Milk - acid or alkaline?

[Slappy Hands]

The acid/alkaline conundrum is very important for health imo, but there is so much misinformation on it that it's practically impossible to figure out the facts. Citrus, for example, will alkalize your body, unless you have blood sugar regulation issues. Lemons in particular apparently have an ionic charge that work similar to electrolized water if freshly squeezed. But this is beside the point, lemons are famous for their counter-intuitive effects.

Milk is not. Raw, homogenized, pasteurized - everyone has a different opinion. People say milk is low in phosphorus, but google says otherwise. Some say casein prevents calcium absorption, but a lot of studies on rats says otherwise. The effects of lactose and casein on insulin seem to be a lot more devastating than simple sucrose, which people suggest has an alkalizing (stressing?) effect on the cell, regardless of the mineral/phosphorus content...

What is your experience? I -love- milk (I'm Irish and am surrounded by organic grassfed butter squirters [albeit darty darty Holsteiners!) but my intuition has given up trying to figure it out. I know milk can completely neutralize the stomach's ability to digest food for up to four hours, but the effect it has on the stomach has very little relevance to the over all effect on the body (cell/plasma) pH from everything I read. That's generally where people let their brains take a nap and just start spouting stuff like "lol nob blood alweyz at 7.456755756 l2p" or "food cant change body pH cuz of stomach, use common sense friend"

Can anyone shed some light on this?

 

[tara]

It looks to me too as though pH is very important, and as though food can affect this significantly.
I agree that the body's 's ability to regulate its blood pH doesn't make the pH in the rest of the tissues irrelevant.
I'm going with Peat and Reams that average UpH of ~6.3 - 6.7 is generally optimal, and too far out of that range is problematic.

Peat says the calcium in milk tends to have alkalising effects. I don't know if there is any good contrary evidence.

I have difficulty with too much milk, and would be pleased if I could solve it, because I love milk too.
I had not come across the theory that it messes with digestive pH for hours after. Nor had I heard that casein prevents calcium absorption. I'm still wondering about whether the A1/A2 protein issue has relevance too - the promoters of that theory point to A1 promoting diabetes etc, but not A2.

Not shedding much light, but I'm interested in this topic.

 

[you]

Doesn't matter.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22081694

Milk and dairy products neither produce acid upon metabolism nor cause metabolic acidosis, and systemic pH is not influenced by diet

The modern diet, and dairy product consumption, does not make the body acidic. Alkaline diets alter urine pH but do not change systemic pH.

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People say milk is low in phosphorus, but google says otherwise

Everything is in comparison and in comparison to (almost) all other protein sources, milk is "low in phosphorus".

 

[tara]

Doesn't matter.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22081694

Milk and dairy products neither produce acid upon metabolism nor cause metabolic acidosis, and systemic pH is not influenced by diet

The modern diet, and dairy product consumption, does not make the body acidic. Alkaline diets alter urine pH but do not change systemic pH.

I just read the abstract, not the full article. What do they mean by systemic pH? Did they do any long term testing, or just short term?

Peat has said 24 hr UpH should probably be between 6.3 and 6.7. I think Peat has said that milk tends to be systemically alkalinising because the alkaline minerals (esp. calcium and potassium) outweigh the acidic minerals (eg phosphorus). So he would agree that milk is not acidifying, but he would disagree that diet cannot affect systemic pH. I believe he has talked at length about intra- and intercellular pH and the interdependent effects of diet, CO2 and related molecules, etc.
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According to Reams, UpH tends to reflect tissue intracellular pH (not blood pH, which is tightly regulated close to 7.4 as long as the body has the buffers etc to maintain it).
There seems to be quite a bit of evidence that UpH can be influenced by diet.