The Alkaline diet (alkaline diet) seems to be a pretty good diet.
These diet advocates always recommend replacing acidic foods into alkaline foods to improve effective health.
They even said that this diet can help fight serious diseases like cancer.
There are some people who adopt this diet also claim the miraculous results that this diet brings to them.
But is there any good, convincing evidence behind the Alkaline diet? Let's find out in this article together!
What is Alkaline Diet?
An alkaline diet known as an acid-alkaline diet or an alkaline diet.
This diet is on foods that can help you change your body's acidity or alkalinity (pH level).
So How Do They Work?
When you metabolize food and extract calories (calorie) from alkaline foods, which means that you are actually burning food intake, this burning process is very slow and takes place for a while. have control.
When you burn food, the food will leave ashes when you burn wood in the oven.
When released, this ash may be acidic or alkaline (or neutral) ... etc. And those who follow this diet believe that this ash can directly affect the acidity of your body.
So if you eat acidic foods, it will make your body acidic. And similarly, if you eat alkaline food, it will make your body alkaline. If the food is neutral, there will be no changes.
Foods with acid ash will make you more susceptible to disease, while foods with alkaline ash will protect your body better. So, by choosing foods that are more alkaline, you can "refine" your diet and improve your health effectively.
Food ingredients leaving acid ash include: proteins, phosphates, sulfur, food ingredients leaving alkaline ash including calcium, magnesium and potassium.
Some categories of acidic and alkaline or neutral foods.
- Acidity includes: meat, poultry, fish, milk, eggs, cereals and alcohol.
- Neutral: natural fat, starch and sugar.
- Alkalinity: Fruits, nuts, beans and vegetables.
In short: according to Alkaline diet advocates, consuming foods can directly affect the acidity or alkalinity levels in your body.
Normal pH Concentration In The Body
When you apply an alkaline diet, it is important to understand the meaning of pH values.
Simply put, the pH value is a measurement that helps us know if something is acidic or alkaline.
PH value between 0-14:
- 0-7 acidic.
- 7 is neutral.
- 7-14 is alkaline.
Supporters of the diet also said they monitored and controlled the pH value with a urine test stick. And they always ensure alkalinity always has a pH value greater than 7 and acidity less than 7.
However, one important thing to keep in mind is that the pH index inside the body is different for each person. Some parts are acidic, the rest are alkaline. Others are neutral.
The stomach contains hydrochloric acid, so it has a pH index between 2 and 3.5 (highly acidic). This is necessary to digest food.
On the other hand, human blood is always slightly alkaline, with a pH between 7.35 and 7.45.
The pH value in the blood is outside the normal range is very serious, and can lead to death if not treated promptly. However, this only happens in certain disease stages, and absolutely no problem with the foods you eat every day.
Summary: pH value is a parameter indicating the degree of acidity and alkalinity. The stomach is very acidic, the blood is slightly alkaline and has a value between 7.35 and 7.45.
Food Affects Urine pH Not Blood
It is important to ensure that your health is to ensure that the pH value of the blood is constant.
If the blood pH value is outside the normal range, your cells will stop working and you will die very quickly if left untreated.
For this reason, the body has many effective mechanisms for regulating and maintaining the pH balance in your body. This is called endothelial balance.
And fortunately, these mechanisms have almost no effect on changing the pH value of blood. If that is not true, we will definitely be in big trouble.
In fact, food cannot alter the pH in your blood.
However, food can certainly change the pH value of urine, although the effect is somewhat unreliable.
This is one of the main ways that your body adjusts your blood pH by excreting your urine.
When you eat a large amount of meat, a few hours after your urine is more acidic, the body will remove acid from your system.
It can be said that urine pH is not really an indicator of general health of the body. It may be affected by many other factors, not just a diet.
So even if you are using a test stick and notice that your urine is alkaline, this is very little related to your blood alkalinity, or your overall health.
In summary: blood pH values are not affected by diet, but can alter the pH value of urine.
Osteoporosis-Free Foods
Osteoporosis is a bone-related disease, due to reduced bone mineral content.
Osteoporosis is particularly common in postmenopausal women, and can significantly increase the risk of fractures.
Many devotees of the alkaline diet believe that, to maintain a constant blood pH, the body must use alkaline minerals such as calcium from your bones to absorb the acidity of acidic foods you eat.
According to this theory, acidic diets like Western diets will lose bone mineral density, leading to osteoporosis.
And according to this theory, the functions of the kidneys are completely ignored. The main function of the kidney is to remove acid and regulate the pH in the body. It is one of their roles.
The kidney produces bicarbonate ions that neutralize the acid in the blood. This is a sustainable process, which helps the body to regulate blood pH closely.
Our respiratory system is also involved in blood pH control. When bicarbonate ions from the kidney bind to acid in the blood, they form carbon dioxide (which we exhale) and water (which we urinate out).
The bone is not really related to this process.
Another problem related to osteoporosis is the lack of collagen protein, which causes osteoporosis.
Looking at the studies we see, none of the studies found an intimate relationship between acidic diet and bone density and the risk of fractures. In fact, there is no actual relationship between urine pH and bone health.
Contrary to this, high protein diets (acid production) are actually associated with healthier bone health.
The scope of this study is unspecified, but it shows that animal proteins, foods that make up most of the acid are actually beneficial for bone health.
Looking at clinical trials, a large number of reviews have concluded that acidic diets have no effect on calcium levels in the body. They improve bone health by increasing calcium flow and activating hormone IGF-1, stimulating repair of muscles and bones.
This also reinforces studies related to high-protein diets (acid production) to make bone health better, not worse.
In short: research does not support the idea that acidic diets are harmful to bone health. Protein, acid-rich foods seem to be very beneficial for bone health.
What Happens Between Acid And Cancer Concentration?
The most comprehensive assessment of the relationship between "acid diet" and cancer concludes that they have no direct relationship.
Despite this evidence, there is still a lot of controversy that cancer can only develop in an acidic environment and can be treated or even cured with an alkaline diet. .
But this idea is still lacking for many reasons.
First, the most important as mentioned earlier, food cannot affect blood pH.
Second, even if we assume that food can significantly alter the pH value of blood or other tissues, cancer cells are not limited to acidic environments.
In fact, cancer growth in the condition of normal body tissue is slightly alkaline 7.4. Many experiments have confirmed this by successfully deploying cancer cells in an alkaline environment.
And tumors will grow faster in acidic environments, tumors themselves create acid. Thus the acidic environment does not produce cancer, but cancer creates an acidic environment.
Summary: Current research shows that there is absolutely no relationship between dietary acid and cancer. Cancer cells also develop in alkaline environments.
Through this article, I hope you can better understand the alkaline diet, so that you can find a diet that suits your body better, and gain more health benefits.
Good luck!
