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Old 07-28-2010, 09:40 PM   #161
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I always wonder what the alkaline diet people say about stomach acid... which by far is more acidic than anything that is typically eaten. Therefore you drink a glass of water (pH 7) or pretty much anything for that matter and as soon as it hits your stomach the pH is around 1.

If they took the same food that they argue were health and which ones were unhealthy and then talked about ease of digestion than maybe they could have a good link. But body pH is (in my opinion) terrible reasoning.
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Old 07-28-2010, 09:42 PM   #162
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Originally Posted by photon View Post
It's a blog, not a medical journal. The point is discussion of things, not to make medical statements. That's the whole point of the disclaimer, it's not an appropriate venue for actual medical diagnosis or advice. If someone read something and took it to be medical advice and had a problem, they would sue. If he was giving medical advice and then hiding behind the disclaimer then I would agree with you, but he's not, he's blogging on current events and information.

And as to having his name beside it, really he's not hiding, as he says you can figure out who he is pretty easily, it took me two minutes.
Then as I first began - this has zero business being used as to confirm anything. Thank you for agreeing with me.



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What relevance does someone's name have with respect to the veracity of something?
If a claim is made and is to be taken as truth it should have a name next to it, no? I demand it.

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Right, because the discussion is for entertainment, it's not intended to be a medical journal to determine veracity, and it's not intended to give medical advice for people to make life altering decisions on.

That doesn't mean what's being said is or is not true. You and I are anonymous but we can still have a discussion about our positions on topics.
Again my original point - This site should not be used by Troutman to forward his argument.

You are not anonymous, you have been here too long to be!

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Different foods are harmful for different reasons, but you haven't established that acidic or alkaline food even changes blood pH, so to say pH science explains why foods are unhealthy is premature, at least in this discussion so far.
I searched a long time to find some medical journal on this topic, and none seem to exist. I find it curious however, that it is getting bunked as it has not been tested to confirm or deny. They say it works. Others say it doesn't. Lets get a study done on it then.

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And the link you posted explains how the body balances out the pH, if you look at the chemical reactions I don't see anywhere in there that it is using Calcium or Iodine, so the idea that it takes nutrients away from the body to balance pH isn't supported by that article either; that too could be a bogus claim for all I know.


Which also raises the question of an alkaline diet being just as harmful, if one assumes that the body uses nutrients to bring "up" an acid, then you could also assume that the body uses different nutrients to bring "down" a base.

So to sum up the things that have to be established for this to have any merit:

a) that eating acidic or alkaline foods alters the blood pH
b) that the body "consumes" important nutrients to balance the blood's pH
c) that those nutrients are consumed to a significant degree
d) that an alkaline diet either does not consume other important nutrients, or that if it does the alkaline diet is more advantageous (i.e. consumes less nutrients, or ones that are more easily replaced, etc).
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That's not an adjustment, that's a complete change. I think you are being disingenuous. This is what you said:
I didn't want to get the site in trouble and I couldn't locate a study in Canada or USA as of yet... So I changed it.

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You said she lied, and then you gave what you claim is the lie. You have not established that she in fact lied. To establish that she lied you must first establish that there is in fact evidence that alkaline diets are beneficial to humans, which you haven't done (all's you've done is shown that the body maintains a pH level). Second you have to establish that she knowingly ignored such evidence intentionally, so rather than just being mistaken, or ignorant of such evidence, that she intentionally ignored that evidence when making that statement.
I believe she has lied in her life.

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We're waiting.

So now your adjustment.



So changing the statement to something completely irrelevant establishes diet having an impact on blood pH how exactly?



I thought your point was that diet can impact your pH? No one is questioning that the body maintains a tight pH.



Um, what? I think you had better read again.



So uh yeah, not only does troutman's link NOT say it's impossible to measure your pH, the link you provided agrees with it and both disagree with the video.

So after all that, we're still in agreement that a healthy diet is better for you, and we still don't have any evidence that an acidic diet is harmful.
I need to get to work... This has eaten a lot of time! To Be Continued!

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Old 07-28-2010, 11:27 PM   #163
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Then as I first began - this has zero business being used as to confirm anything. Thank you for agreeing with me.
I'm obviously not saying that, and I'm not saying just because he's got some letters behind his name and a blog that what he says is unquestionable either.

It's a blog, it's someone posting their opinion about something. Some blogs are better than others because the blog's author has demonstrated a history of being in a relevant field, having experience, etc.. blog entries are like wikipedia entries, not authoritative in and of themselves, but they are good for focusing in on the important things, referencing resources that might be otherwise hard to find, finding out what opinions are out there, how those opinions are supported, etc..

The blog entry linked from Orac is only tangentially related to this anyway, I think we can both agree that the idea that cancer (and all disease) is caused by acidification of the blood is complete baloney, which is the quackery that Orac is trying to refute in his blog post.

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If a claim is made and is to be taken as truth it should have a name next to it, no? I demand it.
No claim that's made should be "taken" as truth.. if there's a name beside it it doesn't make any difference to the truth of the claim. And has been said, Orac's name is easily found and he also posts on sciencebasedmedicine.org. So now we've got the identity, we can move on.

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Again my original point - This site should not be used by Troutman to forward his argument.
I disagree, I don't see it as a black and white issue. Basically we're talking about source credibility, and I would find a source with an established history more credible than another where I knew there name but had no history. I don't think his using a pseudonym hurts his credibility, you think it does, but ultimately a link to a blog post isn't the end of a discussion, it's usually the start of one or helps direct or focus it.

So is there anything in the actual content that you disagree with that's relevant here? Or should we just leave Orac as he is?

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Originally Posted by To Be Quite Honest View Post
I searched a long time to find some medical journal on this topic, and none seem to exist.
Or we just don't know what to look for, or because of the understanding of how the body manages pH makes the whole idea silly.

I kind of suspect it's the latter.

http://www.chemistry.wustl.edu/~edudev/LabTutorials/Buffer/Buffer.html

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I find it curious however, that it is getting bunked as it has not been tested to confirm or deny. They say it works. Others say it doesn't. Lets get a study done on it then.
The quote you said is a lie says this:

"Studies of alkaline diet are limited to animal and test tube trials. There's no scientific evidence at this time that alkaline diets are beneficial to humans."

At this point there's no scientific evidence to support the idea, so there's absolutely no basis for thinking it's worth doing. And yet there's a whole industry built up around the idea. One would think the people profiting from the industry would do the $tudie$, but that doesn't often happen.

This is a perfect example of the whole problem with the magical thinking non-evidence based "medicine" facilitates and promotes.. "it's not disproven", "some say it works", etc..

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I didn't want to get the site in trouble and I couldn't locate a study in Canada or USA as of yet... So I changed it.
I wasn't worried about the site, I highly doubt it'd come up on her radar. I was more hopeful you'd change it because it's wrong and it'd be the honest thing to do.

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I believe she has lied in her life.


You can't dig your way out of a hole. This truly unbecoming.

Your claim was that she lied, and you provided the statement that you thought was a lie. Your claim was not that she has lied in her life. If she has or not is irrelevant. One more try?
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Old 07-28-2010, 11:54 PM   #164
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Study - http://www.pmri.org/research.html#articles

http://www.energiseforlife.com/wordp...ajor-benefits/ found it from here.

The research was led by Dr. Dean Ornish, head of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, and a well-known author advocating lifestyle changes to improve health.

Prostate Health

Ornish D, Weidner G, Fair WR, et al. Intensive lifestyle changes may affect the progression of prostate cancer. Journal of Urology. 2005; 174(3): 1065-70

Kronenwetter C, Weidner G, Pettengill EB, et al. A qualitative analysis of interviews of men with early stage prostate cancer: The Prostate Cancer Lifestyle Trial. Cancer Nursing. 2005; 28(2): 99-107Ornish D, Lee KL, Fair WR, Pettengill EB, Carroll PR. Dietary trial in prostate cancer: Early experience and implications for clinical trial design. Journal of Urology. 2001; 57(4 Suppl 1): 200-201

There is a lot more there. Just posting a tiny bit. Obviously these guys have been running studies for a LONG time. Why hasn't anyone tried to actually disprove it or run their own study and complement it? Where do your doctors that you quoted work?

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Old 07-29-2010, 12:00 AM   #165
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Is this guy a moron? Diet Soda and Orange juice have approximately the same pH, is he saying OJ is just as bad as Diet soda?

Also, he says that the pH of vegetables is on the alkaline side. The pH of Oranges, bananas, grapes and most fruits is actually pretty acidic.
Did you even watch the video?
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Old 07-29-2010, 12:04 AM   #166
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Okay, Dr. Woo.

http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH...~r,WSIHW000|~b,*

Do Dietitians and Other Health Care Professionals Recommend Alkaline Diets?

No. Studies of alkaline diet are limited to animal and test tube trials. There's no scientific evidence at this time that alkaline diets are beneficial to humans.
Didn't seem like the video was recommending an alkaline diet at all.

The video said that North American eating is often much too acidic. Seemed like it was suggesting a balanced diet that included both acidic forming and alkaline forming foods instead of simply the acidic ones.

Basically it was saying don't OD on diet soda, coffee, etc, instead make sure you have some veggies and fruits in combination with the animal products/dairy, etc.

Not sure how you can find that particularly wacky advice.

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Old 07-29-2010, 12:19 AM   #167
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Not sure how you can find that particularly wacky advice.
It's like saying you need to eat lots of green foods to balance red-coloured foods in your diet. Sure, it means you'll eat more veggies, but the veggies aren't good for you because they're green.
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Old 07-29-2010, 08:31 AM   #168
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Originally Posted by Flames Draft Watcher View Post
Did you even watch the video?
I watched the video, my eyes glazed over with where it was going though. Yes he did say afterward that those foods are "alkaline forming" whatever that means.

My question still stands, who is this guy in the video? and why should I believe him?
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Old 07-29-2010, 08:58 AM   #169
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Lol wut? If a therapy works at a level not yet able to be measured, then it doesn't work.

How do you measure if it works.. people get better!

That's the whole point of proper trials.

How could you have a therapy that works that isn't detectable?

Scientist: So you had 500 people in the control group and 500 people getting the alternative treatment. How many controls got better?
Alternative Practitioner: 50.
Scientist: Great, how many getting the treatment got better?
Alternative Practitioner: 50.
Scientist: So there was no difference, the treatment doesn't work?
Alternative Practitioner: Oh it works, it just works at a level not able to be measured.
Scientist: ...

You don't have to know how a therapy works to be able to detect that it does work.
I would agree that, when clinically testing a drug that is designed to address specific physiological issues (symptoms) and does not usually take into account imbalances in the whole body (cause), the clinical trial is a solid approach to come to a decisive conclusion. Most of the alternative therapies are more concerned with addressing the cause rather than the symptoms (although some make an effort to address those, too.) A clinical trial would almost always fail or produce underwhelming results, because the trial is not designed to address 500 individual situations; they are designed to address one single therapy or drug in 500 test subjects. An alternative therapy may be perfectly suited to a few people in the trial, but for others, when looking deeper into their particular situation, may require a completely different approach.

Some MDs approach their patients / clients this way as some in this thread have attested to. In fact, some of them will advocate that a client utilize a different health care approach in some situations. I'd love to find an MD with this outlook, however this seems to be the exception not the rule.
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Old 07-29-2010, 09:01 AM   #170
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One of the primary assertions in the video of why diet soda is bad for the "acid-alkaline" balance is the presence of phosphoric acid. He goes on to claim that because phosphoric acid is close to battery acid in its pH it leaches minerals from bones and other organs causing sickness.

As an aside I should make a video and put on youtube, with cute hand gestures and quasi official sounding commentary, and say that phosphoric acid is alkaline forming, that should terminate this debate. Why won't it, oh I guess my hands are not as knowledgeable as this guys hands are, sorry!

Anyway back to the assertion that phosphoric acid leaches minerals from the body, there is very little proof of that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphoric_acid The section on "Biological effects on bone calcium and kidney health" states there have been very contradictory results from studies performed on phosphoric acid intake vs. mineral leaching, but the general medical consensus is that phosphoric acid does not leach minerals from the body.

Now I am not recommending drinking 4 gallons of diet pop everyday, that is foolish, but so is asserting that our body is that fragile that we have now control the pH of our food. Our bodies are the result of millions of years of evolution which has survived diets of pure vegetable, pure meat, massive amounts of fat, give it a bit of credit.
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Old 07-29-2010, 09:11 AM   #171
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Didn't seem like the video was recommending an alkaline diet at all.
The links were all to do with pH balance or alkaline balance diets (post # 130).

http://sciencebasedpharmacy.wordpres...sis/#more-1424

http://www.quackwatch.org/01Quackery...SH/coral2.html

Have you seen advertisements for products such as coral calcium or alkaline water that are supposed to neutralize acid in your bloodstream? Taking calcium or drinking alkaline water does not affect blood acidity. Anyone who tells you that certain foods or supplements make your stomach or blood acidic does not understand nutrition.

You should not believe that it matters whether foods are acidic or alkaline, because no foods change the acidity of anything in your body except your urine. Your stomach is so acidic that no food can change its acidity. Citrus fruits, vinegar, and vitamins such as ascorbic acid or folic acid do not change the acidity of your stomach or your bloodstream. An entire bottle of calcium pills or antacids would not change the acidity of your stomach for more than a few minutes.

All foods that leave your stomach are acidic. Then they enter your intestines where secretions from your pancreas neutralize the stomach acids. So no matter what you eat, the food in stomach is acidic and the food in the intestines is alkaline.

Dietary modification cannot change the acidity of any part of your body except your urine. Your bloodstream and organs control acidity in a very narrow range. Anything that changed acidity in your body would make you very sick and could even kill you. Promoters of these products claim that cancer cells cannot live in an alkaline environment and that is true, but neither can any of the other cells in your body.

http://foodconsumer.org/7777/8888/C_...er_Risks.shtml

The Take-Away: What you eat can have a profound affect on your cancer risk, but the acidity or alkalinity of foods is not important. Instead, focus on making dietary choices that can truly affect your risk: Eat a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, whole grains and beans; limit consumption of red and processed meats; enjoy alcohol in moderation, if at all.


This reminds me of proponents of super-oxygenated water. Too bad humans don't have gills, and can't absorb extra oxygen from the stomach.

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Old 07-29-2010, 01:48 PM   #172
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Originally Posted by To Be Quite Honest View Post
Hey look, a blog entry, with a disclaimer even!

Quote:
IMPORTANT
It is essential to remember that none of the Energise for Life employees or directors are:
  • a doctor
  • a dietitian
  • a medical professional
  • a journalist
  • a therapist
Only opinions based upon our own personal experiences or information detailed in medical/academic journals or other publications is cited. WE DO NOT OFFER MEDICAL ADVICE or prescribe any treatments. This refers to any form of conversation between Energise for Life and our customers.
For any health or medical issues - you should be talking to your doctor - not taking our advice.
Emphasis theirs. So they don't even have anyone qualified to read the papers.

Anyway, the study isn't about alkaline diets, and taking a study about one thing and using the data to try and draw conclusions about something completely different is seriously flawed methodology.

If I went back and found out all the guys in the study had mustaches should I then draw the conclusion that mustaches improve health?

Remember the claim here is that diet can impact blood pH and that as a result nutrients can be removed from the body, and there's nothing in this study that supports any of that.

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Originally Posted by To Be Quite Honest View Post
There is a lot more there. Just posting a tiny bit.
Lot more of what, studies that are misappropriated to support an idea that someone just happens to be trying to make money from?

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Originally Posted by To Be Quite Honest View Post
Obviously these guys have been running studies for a LONG time. Why hasn't anyone tried to actually disprove it or run their own study and complement it?
Which guys? The people that wrote the study, or the website with no one in the medical profession?

For the people that wrote the two studies you mentioned, how do you know that their paper hasn't been refuted or complimented? Did you check the citations?

As for the website promoting the alkaline diet, they aren't actually doing any research so there's nothing to disprove or compliment, it's just (so far) unsubstantiated claims.

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Where do your doctors that you quoted work?
"My" doctors? I didn't quote any doctors. And where the people in the links that have been posted work is readily available via search if you are interested, though again not sure what relevance that has.
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Old 07-29-2010, 02:18 PM   #173
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I would agree that, when clinically testing a drug that is designed to address specific physiological issues (symptoms) and does not usually take into account imbalances in the whole body (cause)
Not all drugs are designed to address symptoms, and "imbalances in the whole body" isn't a very specific definition of something, blood sugar can be imbalanced but that doesn't say why its imbalanced. Define "imablances in the whole body", hiding behind vague definitions is common in quackery, so to not be quackery a good definition is expected.

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Most of the alternative therapies are more concerned with addressing the cause rather than the symptoms (although some make an effort to address those, too.)
Concerned with addressing "a" cause at least, though in most cases the cause isn't even established to be real. I'd like to see a case where the actual "cause" is shown to exist.. be it a subluxation or a misaligned chakra.

Like how the cause of all disease is acidification of the blood, or so is claimed by some but there's no evidence of.

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A clinical trial would almost always fail or produce underwhelming results, because the trial is not designed to address 500 individual situations; they are designed to address one single therapy or drug in 500 test subjects.
So, do the study differently then.

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An alternative therapy may be perfectly suited to a few people in the trial, but for others, when looking deeper into their particular situation, may require a completely different approach.
So align the study along diagnoses of the cause then, get 1000 people with the same root cause. Study the methodology. Study the treatment decision process.

If the root cause is real, and the treatment is real, then you can design a clinical trial to validate it, always. A practitioner claims that they can diagnose the problem and decide on a treatment, this fact alone indicates that it is in the realm of reason, cause and effect, etc, which means that it can be studied.
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Old 07-29-2010, 02:30 PM   #174
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Hey look, a blog entry, with a disclaimer even!



Emphasis theirs. So they don't even have anyone qualified to read the papers.

Anyway, the study isn't about alkaline diets, and taking a study about one thing and using the data to try and draw conclusions about something completely different is seriously flawed methodology.

If I went back and found out all the guys in the study had mustaches should I then draw the conclusion that mustaches improve health?

Remember the claim here is that diet can impact blood pH and that as a result nutrients can be removed from the body, and there's nothing in this study that supports any of that.



Lot more of what, studies that are misappropriated to support an idea that someone just happens to be trying to make money from?



Which guys? The people that wrote the study, or the website with no one in the medical profession?

For the people that wrote the two studies you mentioned, how do you know that their paper hasn't been refuted or complimented? Did you check the citations?

As for the website promoting the alkaline diet, they aren't actually doing any research so there's nothing to disprove or compliment, it's just (so far) unsubstantiated claims.



"My" doctors? I didn't quote any doctors. And where the people in the links that have been posted work is readily available via search if you are interested, though again not sure what relevance that has.
http://www.pmri.org/index.html

Now you are just being difficult. These are Doctors just like the Doctors of which YOU came to the rescue for Troutman (Orac). They have been working studying the food properties in question. Just because it doesn't come from your beloved Orac and associates does not mean it is less important.

Yes, where do the Doctors you believe in work? Like Orac? Who does he work for? Does he have a bottom line $$$?

The Blog site was linked to show where I found the link to the study. That is the ONLY reason it was inserted there.

Dean Ornish, M.D., is the founder and president of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California. He is Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Ornish received his medical training in internal medicine from the Baylor College of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and the Massachusetts General Hospital. He received a B.A. in Humanities summa cum laude from the University of Texas in Austin, where he gave the baccalaureate address.
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Old 07-29-2010, 02:36 PM   #175
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Originally Posted by troutman View Post
The links were all to do with pH balance or alkaline balance diets (post # 130).

http://sciencebasedpharmacy.wordpres...sis/#more-1424
Lol @ one of the comments:

Quote:
Thanks for this, I have been waging a quiet battle against this sort of nonsense for a while now. I worked in a clinical biochemistry lab measuring blood pH and bicarbonate for several years and I can confirm that unless a person is very ill, their blood pH will be very close to 7.4.
By the way, our bodies produce about 1 kg or 20,000 mmol of acids every day as carbon dioxide, a lot more if we exercise vigorously, and eliminate them effortlessly. A 4 ounce piece of beef generates about 8 mmol of acids, a liter of Coke contains 2.5 mmol of acids (pH 2.6 = 0.0025M). So the amount of acids generated in our diet is tiny compared to the amount our metabolism produces constantly. Experiments using ammonium chloride to induce a metabolic acidosis require
4 mmol/kg
and a low alkali diet to achieve this, or 15 mmol/kg and a high alkali diet. That means a 60 kg person would have to consume 240 mmol of acids daily, the equivalent of 7.5 pounds of beef or 96 liters of Coke each and every day to overwhelm their homeostatic mechanisms and produce acidosis.

LOL!


So exercising generates far more acid than drinking 96 liters of Coke each day does. That means everyone should stop exercising immediately if they want to stop leeching nutrients from their bodies!!!


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This reminds me of proponents of super-oxygenated water. Too bad humans don't have gills, and can't absorb extra oxygen from the stomach.
Heh, yup.
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Old 07-29-2010, 02:40 PM   #176
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Damn you Science and your proof .. always getting in the way of Scammers peddling snake-oil.
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Old 07-29-2010, 02:56 PM   #177
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Originally Posted by To Be Quite Honest View Post
http://www.pmri.org/index.html

Now you are just being difficult. These are Doctors just like the Doctors of which YOU came to the rescue for Troutman (Orac).
Did I say otherwise? No.

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They have been working studying the food properties in question.
No they haven't, their research you referenced didn't say a single thing about the alkalinity or blood pH. You have conflated the content of the blog post you linked with the content of the paper it references.

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Just because it doesn't come from your beloved Orac and associates does not mean it is less important.
Where did I say I loved Orac or found him more authoritative than the researchers from PMRI? I'm getting the sense that you aren't actually following the thread of conversation here, or have the parties confused, or something.

Are you actually reading what I'm writing? I didn't question the work of the PMRI at all.

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Originally Posted by To Be Quite Honest View Post
Yes, where do the Doctors you believe in work? Like Orac? Who does he work for? Does he have a bottom line $$$?
I don't "believe in" doctors, that's the kind of magical thinking that's the problem. If you want to know who he works for find out for yourself, I'm not going to do your research for you. I can tell you though that he's not selling stuff on his blog.

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Originally Posted by To Be Quite Honest View Post
The Blog site was linked to show where I found the link to the study. That is the ONLY reason it was inserted there.
Then you need to work on your reading comprehension. First, the blog entry doesn't even HAVE a link to the study.

Second, if you read the blog entry and then read the paper in question (you did read the paper right? I did), you will see that the conclusions given in the blog entry are in no way related to the content of the paper.

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Dean Ornish, M.D., is the founder and president of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California. He is Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Ornish received his medical training in internal medicine from the Baylor College of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and the Massachusetts General Hospital. He received a B.A. in Humanities summa cum laude from the University of Texas in Austin, where he gave the baccalaureate address.
That's nice, sounds like a great guy. I want to have his babies.

Did I ever question him or the content or conclusions in his paper? Not one bit.

Are you planning on responding to the other stuff we were discussing, the parts where you accused someone of lying? Or clarify what relevance your "alteration" of the accusation has? Or acknowlege that you completely misrepresented what the links said with respect to measuring body pH? Do you concede that measuring blood and saliva pH do not give a reading of blood pH?
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Old 07-29-2010, 02:58 PM   #178
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Not all drugs are designed to address symptoms, and "imbalances in the whole body" isn't a very specific definition of something, blood sugar can be imbalanced but that doesn't say why its imbalanced. Define "imablances in the whole body", hiding behind vague definitions is common in quackery, so to not be quackery a good definition is expected.



Concerned with addressing "a" cause at least, though in most cases the cause isn't even established to be real. I'd like to see a case where the actual "cause" is shown to exist.. be it a subluxation or a misaligned chakra.

Like how the cause of all disease is acidification of the blood, or so is claimed by some but there's no evidence of.



So, do the study differently then.



So align the study along diagnoses of the cause then, get 1000 people with the same root cause. Study the methodology. Study the treatment decision process.

If the root cause is real, and the treatment is real, then you can design a clinical trial to validate it, always. A practitioner claims that they can diagnose the problem and decide on a treatment, this fact alone indicates that it is in the realm of reason, cause and effect, etc, which means that it can be studied.
You missed the point. Your paradigm is stuck in conventional medicine, so all your responses are designed to again try and shove alternative medicine into the conventional medicine methodology. I'm suggesting that the mainstream medicine paradigm does not apply to alternative medicine. You can find 1000 people suffering from the same symptoms, but can you find 1000 people in the exact same personal situation? Nope, probably not even ten. Does it mean that studies couldn't be designed somehow that prove some of these approaches? Not necessarily. However, those types of studies wouldn't / aren't accepted merely because they don't follow the conventional model. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

In reality, it's better that way for the entrenched mainstream medical community because it's easier to take potshots at the unproven as cover for the misapplication of their own modality. And there's enough vague diagnoses in the mainstream medical community that they could qualify for the label "quackery" as well, since labelling is your thing.
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Old 07-29-2010, 03:05 PM   #179
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I'm suggesting that the mainstream medicine paradigm does not apply to alternative medicine.
Right. CAM is allergic to science.
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Old 07-29-2010, 03:10 PM   #180
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Yes, where do the Doctors you believe in work? Like Orac? Who does he work for? Does he have a bottom line $$$?
I have a secret! Don't let anyone else know, it is just between you and I.

Let me tell you, discovering this information has cost me quite dearly, both financially, and in terms of my limited sanity.

Maybe I should use white text, but, Orac is... David Gorski.

Don't click the following link unless you are absolutely sure that you want to discover the truth (or rather Gorski's fanciful imagination).

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?page_id=224

Oh, and as per his employment and his secret funding arrangements [Boo Hiss], it is discretely hidden under the bold heading "FINANCIAL AND CONFLICT OF INTEREST DISCLOSURES."Within it lies this damning information:
"He currently receives no funding from pharmaceutical companies, although he did once receive a modest payment for an invention from such a company back in the mid-1990s. Indeed, so bereft of pharmaceutical funding is Dr. Gorski that before his talks, when he is required to make his disclosures of conflicts of interest, he often jokes that no pharmaceutical company is interested enough in his research to want to give him any money."
This message will self destruct.

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Last edited by firebug; 07-29-2010 at 03:15 PM.
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