Confused About Acid/Alkaline Balance

DankMemes

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My understanding is that we should be eating foods that are rich in alkaline minerals and low in acidic minerals but at the same time I see recommendations for Colas, Apple cider vinegar, aspirin, ascorbic acid etc and they're all highly acidic. Too much alkaline supposedly neutralises the PH of our stomachs leading to indigestion (i've noticed this when supplementing cream of tartar).

Bi-carb soda is another thing that confuses me, it's an alkaline compound but it's used to increase CO2 which is an acid?

Is 'acid' a category certain chemicals or is everything 'acidic' have a PH lower than 7 (fatty acids, malic acid) etc?

Sorry if this seems basic, but science has never been my strong suit.
 

tara

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I don't have this all clear in my head yet, but as I understand it:

Ascorbic acid are not supplements Peat recommends particularly, but some people here say they have found them helpful.
Colas and aspirin are more from Peat. He says the phosphorus in colas is less than in meat and grains, so not too big a deal. Vinegar I think he recommends for it's somewhat anti-septic effects with carrot salad.

Some people have given other explanations, and I'm not sure I'm right here, but I think baking soda can produce some CO2, which as you say is acidic, but it does so by neutralising acids somewhere in the system for an over all alkalising effect. I think bag breathing and other reduced breathing practices may have acidifying effects by raising CO2. I think when people get too acidic, the body can attempt to balance this by hyperventilation to get rid of some of the CO2, to raise pH. I think I needed more alkaline minerals (along with other things) as part of being able to sustain better CO2 levels/reduce hyperventilation.

It's not just the actual pH of a food that matters, but also which minerals make it up, and what the body does with them. This is more complex than I have grasped yet.
I think everything acidic probably has a pH less than 7. But some of those substances may contain alkaline minerals too, and maybe the body can use these somehow to maintain alkaline stores? not sure about this.

Peat encourages plenty of the alkaline minerals partly because they each have their own job to do, but I suspect also to help balance the other more acidic factors.

Peat has said that optimal 24hr urine pH should ideally be in the range 6.3-6.7. This is more acidic than some of the promoters of 'alkaline diets' propose. I'm inclined to go with Peat's (and Reams) take on this.
 
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DankMemes

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I'm still a bit iffy about the cola, drinking it leaves the 'furry' feeling on my teeth and the association with calcium kidney stones probably means that excess calcium is being excreted.

I've been looking for a fizzy drink without citric or phosphoric acid and red bull seems to be the only one.
 

Giraffe

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Peat wants the blood a little alkaline, but inside the cell it should be a little acidic. If cells are stressed they start to produce lactic acid instead of CO2. CO2 easily leaves the lungs, but lactic acid does not. He recommends to increase increase CO2 (baking soda, bag breathing) in order to stop the stress reaction.

You might want to read Wikipedia: Bohr effect or check the interview transcripts.

DankMemes said:
post 102989 Too much alkaline supposedly neutralises the PH of our stomachs leading to indigestion (i've noticed this when supplementing cream of tartar).
In one of the herb doctor shows Sarah recommended to take baking soda away from meals because you don't want it to interfere with digestion. If I remember it right they where talking about quite high amounts here like 1 tbsp.
 
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tara

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Giraffe said:
post 103038 Peat wants the blood a little alkaline, but inside the cell it should be a little acidic.
Yes - I think everybody agrees blood should be in the range 7.35-7.45, ideally 7.4. I was thinking of general tissue intercellular pH, which may be reasonably represented by UpH (according to Reams), as ideally a little acidic (~6.4). UpH is easy and non-invasive to test regularly, and can give an indicator about whether you need more acidifying or more alkalinising.

I think it is reckless to regularly take a tsp of baking soda without having an idea of where one's systemic pH is. There are a couple of threads here about people getting into trouble with milk-alkali syndrome by supplementing too much baking soda and calcium.

DankMemes said:
post 103025 I've been looking for a fizzy drink without citric or phosphoric acid and red bull seems to be the only one.
Ginger ale?
 
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Parsifal

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That is a good question and it needs to be discussed more IMO.
You can read this interview transcript: https://raypeatforum.com/forum/viewtopi ... =73&t=5411
This topic is very interesting as well: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6802&start=240

tara said:
I think when people get too acidic, the body can attempt to balance this by hyperventilation to get rid of some of the CO2, to raise pH. I think I needed more alkaline minerals (along with other things) as part of being able to sustain better CO2 levels/reduce hyperventilation.
I believed that the hyperventilation was due to too much lactic acid? I don't believe that we are only expelling CO2 by exhaling but a lot of other things no?
 

tara

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Parsifal said:
post 103350 I believed that the hyperventilation was due to too much lactic acid?

I assume anything that makes the body too acidic could potentially have this effect, including lactic acid, direct effects of diet, etc.

Parsifal said:
post 103350 I don't believe that we are only expelling CO2 by exhaling but a lot of other things no?
I know the lungs have this function. We can lower CO2 levels by lots of means, but once it's there, I think breathing is the only way to dispose of it? Do you know of other means?
 
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tara

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Parsifal said:
post 103350 I don't believe that we are only expelling CO2 by exhaling but a lot of other things no?
I'm not aware of anything else we dispose of by breathing it out? AFAIK, the primary function of the lungs is to get O2 into the blood and CO2 out. Unfortunately it sometmes gets too much CO2 out. I think the lungs may also have some function wrt serotonin metabolism as well, but I'm not aware of expelling anything in our out breath from these processes - maybe omeone else know more on this?
 
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papaya

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cream of tartar mixed with baking soda creates co2. would this be good to take if we are dieting/breathing out excess co2(fat) to replace lost co2, or would adding the extra co2 actually prevent weight loss? basically i'm wondering if taking cream of tartar + baking soda would balance the bodies co2 level while dieting.
 

Travis

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My understanding is that we should be eating foods that are rich in alkaline minerals and low in acidic minerals but at the same time I see recommendations for Colas, Apple cider vinegar, aspirin, ascorbic acid etc and they're all highly acidic. Too much alkaline supposedly neutralises the PH of our stomachs leading to indigestion (i've noticed this when supplementing cream of tartar).

Bi-carb soda is another thing that confuses me, it's an alkaline compound but it's used to increase CO2 which is an acid?

Is 'acid' a category certain chemicals or is everything 'acidic' have a PH lower than 7 (fatty acids, malic acid) etc?

Sorry if this seems basic, but science has never been my strong suit.
I think we all should remember to use a lowercase 'p' because this is actually a mathematical operator, believe it or not. The lowercase 'p' used as abbreviation of the negative base ten logarithm. But why the letter 'p' was chosen to represent this I have no idea.

And the 'H' of course represents hydrogen, making the pH simply a measure of the hydrogen dissociation constant: The propensity of the hydrogen to dissociate from a molecule. Since this is a relative value, there needs to be a baseline . . . and there is, and this is that of water defined at pH seven. So anything with a pH lower than seven will have the tendency, however slight, to donate a hydrogen ion (H⁺) to water forming hydronium (H₃O⁺). An analogous thing occurs with a pH above seven, when the hydrogen ion (H⁺) is stolen from water forming hydroxide (OH⁻). The pH can simply be understood as how much a molecule holds onto H⁺ in the presence of water.

Carbon dioxide has no hydrogens, and cannot be a classic Brønsted acid. However, carbon dioxide is a Lewis acid since it can accept electrons. This is really quite unfortunate that Gilbert Lewis had decided to confuse the planet with such a concept, but carbon dioxide actually becomes a real Brønsted acid after adding with water and becoming carbonic acid (H₂O + CO₂ ⟶ H₂CO₃). This has hydrogen ions so this acid is much easier to see as an 'acid.'

I'm fairly certain that our bones form a reservoir for balancing pH, and this has less to do with calcium than it has to do with phosphate. The phosphate ion is a phosphorous surrounded by four oxygens, one or two of which of which have a tendency to attract and bind a H⁺. Phosphates are commonly used in buffers and will become phosphoric acid with three hydrogens. In bone, the mineral hydroxyapatite predominates and consists of calcium and phosphate. The phosphates in bone are held in a crystalline lattice having only one H⁺, making these phosphates slightly basic. Upon dissolution of the bone mineral, this slightly basic phosphate⁻ will attract and bind a H⁺. So if all else fails, bone phosphate will keep the pH more‐or‐less in range.

Extra H⁺ is also excreted in the urine, so I think we're basically immune to acids as long as we eat enough calcium to balance them.

But digestion does need acids (H⁺) to help break down proteins. This is important, especially when eating certain ones which can become exorphins or antigens.

Most acids we consume are of course quite weak, meaning they are only somewhat impartial to H⁺. The danger lies with certain molecules, like lye, that either want H⁺ very strongly or want to get rid of them very strongly (HCl). Even a molecule with a pH of 6.90 will be considered an 'acid,' even though it's ability to donate a H⁺ is negligible.
 
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