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autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis MAY be helped by drinking baking soda

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  • jsquaredd
    jsquaredd Posts: 5 Member
    From the study:

    One of the many functions of the kidneys is balancing important compounds like acid, potassium and sodium. With kidney disease, there is impaired kidney function and one of the resulting problems can be that the blood becomes too acidic, O'Connor says. Significant consequences can include increased risk of cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis.
    "It sets the whole system up to fail basically," O'Connor says. Clinical trials have shown that a daily dose of baking soda can not only reduce acidity but actually slow progression of the kidney disease, and it's now a therapy offered to patients.


    In other words, it sounds like they are saying if you eat too acidic for too long, you are overworking your kidneys and they not able to keep your body pH neutral. To me, this sounds exactly like they are saying that the process of making your body neutral (again, which it does an absolutely amazing job of) also comes at a cost.

    Except that's not what the study was saying. It said with already damaged kidneys, blood can get too acidic. Not that too much acid damages the kidneys. There's nothing in this paper that points to acid as anything that causes kidney damage, but rather it's a symptom of kidney damage they were trying to fight.

    And after reading the journal article, the hypothesized reason for the anti-inflammatory result was actually a cholinergic response, which for some reason necessitated both the baking soda and functioning proton pumps in the stomach but may have nothing at all to do with an acid/base reaction. It looks like the baking soda was originally studied to fight excess acid from kidney disease, but they then found out it also had an anti-inflammatory effect, but not that that effect had anything necessarily to do with acid/base chemistry. Does that seem likely given the fact that they found you absolutely needed functioning proton pumps to get the effect? Sure, it does. But until they try a different base and get the same response, no one can be sure this even has anything to do with acid/base chemistry.
  • aklrn
    aklrn Posts: 20 Member
    AnvilHead wrote: »
    Interesting. Find it ironic that Baking Soda is a very alkaline substance, yet people have been saying "bah" for years on the pH diet -- eating more alkaline versus acidic. I'm not sure I completely buy into the pH diet, but I do think there's something to the Western diet being so acidic. People always counter that with saying the body does an amazing job of balancing pH, which it does, but is this the first indication of "at what cost"? Perhaps that's what they are on to here.

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    Thank you for science! Body always compensates.
  • snickerscharlie
    snickerscharlie Posts: 8,581 Member
    Aaron_K123 wrote: »
    It can also help constipation unintentionally if you really want to try this....

    Baking soda or the flag button?

    Both, methinks.