What is it?
The Alkaline Diet is a diet which promotes the intake of foods which have an alkaline (base) producing effect in your body (pH above 7.0) and omits those that are acid producing (pH less than 7.0). The pH of the foods is determined by burning the food and measuring the pH of the ash, not the raw food item itself with the presumption that the process of burning the food acts as a surrogate for human metabolism thankfully, although similar, our metabolism is a great deal more controlled!
According to the pH of the ash foods are divided into two classes those that are acid and those that are alkaline.
Acidic foods: meat, fish, poultry, cheese, eggs, grains, sugar and processed foods.
Alkaline foods: Fruit, vegetables, legumes some nuts and seeds.
Why Do People Do It?
The underlying principal of the alkaline diet is that you can change your body’s pH to become more alkaline though eating alkaline producing foods. There are many claims as to why you would want to do this amongst the most regularly touted being that the more alkaline your body the less susceptible you will be to developing cancer because cancer cells cannot survive in a more alkaline environment.
Will Following the Alkaline Diet Make My Body Less Acidic?
I am not going to beat around the bush on this and I will do a spoiler alert right now that the notion that you can alter your body’s pH through your food choices is not only flawed from a chemistry point of view it is also hugely undesirable from a human biology perspective. While you can’t change the pH of your internal environment (your blood) through eating alkaline foods (or drinking alkaline water), what you can change is the pH of your saliva and urine1, however, neither of which are reflective of your blood or cell pH2. Furthermore if you have managed to alter your urine to be basic this is simply proof of your body’s effort to excrete the excess basic irons to counteract this unnatural (and unwelcome) manipulation.
Let us look at why eating an alkaline diet does not make your body more alkaline and why we wouldn’t want to do this even if we could.
What is the Natural pH of My Body (and Does it Matter)?
The pH values of different components within your body vary greatly for example your stomach acid has a pH around 1.4 and your blood has a narrowly controlled pH range of between 7.35-7.4 which is slightly basic. What you must understand is that the pH of these different body components are not different nor so tightly regulated by accident or for no reason they are those values due to the result of years of refining and clever evolution to be the best pHs to carry out their specific functions. The very functions that enable you to survive.
In support of the necessity of your body to maintain its pH without interference studies have shown various negative effects of drinking alkaline water including inhibited secretion of stomach acid3 and reduced emptying of bile from the gall bladder4 both of which will cause unpleasant gastrointestinal symptoms, reduced digestive capacity and the potential for nutritional deficiencies which have many health consequences as well as placing those with a genetic predisposition at an increased risk of developing an eating disorder5,6.
How Does My Body Regulate Its pH?
Through everyday metabolic processes your body naturally produces acidic substances. However, this acid generation is far from a problem because your body has in place several mechanisms to protect you from damaging and potentially life-threatening fluctuations in blood pH that would occur quickly without them and these processes are;
- A blood-buffering system. This has the function of exactly what the name implies buffering or lessening the impact by working to partially neutralise any acid.
- Respiration adjustment. Your rate and depth of breathing automatically changes depending if you need to either increase or decrease the pH of your blood. As you breathe off carbon dioxide your restore your alkalinity.
- Urine composition. Your kidneys filter your blood and work either to upregulate or downregulate the amount of acidic or basic metabolic products you excrete and therefore help regulate the pH of your blood.
Now, we have the information to answer the questions ‘Can we make our bodies more alkaline through the foods we choose to consume?’ (and the answer is no, not really). However, a more important question may be ‘If we could do, would we want to make our bodies more basic through the foods we consume?’ to which the answer is a resounding ‘no’.
The number of preventative and back-up measures your body has in place (of which I gave a very simplified taste above) to control the pH of your blood highlights the level of importance your body places on ensuring your blood pH is kept stable because this narrow range is the range within which your blood and the enzymes within it can perform all their necessary functions.
What About Acid & Cancer?
The concept that cancerous cells do not survive in a highly basic environment is true, what is equally true is that cancer cells also do not survive in a highly acidic environment and more importantly neither will the human being trying to kill the cancer! So, basicing up your body (even if it was possible which it’s not) will not prevent or cure cancer.
As a side not it is the cancer cells themselves which create an acidic environment due to their high growth rate and metabolic activity and not that the initial presence of an acidic environment caused or promoted cancer.
The Bottom Line; Does the Alkaline Diet Work?
Maybe, in that it may impart improved health outcomes but not because of the mechanism it is promoted to work by in that the Alkaline Diet does not make your body more alkaline and even if it did this would create more harm than good. Any health benefit people experience on this diet are more than likely attributable to the emphasis on consumption of fruit and vegetables and the decreased consumption of processed foods both of which are well recognised as health promoting practices. There are many foods within the ‘acid’ group that have specific nutritional properties that merit their inclusion in a healthy diet. It comes down to the fact that any dietary changes you make should be sustainable and respect your body and it is more than likely you can experience the same if not greater health benefits without cutting out acidic foods because the reality is any health gains made on the alkaline diet are not attributable to a change in blood pH. Therefore, it is up to you to either use this information you’ve now gained and adapt the valuable bits of this diet to your life with realistic expectations or you can take the stance of the British Dietetics Association who said it best when they described the Alkaline diet as “nonsense” and included it in the “top 5 celeb diets to avoid in 2018”7 (which is equally applicable to 2019 and beyond).
I have trust in the human body, I have trust in my body, and I have trust in your body that it knows what it is doing and the best thing you or I can do is revere in the infinite wisdom of our bodies and cease trying to manipulate them to fit into the latest and greatest diet ‘hack’.
Your body got this.
With my whole heart I hope you found this information useful and inspiring.
Become Great. Live Great.
Bonnie.
Reference
- Buclin T, Cosma M, Appenzeller M, et al. Diet acids and alkalis influence calcium retention in bone. Osteoporos Int 2001;12:493–9.
- Maurer M, Riesen W, Muser J, et al. Neutralization of Western diet inhibits bone resorption independently of K intake and reduces cortisol secretion in humans. Am J Physiol Renal Physiol. 2003;284: F32–40
- Drobnik M. [Evaluation of pharmacodynamic properties of medium-mineralized alkaline water designed for distribution as bottled natural mineral water]. Rocz Pań stwowego Zakładu Hig. 2000;51:379–84.
- Gasbarrini G, Arienti V, Magri F, et al. [Effects of bicarbonatedalkaline water (Uliveto) on gastric and gallbladder emptying in normal subjects. Ultrasonic evaluation]. Minerva Med. 1991;82:59–62.
- Ramacciotti CE, Perrone P, Coli E, Burgalassi A, Conversano C, Massimetti G, Dell’Osso L. Orthorexia nervosa in the general population: a preliminary screening using a self-administered questionnaire (ORTO-15). Eat Weight Disord. 2011. 16:e127–30.
- Portela de Santana ML, da Costa Ribeiro Junior H, Mora Giral M, Raich RM. Epidemiology and risk factors of eating disorder in adolescence: a review. Nutr Hosp. 2012 27(2):391–401.
- “Top 5 worst celeb diets to avoid in 2018”. British Dietetic Association. 7 December 2017. The British Dietetic Association (BDA) today revealed its much-anticipated annual list of celebrity diets to avoid in 2018. The line-up this year includes Raw Vegan, Alkaline, Pioppi and Ketogenic diets as well as Katie Price’s Nutritional Supplements.
2 thoughts on “The Alkaline Diet; Does it Work?”
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