"If your body PH is alkaline, it won't get cancer or other diseases!" - a woo debunking thread

[JohnT]

So I was at some networking event last week and, intermixed with the juice-plusers, the essential-oilers, and other housewives selling MLM products of dubious nature, one guy stood up and his pitch gave the quote seen in the thread title: “If your body PH is alkaline, you cannot get cancer nor will you ever get sick.”

Fortunately, I’m a professional and was able to keep my eyes from rolling.

Regardless, to my sensitive ears, this is obvious woo. However, googling it is boring - snarky SDMB comments are fun! So, tell me - why is it woo?

Also, he was pitching this miracle water filtration system that “reduced” the size of water molecules from “25 microns to 5 microns” which allows the water to more easily enter your cells which helps your body cleanse itself. This is obvious-sounding woo as well, but perhaps woo surrounding a grain of truth…? After all, here in S Texas our water is pretty mineral ridden, so perhaps he’s talking about getting rid of the sediments and minerals that cloud up our glasses… but that doesn’t explain the 80% reduction in the size of the H2O molecule. So the woo is probably a bit hidden in this one.

And since the thread is open, feel free to discuss your favorite/most annoying bits of medical woo. It’s almost Thanksgiving, so many of our family members will be sitting around the dinner table talking about nitrates and the miracle that is Juice-Plus and so much more. Please… share!

[USCDiver]

I can’t address the whole ‘reducing the size of a water molecule’ thing because that is clearly woo and doesn’t even make sense on the face of it.

But to the pH discussion, a healthy person has a pretty tightly controlled pH buffering system that keeps your serum pH pretty close to 7.4. So the body is already slightly basic most of the time.

[DrFidelius]

“Balancing your humours” has never gone out of style, they just come up with new words for it.

[Finagle]

Alkaline won’t help? They lyed to me!

[WhyNot]

The acid/alkaline myth seems to be the dividing line amongst woosters, for what it’s worth. Those who believe in it also believe in a lot of other crazy shit, like colloidal silver, MSM (bleach), “detoxing” through fasting and purging and “the healing crisis” where a person gets sicker as a result of their healing. (Perhaps because they’re drinking silver and bleach, eh?) Those who don’t believe in it tend to be the more rational woosters, interested in the chemical constituents of plants and not eating so much junk food. And the two sides are constantly bickering.

Bottom line: your body works really really hard to keep your pH in a very narrow range - although that range varies depending on what organ you’re looking at. As long as your lungs and kidneys are functioning, there’s really no way for food to change your pH in any organ except your mouth, stomach (very briefly) and bladder/urine, because your lungs are always prepared to blow off extra acid as CO2, and your kidneys can pull either acid or alkaline elements out of your blood, and do, constantly. (They dump them in your urine, which is why you CAN change the pH of your urine, and this might be useful if you have a lot of bladder infections.)

Ultimately, the pro-alkaline diet isn’t a terrible diet, so I don’t get myself too worked up about that part. More vegetables and less sugar? Okay, yeah, that’s probably not a bad idea for most of us. But I do think if people eat alkaline foods and don’t get their colonoscopies because they think they can’t get cancer, or they try to treat their cancer with carrot sticks…that’s an issue.

I’ll nominate colloidal silver and MSM for the most stupid woo shit I see regularly promoted. I cannot for the life of me figure out why some people refuse actual science and replace it with scientific looking stuff. I can understand the “natural is better!” mindset (although I don’t share it), but colloidal silver and MSM…these are not natural, either. And they can be actively harmful, not just encourage people to avoid actual effective treatment.

Oh, and internal use and undiluted skin application of essential oils has to rank way up there, too. There are two huge MLM essential oil companies (Young Living and DoTerra) which promote these unsafe practices (against all professional aromatherapy safety guidelines), and they’re pretty fucking scary. They’re going to kill some kids with that shit, and then essential oils will get regulated pretty damn fast, and I’m gonna be pissed when I have to order black market lavender. :rolleyes:

[lazybratsche]

@JohnT

Also, he was pitching this miracle water filtration system that “reduced” the size of water molecules from “25 microns to 5 microns” which allows the water to more easily enter your cells which helps your body cleanse itself. This is obvious-sounding woo as well, but perhaps woo surrounding a grain of truth…? After all, here in S Texas our water is pretty mineral ridden, so perhaps he’s talking about getting rid of the sediments and minerals that cloud up our glasses… but that doesn’t explain the 80% reduction in the size of the H2O molecule. So the woo is probably a bit hidden in this one.

25 micron water molecules? Holy shit that’s huge. At that size, I’d be able to see individual molecules on a good dissecting microscope, and push little piles of them around. Hell, even 5 microns is ridiculously huge, since it’s not much smaller than all of the cells in your body.

I’ve used lasers to punch micron-sized holes that completely obliterate a cell.

This is probably something to do with water “clusters” which is a ripe field of woo, as it is often used as a basis for homeopathy. All those molecules that have been completely removed from a homeopathic preparation are somehow “remembered” by water “clusters”.

[njtt]

@USCDiver

I can’t address the whole ‘reducing the size of a water molecule’ thing because that is clearly woo and doesn’t even make sense on the face of it.

But to the pH discussion, a healthy person has a pretty tightly controlled pH buffering system that keeps your serum pH pretty close to 7.4. So the body is already slightly basic most of the time.

Right, and if it got noticeably more alkaline, you would very soon be dead. I think it is true that cancer cells don’t like too much alkalinity, but neither does the rest of your body.

[kayaker]

@USCDiver

But to the pH discussion, a healthy person has a pretty tightly controlled pH buffering system that keeps your serum pH pretty close to 7.4. So the body is already slightly basic most of the time.

Even in an unhealthy individual, serum pH is pretty close to 7.4. Otherwise you die.

[Smeghead]

@njtt

Right, and if it got noticeably more alkaline, you would very soon be dead. I think it is true that cancer cells don’t like too much alkalinity, but neither does the rest of your body.

Much like cancer’s huge but ultimately useless vulnerability to bullets.

[OneCentStamp]

@JohnT

Also, he was pitching this miracle water filtration system that “reduced” the size of water molecules from “25 microns to 5 microns” which allows the water to more easily enter your cells which helps your body cleanse itself.

Jesus. Where to start? For one, a water molecule is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay smaller even than 5 microns. At roughly 0.3 nanometers, we’re talking over 15,000 times smaller.

Hell, many of the cells this magic water is supposed to more easily enter are themselves smaller than 5 microns.

:smack:

[WhyNot]

@Smeghead

Much like cancer’s huge but ultimately useless vulnerability to bullets.

I’m stealing that, just so you know.

[JohnT]

@WhyNot

Oh, and internal use and undiluted skin application of essential oils has to rank way up there, too. There are two huge MLM essential oil companies (Young Living and DoTerra) which promote these unsafe practices (against all professional aromatherapy safety guidelines), and they’re pretty fucking scary. They’re going to kill some kids with that shit, and then essential oils will get regulated pretty damn fast, and I’m gonna be pissed when I have to order black market lavender. :rolleyes:

Yeah, there was a woman there who claimed that her “essential oils” cured her cancer and has kept her cancer-free for the past 2 years.

I will say that with stories like that I lend a more sympathetic ear as the Big-C is some scary shit, but the sympathy goes out the door when the same person starts peddling some literal snake-oil to cure people of diseases they don’t have.

In my life, I’ve eaten a fair amount of peanut butter and fried chicken. Think that’s the reason I’ve been cancer-free for the past 47 years? Even if not, think I could write a 125 page book on the PB&FC benefits of cancer-free living? Ca-ching! $$$$

[JohnT]

@lazybratsche

25 micron water molecules? Holy shit that’s huge. At that size, I’d be able to see individual molecules on a good dissecting microscope, and push little piles of them around. Hell, even 5 microns is ridiculously huge, since it’s not much smaller than all of the cells in your body.

I’ve used lasers to punch micron-sized holes that completely obliterate a cell.

This is probably something to do with water “clusters” which is a ripe field of woo, as it is often used as a basis for homeopathy. All those molecules that have been completely removed from a homeopathic preparation are somehow “remembered” by water “clusters”.

Gotcha.

And here I thought he was talking about a water filtration system. I didn’t approach the guy for a meet 'n greet afterward - that would have just set up a series of increasingly-desperate phone calls - but had hoped (against hope, apparently) that he wasn’t just peddling bullshit.

Oh well…

[JohnT]

@njtt

Right, and if it got noticeably more alkaline, you would very soon be dead. I think it is true that cancer cells don’t like too much alkalinity, but neither does the rest of your body.

The cure is worse than the disease! :eek:

[RivkahChaya]

@USCDiver

But to the pH discussion, a healthy person has a pretty tightly controlled pH buffering system that keeps your serum pH pretty close to 7.4. So the body is already slightly basic most of the time.

I think the “blood pH” thing goes back to about 2007, when the media picked up on an article that was published in JAMA Pediatrics in 1992 by a Donald W. Lewis, MD, who speculated that Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol had renal tubular acidosis. People who have this disease actually do have a low blood pH, and it causes pain, in addition to causing hypokalemia, and rickets, and other body system dysfunctions. Basically, the kidneys are not removing acid from the blood, and into the urine. Part of the treatment is eating baking soda, something which was actually known in Dickens time, even though the disease process itself was unknown.

Anyway, the “keep your blood alkaline through my diet or supplement” seems to go back to this, so I think people misunderstood the reports, sort of like how a few people have celiac disease, and now there’s a whole movement to improve general well-being by everyone going gluten-free.

[WhyNot]

@JohnT

In my life, I’ve eaten a fair amount of peanut butter and fried chicken. Think that’s the reason I’ve been cancer-free for the past 47 years? Even if not, think I could write a 125 page book on the PB&FC benefits of cancer-free living? Ca-ching! $$$$

OMG ME TOOOOO!!! It’s a MIRACLE!

Problem is, it’s got to suck if it’s going to work. It needs to be expensive European free range organic grass fed peanut butter and dry tasteless fried chicken. Make it unpleasant or they won’t buy it.

[JohnT]

“dry tasteless fried chicken”

might be more marketable as

“Oil-free fried chicken using a secret recipe handed down by Tibetan monks and only recently discovered by local sherpas. Whom we all know live to 120 years of age.”

[njtt]

@RivkahChaya

I think the “blood pH” thing goes back to about 2007, when the media picked up on an article that was published in JAMA Pediatrics in 1992 by a Donald W. Lewis, MD, who speculated that Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol had renal tubular acidosis. People who have this disease actually do have a low blood pH, and it causes pain, in addition to causing hypokalemia, and rickets, and other body system dysfunctions. Basically, the kidneys are not removing acid from the blood, and into the urine. Part of the treatment is eating baking soda, something which was actually known in Dickens time, even though the disease process itself was unknown.

Anyway, the “keep your blood alkaline through my diet or supplement” seems to go back to this, so I think people misunderstood the reports, sort of like how a few people have celiac disease, and now there’s a whole movement to improve general well-being by everyone going gluten-free.

A high school classmate of mine back in the 1960s suggested altering blood pH as a cure for cancer when a visiting speaker (a cancer doctor of some sort) at our school mentioned something about the surface charge on cancer cells (different from normal cells, I think) being related to their tendency to metastasize. He got a pretty withering response from the speaker.

[njtt]

@Smeghead

Much like cancer’s huge but ultimately useless vulnerability to bullets.

Actually, I doubt whether cancer is very vulnerable to bullets. Bullets don’t kill bodies by harming them at the cellular level, but by disrupting their structural integrity. Cancer is a problem at the cellular level, and tumors do not have very much structural integrity to be disrupted. Smashing them up physically will probably only make them metastasize all the faster.

[VunderBob]

@DrFidelius

“Balancing your humours” has never gone out of style, they just come up with new words for it.

Or just use it as is. A tangential thread hijack:

I had a liver biopsy in September, and had trouble with low blood pressure following the procedure. Finally they sent me home. That night, my BP tanked, and I wound up in the ER and ICU because of it.

The medical folks figured that the biopsy was the problem, despite me being a retired EMT that knows how to administer an abdominal exam. I did not feel any lumps or pain, even where my liver was punched.

As I was headed for an MRI to look for internal bleeding, the doctor in charge of the ICU came along, and was giving me this big line of BS about “bodily humors not being right”, which I immediately interpreted as they had not a freaking clue. FWIW, that doctor was a foreigner, so I could cut him some slack on the bodily humors bit, but not much.

The entire time I kept saying to anyone within earshot that I thought the hypotension was caused by my BP meds, which I was instructed to take the morning of the procedure and after I got home. After the fact, I realized that I had lost so much weight over the summer that I was overdosing, and mix that with IV sedation, put me on the floor.

My vindication came during a different procedure a month later, where I was given the same sedation but I went cold turkey on the BP meds a day before and for 2 days after. No pressure problem whatsoever.