Alkalize your body? No thanks
March 4th, 2010
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Recently it seems that there’s a new scam out there. For years, there have been various quacks out there saying that we need to “energize,” “detoxify” or “rebalanced” our bodies, but now there are many who think the answer is to “alkalize” the body. To this end, a number of products have been pushed which claim to do the trick when it comes to making your body “more alkaline.”
As you probably know from basic chemistry, an alkaline, or base is the opposite of an acid and the level of acidity or alkalinity of a substance is measured by pH. Seven represents neutral and lower pH values represent a more acidic substance while higher pH represents a more basic substance. Acids and bases, of course, will react with each other and, if equal, result in a neutral solution of water an an ionic salt.
There’s not a lot you can do to change the pH of your body by very much. You can take antacids to neutralize some of the acid in your stomach, and if you have heartburn, that might be desirable, but the effect is temporary. The pH of urine may also be altered by what you consume, but that’s also temporary.
The above graphic comes from an actual “alkalize your body” website. It appears to indicate that it’s preferable for your body to have a pH similar to that of bleach or lithium hydroxide than one closer to lemon juice or stomach acid. I don’t think I’d want to be either one of those levels, but given the choice between the two, I’d rather be acidic.
But would you even want to make your body alkaline? Probably not. The human body does not have any single pH value. Blood is, on average, ever so slightly bellow a pH of seven, making it basic. Lymphatic fluid and the fluid in most cells tends to be ever so slightly acidic. The stomach and digestive tract is acidic and so is the mouth. Biological compounds and systems are actually far more likely to be acidic than alkaline, and important organic molecules are often acidic. DNA, is Deoxyribonucleic acid, only one of the vital nucleic acids. Amino acids are vital to numerous biological functions. Numerous vitamins and other critical compounds are also acidic.
In many cases, the very acidity of the body preforms a vital function. Acidic environments can help inhibit the growth of pathogenic bacteria, and in the case of the digestive tract, the acidity of digestive fluids help break down food. The acidity of the stomach is high enough to cause damage to tissue, but the body has evolved to deal with this – a protective mucus lining prevents the stomach from digesting itself.
Of course, acidic substances can be very harmful, IF they are acidic enough. This is likely where the origin of this scam lies. To the lay person, the term “acid” invokes images of the Joker leaving Batman dangling above a vat of sulfuric acid, or the tales of “The Acid Bath Murderer.” Indeed, powerful acids can be quite harmful, and this could lead one to believe that acids are bad for the body in general. However, bases can be just as bad, if not worse. Powerful bases like lye can be found in drain cleaners and can easily cause a severe chemical burn. A small amount of a substance like cesium hydroxide will literally eat flesh down to the bone, if you are unlucky enough to get some on you.
Plenty of foods are acidic, but few are alkaline. Indeed, alkaline substances tend to be inorganic. Some of the few examples of biologically-created bases include eggshells and seashells. Some of the weaker bases you’re likely to encounter (which are weak enough not to cause burns or eat away your tissue down to the bone) include baking soda, limtstone and chalk.
So how do you alkalize your body, at least according to these quack claims? One would think it would probably be pretty simple – just get a lot of limestone or baking soda and eat it, bathe in it, inject it or whatever else it might take to get your body alkalized (and possibly kill yourself in the process). No, that would make too much sense. You have to buy their special products, such as “ionic water” or “balanced substances” including things like colloidal silver and other products which have no medical value.
But if you want an example of extreme stupidity, check out what this site has to say:
Although lemons are acidic, they are alkalizing in your body.
Most of the foods we eat are very acidic and too much acid can bring about a barrage of health problems. That’s because your body actually prefers to be alkaline. Instead, most people bombard their systems with too many acidic foods and drinks, which have long lasting detrimental effects. That’s why lemons are so important to consume. They help alkalize your blood and your body thanks you!
Yeah, go figure – adding an acidic substance to your body will make it more alkaline? Makes about as much sense as the rest of the claims.
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 12:35 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Not Even Wrong, Obfuscation, Quackery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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March 4th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
The pathetic thing is these nitwits don’t seem to understand that almost all the body’s electrolytes are buffered; they resist inputs that try to change their pH value and will always drag the system back to equilibrium at the set value required for the biochemical activities they are doing.
Anyone that alkalizes their body in any significant way, would destroy the homeostasis of these systems and surely die.
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March 4th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
I prefer alcoholyzing my body because it phonetically sounds pretty close to alkalizing but the word has more letters which makes it bigger and better. This rationalization makes as much sense as the rationalization to alkalyze one’s body, doesn’t it?
At least red wine is a demonstrated (not proven) heart disease fighter and gets her “in the mood” which is really good for me. Will the alkaline products do this?
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March 4th, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Truth be told, I have never been a fan of the word “base” or “basic” as it applies to pH, because it’s too confusing to a lay person or used out of context. “Alkaline” technically is a slightly different thing, but in practice basically the same. (note, I just used the word basically – same root word, in a different context with a different meaning. This is what I’m talking about.)
Anyways..
As DV82XL notes, your body is pretty much buffered from one thing to another and it’s possible that the pH of a fluid in your body will go up and down a little bit based on a number of things like nutrition, time of day etc. Example: Exercise will cause many of your body’s fluids to become more acidic (temporarily) because of lactic acid.
So, just like blood sugar or oxygenation or whatever, it’s going to go up and down a little bit by time of day, meals, exercise and stuff. You don’t want to just dumbly try to force your body to become higher (or lower) in Ph by forcing something on it.
Your body regulates this all internally. It does occasionally occur that the human body accumulates too much acid in blood plasma and lymphatic fluids (remember all fluids are generally seperate and regulated differently, so there’s no one pH for the whole body) It’s called acidosis. You DO NOT want to simply try to neutralize the acid if you have acidosis, because it’s a potentially serious medical condition and usually the acidity is just a symptom of the problem. The problem is often with the kidneys. You need real medical treatment to treat acidosis and whatever the underlying cause is that is making your body retain acids. It can also be caused by an iron overload and other medical conditions. So yeah, acidosis is nothing to treat with quack products.
BTW: Too high a pH of body fluids can be a very very bad thing too. Urine is supposed to be acidic. If it becomes too acidic it can cause kidney stones, but if it becomes too basic it can also cause kidney stones. Minerals fall out of suspension and crystallize into stones. High urine pH can damage kidneys. If you have too high a pH in your digestive tract you can run into major problems too. It also can give you gal stones.
So yeah, this is all bull****. Your body regulates its various pH’s pretty well and does not need you messing with it. Unless, of course, there’s a problem (like acidosis or something) and in that case, you need real medical treatment, not quackery
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March 4th, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Over here we have lutfisk( “lye fish”) as a christmas tradition. You take a dried piece of cod, you could almost play tennis with this thing, soak it in water for a week with frequent water changes to reconstitute it into something vaguely fish-like; soak it in lye(usually sodium hydroxide; the finns chicken out and use potash), then soak it in water with frequent changes for the next week or so to get the pH down from ~12 to something a little less caustic.
The end result is a puffy, semi-translucent goo that is unbelievably bland in flavour.
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March 4th, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Soylent said:
I have heard of this. Lye is the common term for Sodium hydroxide, also known as caustic soda. In its raw form, it is quite caustic (although it’s a dry powder, and it’s when its mixed with water that it gets really nasty and can give you a very bad burn). However, lye is also used in the making of soap. Traditional soap is made by reacting lye with fats. It denatures the fats and proteins and binds them, while at the same time breaking off glycerol. This is also part of the first stage of making biodeisel, except with biodeisel the glycerol is then removed. With soap, at least some of it is usually retained.
From what I’ve been told, the process of making lutfisk basically turns a lot of the lipids in the fish into soap. Some of the soap is washed out in the secondary process, but the end result is something that is a lot like soap and a little like unflavored gelitin nad not much like the fish it started off with.
I’ve never tasted it. I’ve seen it. One of my friends’ family’s eats it. They seem to not enjoy it at all, but also seem obligated to eat it.
What exactly is the point of this all? Are there people who enjoy this?
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March 4th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
Actually, I believe that the goal is to only partially soapify the fish. If you leave it in too long, the fats turn completely to soap. They call this undesirable effect of a bit too much soapification “soap fish”
However, Soylent can correct me if I’m wrong about this. I think the fish is supposed to be only partially reacted. It’s not completely turned into soap.
I don’t know of any reason why people eat it. Then again, I could say the same for Haggis or HeadCheese.
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March 4th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Does alcoholyzation meliorate the condition of being excessively acerbic? Or would that just exacerbate the condition?
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March 4th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
Finrod said:
Good one Finrod!
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March 4th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
The difference between acidosis and the stuff these products are talking about is acidosis is a real condition and demands real evaluation by a real doctor and real treatment. These “ionic water” and “alkalizing products” don’t actually alkalize your body (if they did they might very well kill you). They may as well be called “magic water” because the only condition they’ll cure is an acute case of fat wallet!
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March 4th, 2010 at 10:20 pm
An actual scientist said:
Be fair… “ionic water” can also cure dehydration.
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March 5th, 2010 at 12:27 am
Forgive an outsider for chiming in, but using alcoholization to treat acerbic people can be dicey. To a person naturally high in bile, alcoholization can exascerbate acerbidity, with excessive consumption leading to unmitigated gall.
Even a male who successfully uses alcoholization to reduce acerbidity may find that an overdose causes phallic flacidosis, turning his newfound sanguinity to melancholy and causing lacrimation.
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March 5th, 2010 at 1:40 am
Soylent said:
Where’s NNadir when you need him?
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March 5th, 2010 at 4:01 am
I have family members who swears by eating Lutefisk. the dish ranges from tasting realy soapy to tasting like a blob of unflavored gelatin. it all depends on the cook. somewhere in between these two extremes of bad taste there hides a dish that is quite palatable. the trick is to stop the process before the fish turns fully into soap and to get all the soap out before eating it. pretty hard thing to accomplish unless you have had lots of experience making it.
Tbh. For all the effort involved it is not really worth it to have lutefisk. even well made it has at most a mild fishy taste and a not an all together pleasing consistency. it’s the side dishes that make the meal so to say.
I happen to like fish however. so i may be biased against ruining good tasting food by heavy handed preparation methods.
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March 5th, 2010 at 4:21 am
drbuzz0 said:
Certainly. Like most every kind of strange food I think it was invented to preserve foodstuffs and just sort of clung on even after refrigeration and other superiour methods were invented and popularized.
You can preserve cod by cleaning it out, skinning it and flattening the fillet out to air dry in the sun, but this turns it into a wood-like plank. I guess they just figured it was tastier to apply lye during the process of reconstituting it into something edible.
Other methods of preserving fish include curing it with large amounts of salt and sugar and sticking it in a barrel. This is done with fatty fish like herring. To turn it back into something you can eat you let it soak in cold water for a day or two to leach out most of the salt; then you prepare it in some way. One interesting way to prepare herring is to pickle it like you would cucumbers with pepper, onion, vinegar and so on.
You can also ferment fish. Surströmming (‘Fermented herring’) is another scandinavian tradition; unfortunately this is punishes everyone in smell range equally rather than just the person eating it. You take freshly caught herring, remove the heads and leave the guts in, stick it in a barrel and put it in the sun for a few months. Then you take it out, stick it in a tin and let the fermentation process continue. They get their interesting flavour from the various waste products of anaerobic fermentation; small amounts of butyric acid, hydrogen sulfide, propionic acid, methanethiol, cadaverine, putrescine, ammonia and probably a handful of other delicious compounds that I’m not aware of. Surprisingly it doesn’t taste nearly as bad as it smells if you manage to acclimatize to the barftastic smell.
It’s no fun at all watching videos on youtube of swedes or norwegians calmy eating surströmming with in a roll of tunnbröd with red onions all the other condiments, but watching tourists torture themselves with it is quite a lot more interesting e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbRIpTUMNi0 or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTdKDltx4Cs
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March 5th, 2010 at 5:40 am
Luke Weston said:
my thoughts exactly.
Now we just need a King Kong reference.
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March 5th, 2010 at 7:03 am
As a Swedish citizen, I can confirm that lutfisk, fermented herring and pickled herring are all disgusting, but they are tradition, so one is supposed to eat them.
I don’t, though.
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March 5th, 2010 at 7:09 am
Troberg said:
As a swedish citizen I can confirm that pickled herring is about the most delicious thing ever invented.
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March 5th, 2010 at 8:09 am
All your base are belong to us
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March 5th, 2010 at 11:24 am
Well, I don’t think the Swedes are really the ones that make me wonder “Who would eat that”???
When you’re done brewing beer or something like that, you end up with this left over yeast residue. In most sane countries, they either throw this out or use it in some byproduct material, like cattle feed or something.
In Australia, they concentrate it, put it in jars and spread it on toast.
Then when foreigners (such as myself) are there, they tell them it’s just regular fruit jam, and then the American wonders why all the native Australians are snickering as he reaches for the toast and starts to eat it, and then realizes why as he says “What the hell? Did someone put salt in this” and they all start laughing…
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March 5th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
I find marmite quite delicious, but that’s probably the result of another peculiarly nordic treat.
Salty liquorice candy(ammonium chloride): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Malaco-04.jpg
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March 5th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
drbuzz0 said:
If you want a real treat, fried eggs on vegemite on toast as superb.
Actually, considering how close it is to breakfast, I think I’ll go make some now.
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March 5th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
my mom does this pH acidity deal. my wife is a biology major and my moms hubby is in the medical field. we have all tried to tell her it is crap and doesn’t do anything. she is convinced that it cured her chronic headaches, so she keeps buying the product. i’ve tried to explain that SHE cured her own headaches by believing that this stuff works. she also has the fat wallet syndrome……sigh.
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March 5th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Finrod said:
Nothing beats a couple of slices of strong cheese and a few freshly crushed garlic cloves on toast. It’s a travesty that you need a long weekend for the bad breath capable of melting through bank-vaults to wear off.
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March 5th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
Take a look at Elete, a water additive, (basically sea-water) that allows your body to increase uptake and use of water in your system.
Is in use for a lot of wildland firefighters, some athletes, and lots of hikers in the grand canyon.
Seems to work, and is the best hangover cure i have found yet.
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March 5th, 2010 at 10:46 pm
No, no, no. You’re missing the point.
Yes, your body maintains a particular Ph or you die, and nothing you can do will change that, BUT (and this is the idea at least), whatever mechanisms are in place to do that get over-used (your body uses something to change its Ph, it’s not entirely free). So, if you eat only so-called acidifying foods, it’s a strain.
I think of it like global warming, the temperature hasn’t risen much but the giant ice cubes are still melting. What happens when their gone?
Probably one of the major mechanisms that protects you
is not absorbing too much acid in the first place… but that would mean not absorbing all your food,
or you get gout, or both.
And, citric acid (lemon juice) supposedly metabolizes into citrate, which is basic. (and then it turns into VLDL and clogs ur veins, or something).
Do I believe this as stated by websites? No.
Would I waste money on alkalizing products? No.
Do I think there may be some truth to it, sort of? Sure.
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March 5th, 2010 at 10:48 pm
Adam said:
I meant “they’re”, ewww…. I’m sorry internet.
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March 6th, 2010 at 1:41 am
drbuzz0 said:
The trick is not to put it on really thick, and to butter the toast first (not with margarine, with some real butter). Give it a shot, can’t get much better than Vegemite toast for brekky.
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March 6th, 2010 at 2:25 am
Curtains said:
Actually, I don’t consider the stuff that. My first experience with it I spit it out because I was startled more than anything else. Expecting raspberry jam and biting into Vegemite is like taking a big gulp of what you think is water and having it be vodka. Well… maybe not that bad, but same idea.
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March 6th, 2010 at 7:06 am
Adam said:
Short term shocks to pH are dealt with using various buffers. In particular that of bicarbonate:
HCO3- + H+ H2CO3 H2O + CO2
Buffer solutions mitigate both acids and bases.
If there is a very severe shock the various buffering agents in blood and in cells; by either decreasing(in case of alkalosis) or increasing(in case of acidosis) the rate of respiration to retain more CO2 or eliminate more CO2 the above reaction can be shifted in the appropriate direction.
Long term, pH is maintained by your kidneys. Your kidneys either dump more bicarbonate or more hydrogen ions into urine, as required, to maintain pH. Nothing is “used up”.
Adam said:
The analogy is flawed; your body is not a closed system. There is no “organ” that takes CO2 out of the atmosphere and dumps it onto Jupiter when there is ‘too much CO2′ and no mechanisms that takes CO2 from Jupiter and dumps it onto Earth when there is ‘too little CO2′ to keep a homeostasis around what you consider to be the ‘correct level of CO2′.
Adam said:
If citric acid indeed metabolizes into citrate, it does so because your kidneys take the H+ and dump it into your urine just like it does with all other acidic foods you eat.
I find it more likely that your body will eliminate the citrate in short order rather than keeping it around as a pH buffer. Citrate is a key component in the citric acid cycle, the basic way in which your body breaks down carbohydrates into CO2 and water, making a bunch of ATP in the process. Citrate probably just looks like energy to your body.
Each glucose is used to produce approximately 36 ATP by by attaching a phosphate ion to adenosine diphosphate(ADP), turning it into adenosine triphosphate(ATP). ATP is the basic “energy currency” of your body; almost any reaction that needs to use energy will take one or more ATP and turn them into ADP + phosphate. ATP is an energy carrier in the same way electricity is; a light bulb is much more generally applicable if you first convert whatever energy source you’re using into electricity rather than constructing 10 different bulbs, one using coal, one using natural gas, one using biomass, one using nuclear fission, one using oil, one using wind and so on. In the same way, it was much easier for evolution to find a way to make muscles and ion transport proteins, flagella and so on to work with only ATP; then produce ATP from the various stages of break down of fats, proteins, carbohydrates, anaerobic metabolism of glucose into lactic acid etc.
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March 6th, 2010 at 7:11 am
That first formula didn’t show up because it interpreted my arrows as malfomated tags and removed them.
Lets try this:
Let the equal signs below be a stand-in for a reverisble reaction sign:
HCO3- + H+ = H2CO3 = H2O + CO2
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March 6th, 2010 at 9:45 pm
Following the arrow and not paying attention to the illustrations, it would seem that their goal is to increase every part of our body except our bust area from 2.5 to around 8.5.
8.5’s not too bad I guess, sure it’s akin to saying that having a 1 megaton dropped on your city isn’t as bad as a 10 megaton one but hey, it’s more like baking soda than lye and everyone knows that along with duct tape, baking soda solves practically every problem imaginable.
I was most confused at their apparent claim that people can have a PH of around 2-3.
I’m not about to go averaging out the PHs of every substance in the body based on their abundance, but I’d think we’d be around 7 to 8 simply because the ph of blood is around 7.5.
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March 8th, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Soylent said:
I am a Minnesotan of largely Swedish descent, and I enthusiastically agree!
Lutefisk, on the other hand, is best eaten on a dare. You eat it so that you can say you did. At least, that’s why people around here will eat it. Its primary value is to hold some sort of sauce that renders it slightly less disgusting. I’ve had both drawn butter and cream sauce with lutefisk. The latter is better; it has more flavor, which is something lutefisk greatly lacks. (To be fair, fresh cod isn’t much more flavorful, and is good primarily for how well it soaks up seasonings.)
Curse you, now I’m craving pickled herring! And my father-in-law finished off the jar last weekend!
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March 9th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
It’s not just about alkalizing your body. That is part of it along with cleaning out the toxins and filling your body with good nutrition to keep you naturally healthy and in good condition. Chemicals don’t do this, and that seems common sense. You need real food and water with good fresh live nutrition. Acid comes from chemicals we put in our body and our body needs help to get them all out because we live in such a chemical full world thanks to the big pharma companies. They make money when we get sick duh! They want us sick and tell us chemicals are good.
Lemon is good because it helps clear your system. It acts like a natural cleaner to push all that toxic stuff from your blood and bowels and liver. Good vegies and water and also natural herbs and enzymes. No tap water because they put toxic fluoride in that. If you live somewhere they say there’s no fluoride put in the water, don’t trust them. Get it tested because chances are there is fluoride even if they say no. God knows what other chemicals they are putting there!
This is just another false discussion sponsored by the big companies. I wonder how much their puppets get paid to lie like this and if they ever think about how wrong what they do is.
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March 9th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
Jake said:
Luckily, Jake was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence.
It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Commie works.
God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural … fluids.
You know when fluoridation first began?
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March 10th, 2010 at 1:57 am
I’m not sure what ur saying? is that supposed to be sarcastic? r u saying that chemicals in water are good for u or r u agreeing?
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March 10th, 2010 at 2:25 am
Jake said:
The fact that you cannot tell and do not understand the reference, speaks volumes…
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March 11th, 2010 at 11:00 am
Jake said:
I’m not going for the lemon option. I’m allergic to lemons. (Pity, too; I didn’t discover the allergy until I was 14, by which time I had developed a great passion for lemons.)
Indeed, you should not trust them if they say there’s no flouride put in the water. Most parts of the world have flouride in the water naturally! HORRORS! How did anyone survive in ancient times, drinking all that flouride? And how can you possibly know what other chemicals are in there? (Hmmm — maybe you could try *asking*? If you’re American, there’s this thing called the Freedom Of Information Act, which means they’re legally obligated to provide that sort of information if you ask.)
Acid comes from the food you eat — but a lot more of it comes from glands in your stomach, which produce peptic acid and hydrochloric acid. It’s potent stuff, which is why heartburn can be so excruciating. Fortunately, your body neutralizes it before it gets into the blood. In fact, your body is very good at buffering the blood. So good that it is actually not possible to change your blood pH in any meaningful way. (Sure, you can get a brief shift, but your body sorts that out promptly.) You can only live in a very narrow range of pH values, right around 7 (neutral). If you actually did manage to alkalize your body, it would have a dramatic effect — you would die. As people on detox regimes aren’t dropping dead, I think we can safely conclude that alkalizing your body in this manner is not actually possible.
You also may want to educate yourself as to what chemicals are. Everything is a chemical. Water itself is a chemical (H20). If you think chemicals are bad while vitamins are good, this means you don’t know what a chemical is, which in turns means you haven’t really thought much about why chemicals are supposed to be bad. Too much sodium chloride (table salt) is bad for you because it raises blood pressure — but not enough, and you will die rather painfully. Vitamin C, perhaps the most famous of the vitamins, prevents a horrific death by scurvy — but it is also a chemical, and an acidic one at that: ascorbic acid. (It’s what gives lemons their distinctive tang. In fact, all acids taste sour.)
It’s very important to keep your body well nourished, and a good variety of fruit and vegetables are one of the best ways to do that. But they are made of chemicals, as are you. It’s not that chemicals are bad. It’s that you need to make sure you are getting enough of some important chemicals, and not overdoing it on others.
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May 24th, 2010 at 11:23 am
I believe in the acid/alkaline balance thingy. I don’t buy products that claim to do as much. Instead I eat foods that are lower in acid and higher in alkaline.
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October 2nd, 2010 at 9:05 pm
I have never read so much sarcasm and stupidity in whole life.
Is the author trying to pretend that they understand something about the pH of the body as they really have no idea what so ever.
Are you saying the the body adjust its pH without any input from what we eat and what we drink at all, if that is what you are saying, you are nuts.
So we do we take medications if they have no effects on the body.
EVERYTHING you eat and drink makes a difference to your body’s pH.
And for the information of everyone, the site where you got the above image suggests you drink natural mineral water which is slightly alkaline to help buffer some of the excess acidity we normally have because of the amount of acidic foods and beverages available these days.
And if you prefer to be slightly acidic, we know that from your writing.
And where did you get that the blood is slightly acidic.
Blood pH is normally between 7.2 – 7.5 if it goes under 7pH you are already dead.
Maybe you already are as you have no idea what you are saying and trying to sound like someone who really does and for those dead brains who agree, get off your alcohization and start thinking.
Some One Who Understand Body pH for over 33 years.
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October 2nd, 2010 at 9:16 pm
Since the real Robert Atkins died 2003, I can only assume that the above idiot is some middle aged nobody living in his parent’s basement.
You apparently know nothing about ether biochemistry or homeostasis except what you have read on crank websites. We can see right through you nit-wit, like every other nut-job that shows up you don’t back up a thing you write with evidence or citations. Your statements will be granted the credence they deserve – none.
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October 2nd, 2010 at 10:59 pm
Robert Atkins said:
I said blood was basic. However, it’s constant. It can become more acidic in some circumstances. If you exercise heavily, the lactic acid produced will lower the pH of your blood. The body of course compensates for this. If your blood stays at too low a pH for more than a short period of time as it might with a high lactic acid level, that is called acidosis and is vindictive of major problems that a doctor needs to address.
Regardless your body does not have one pH. Your blood is one level and your various fluids are different levels. the digestive tract is always acidic and anything you eat or drink will only impact this directly and only temporarily.
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