway and why the body regulates it.
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  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,106 Member
    ccrdragon wrote: »
    One of the big proponents of the alkaline diets is Gwyneth Paltrow of GOOP. If that isn't enough to turn you off of the diet, this should. She advocates drinking alkaline water every morning, but she also advocates squeezing fresh, organic lemon juice (an acid) into the alkaline water. Know what happens when you mix an acid and a base? You get a neutral result... thus eliminating any so called benefit from drinking what is now, expensive non-alkaline lemon flavored water.

    Yes! The sentence "Gwyneth Paltrow is a believer in this" is all I need to hear to inform me that I DONT want to follow it.

    Yes, the appeal to authority may be a fallacy, but I think the suspicion of quacks is pretty legit.
  • MargaretYakoda
    MargaretYakoda Posts: 2,998 Member
    ccrdragon wrote: »
    One of the big proponents of the alkaline diets is Gwyneth Paltrow of GOOP. If that isn't enough to turn you off of the diet, this should. She advocates drinking alkaline water every morning, but she also advocates squeezing fresh, organic lemon juice (an acid) into the alkaline water. Know what happens when you mix an acid and a base? You get a neutral result... thus eliminating any so called benefit from drinking what is now, expensive non-alkaline lemon flavored water.

    Yes! The sentence "Gwyneth Paltrow is a believer in this" is all I need to hear to inform me that I DONT want to follow it.

    Yes, the appeal to authority may be a fallacy, but I think the suspicion of quacks is pretty legit.

    One needs to be an actual authority for the appeal to authority fallacy to enter into this.

    Which pretty much leaves Gwyneth Paltrow out of that particular logical fallacy.

    Is there a “appeal to *newage” fallacy?


    *rhymes with sewage.
  • MargaretYakoda
    MargaretYakoda Posts: 2,998 Member
    Apparently some people are feeding their infants an alkaline diet. Mixing their own formulas. Which isn’t the best idea.
    To put it mildly.

    https://www.insider.com/alkaline-diet-babies-homemade-formula-hospitalized-rickets-2021-8?amp
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,106 Member
    Apparently some people are feeding their infants an alkaline diet. Mixing their own formulas. Which isn’t the best idea.
    To put it mildly.

    https://www.insider.com/alkaline-diet-babies-homemade-formula-hospitalized-rickets-2021-8?amp

    That's very sad.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    Back in around 2013, I acquired a very bad case of MRSA. Cut my foot on a shell (was swimming with sharks and stingrays in Belize and got freaked out a bit) and got a tiny red bump on my rear a few days later. Within a week, it was as large as a grapefruit and I couldn't sit down and it was on fire. Doc wanted to put me in the ICU, but I convinced him to lance it, drain it and just go home with antibiotics. Aside from dislocating my knee, definitely the most painful thing I've ever experienced. When a doc says, "this is going to really, really hurt", not a good thing.

    Long story short, I ended up having to take six or seven rounds of antibiotics and it would not go away. In desperation (and a bad MRSA infection will make you very desperate), I did the Alkaline Diet. This was after reading about people having MRSA for years or even decades, never being able to get rid of it. Also, MRSA is contagious and can spread to family members. You have to be absolutely sterile when dealing with your wounds. I read that quite a few people were saying they got rid of it from doing the Alkaline Diet. So I tried it. I was off the antibiotics at that time (had been for weeks) and the MRSA went away.

    Now, could it have been the antibiotics working after I was done with them? Maybe. I don't know and, quite frankly, don't care. But the MRSA, which kept reappearing on my skin, disappeared and stayed gone. When I've taken blood tests now, it's not detectable, even though they say you never quite get rid of it once you're septic (it enters the blood, which it did).

    I honestly just think that not doing any carbs/sugar to feed it would have been likely a huge help.

    The "something worked; not sure what" resonates with me - as of last December I'd been dealing with golfer's elbow for two years, and had tried massage, acupuncture, and physical therapy (which included Graston, laser, topical dexamethasone, and exercises to do at home which I did religiously.) Then we had a spike in the coronavirus and I stopped going to PT, but I did start doing a lot of downward dog, and low and behold, the pain went away! While it could have been time plus everything else, I do strongly suspect that the downward dog in that point of my recovery was quite helpful.

    Do you have a theory as to why the Alkaline Diet helped? Or did you say that here and I didn't understand it because this is different from my mom's plan to control her silent reflux?
    I honestly just think that not doing any carbs/sugar to feed it would have been likely a huge help.

    I have read (in a book so I do not have the reference handy) that spikes in sugar intake depresses the immune system, so yes, I can see how reducing that could help in your case.
  • MikePfirrman
    MikePfirrman Posts: 3,307 Member
    @MargaretYakoda -- I pray you never have to go through what I did. MRSA kills more people annually than AIDS. It's brutal. And as I mentioned, I was desparate and have no idea if it worked. If you comprehended that, you might not have posted such a glib response.

    And, also, as I mentioned, don't care what others think. All I know is the MRSA, something that many never get rid of their entire lives, is gone and not detectable. Quite honestly, I don't mind if strangers on the internet agree or not that I did it in desperation. My ego doesn't need your approval.

    I’m glad you no longer have MRSA.
    I do know people who have had it.

    But alkaline water is still hooey.
    Also? All I did was post a jpg of the Wikipedia article that says it is quackery. I did not attack you personally in any way.

    Again, I am glad you know longer have MRSA.

    You and I agree the Alkaline part is complete BS. Here's a good article by MD Anderson (the top Cancer Center in the US). They have another one that basically says, "It's Hooey...". But this one, in particular, states my view of it a lot better.

    I know you didn't attack me, but your entire response was assuming I believe that the Alkaline Diet changes your pH. Honestly, I know a lot more about body chemistry and health, in general, now than I did then. But I never claimed that pH could be changed and you were responding in a way that I had somehow definitively stated that.

    https://www.mdanderson.org/publications/focused-on-health/the-alkaline-diet--what-you-need-to-know.h18-1592202.html

    I guess is what I'm saying is that no matter what health condition you have, eating a much healthier diet, especially one that leans toward The Blue Zone or Mediterranean Diet, will assist you in getting healthy. I think in my case, just eliminating the sugar went a long way.
  • MikePfirrman
    MikePfirrman Posts: 3,307 Member
    @MargaretYakoda -- I pray you never have to go through what I did. MRSA kills more people annually than AIDS. It's brutal. And as I mentioned, I was desparate and have no idea if it worked. If you comprehended that, you might not have posted such a glib response.

    And, also, as I mentioned, don't care what others think. All I know is the MRSA, something that many never get rid of their entire lives, is gone and not detectable. Quite honestly, I don't mind if strangers on the internet agree or not that I did it in desperation. My ego doesn't need your approval.

    My dad was one of those who never got rid of MRSA. Hospitalized on average 3 times a year for a week to 10 days while taking antibiotics. For many,many years.
    I’m really glad for you that yours is hopefully gone!

    I'm so sorry to hear that. It's a terrible thing if you can't get rid of it and so, so discouraging when you know that antibiotics destroy your microbiome/immune system. And you just keep taking round after round and praying that no signs of it come back. And then it does.

    And not only that, it's contagious. So you also worry you will spread it to your family. Just a horrid condition.

    I hope he's better now or at peace.