The Alkaline diet (also known as the alkaline ash diet, alkaline acid diet and the acid alkaline diet) is a dietary protocol based on the consumption of foods which metabolise (burn) to leave an alkaline residue (ash). Minerals such as calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc, copper, are the principal components of the residue as they are incombustible. Foods are thus classified as alkaline, acid or neutral according to the ph of the solution created with their ash in water.
Originally this diet was used mainly to treat kidney stones as uric acid is soluble in solutions of alkaline salts. In general fresh low sugar fruit, vegetables, roots and tubers, nuts, and legumes and avoiding grains, dairy, meat and excess salt. Such a diet helps to maintain the balance of the slight alkalinity (the “pH balance”) of blood without stressing the body’s pH regulators (kidney, lung and calcium stores). Metabolic acidosis or alkalosis indicates the presence of disease either of a chronic or acute nature such as diabetic ketoacidosis, exercise induced lactic acidosis. In the absence of disease bodily (pH) will be maintained within a narrow range 7.35-7.45 irrespective of diet; the health effects of an alkaline rather than an acid diet are generated by reducing the body’s need to utilize internal stores of mineral buffers such as the calcium stored in bones, to maintain the pH balance particularly as renal function declines with age.
The wide ranging health claims for this diet originate in the observation that an underlying metabolic acidity is a common denominator among many degenerative and autoimmune diseases, and the discoveries in cellular respiration of Nobel prize winning biochemist Otto Heinrich Warburg especially that cancerous cells can live and develop, even in the absence of oxygen.
In recent years it has been the subject of well designed scientific research with substantiating results. “Increasing alkaline content of the diet with bicarbonate supplementation significantly reduced levels of the bone turnover markers urinary N-telopeptide and calcium excretion (both P=0.001); Because fruits and vegetables are metabolized to bicarbonate, a dietary approach may have a similar effect.”
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