Dr. Stephen Barrett has a website called Quack Watch that I read often to stay balanced about traditional medicine versus complementary therapies/medicine. I found this review of the pH Miracle Diet fascinating and worth mentioning. As you will see described in this section about maintaining acid-base balance - the use of 1/2 tsp of baking soda will do exactly what expensive super greens and other hyped products will do. Another one I use if simple liquid chlorophyll - 2 tablespoons a day - called "Chlorofresh". Go to the above link for the whole story and here is a section from it:
Irrational Theories
Young and his wife claim that health depends primarily on proper balance between an alkaline and acid environment that can be optimized by dietary modification and taking supplements. But Benjamin Abelow, M.D. who authored the highly respected textbook, Understanding Acid-Base, has concluded that their understanding of biochemistry is deficient. After reading their 2000 book, Sick and Tired?: Reclaim Your Inner Terrain, he wrote:
I read with special care the part of the book that purports to explain the fundamentals of pH to the non-scientist. This section contains basic errors that suggest to me that Dr. Young is not very knowledgeable about this area; his understanding of basic chemistry seems limited. His definitions of fundamental terms such as "hydrogen ion" are poor, and his explanation of what table salt (NaCl) is and how it dissociates in water is incorrect. He gives the same pH values for blood that comes from arteries and veins; in reality, venous blood is more acidic than arterial blood.
The manner in which Dr. Young writes suggests a religious fervor that has nothing to do with science. I saw no footnotes that support his extreme views; in fact, judging by the titles of the journal articles he cites, I saw no citations in either this or another book by him that pertain specifically to the effect of pH on disease. Further, Dr. Young does not describe any of his own experiments that might lead one to think he has a valid scientific basis for his ideas. He makes many extreme statements without any supporting evidence.
From what I can see, Dr. Young does not have any interest in actually *testing* whether his ideas are correct. For example, the simple way to test his assertions about the effects of pH on disease would be to give sick people a couple of teaspoons of baking soda per day mixed with water. Baking soda (NaHCO3) is a base and will alkalinize the person's blood at least as well as any of the dietary manipulations Dr. Young suggests. But he appears not to have done this, or even to have studied the medical literature to see if others have [11].
The same observations apply equally to The pH Miracle, which contains so many dubious passages that it would take a book to respond to them all. Young bases his notions about alkaline nutrition on the writings of Antoine Bechamp (1822-1895), and Gunter Enderlein (1872-1968), who held that microorganisms do not have fixed structures but arise from smaller entities that are always present but shift their form and function in response to environmental influences. The Youngs refer to the alleged entities as "microforms" or "microzymas." Page 21 of The pH Miracle states that "all cells evolve from them to begin with" and that "red blood cells . . . can de-evolve and then re-evolve into any cell the body needs." They also state that "morbid changes in microforms" are spurred by body acidity and that "harmful pleomorphic organisms do not, and cannot evolve in healthy (alkaline) surroundings." They further claim to have videotaped transformations from bacteria to yeast, fungus, and mold and back again. Page 32 of the book claims that "acidification and overgrowth of negative microforms in the body are the root cause of every symptom, illness and disease." However, the notion of pleomorphism is unfounded and was abandoned by the scientific community long ago.
The book advises readers to check their pH, "cleanse" for several days, eat a vegetarian diet that emphasizes vegetables, and take various supplements, including colloidal silver. The foods to avoid include all dairy products, meats, eggs, corn, peanuts, and foods that contain sugar (including most fruits). The food recommendations are based on their supposed effect on body acidity and alkalinity and whether or not they contain "toxins."
The idea that dietary modification can change the acidity of the body is silly. Homeostatic mechanisms keep the acidity of the blood stream within a narrow range. (The degree of acidity or alkalinity is expressed as "pH.") Certain foods can leave end-products called ash. Alkaline-ash foods include fresh fruit and raw vegetables. Acid-ash foods include all animal products, whole grains, beans, and other seeds. These foods can change the acidity of the urine (but not the body as a whole), but that's irrelevant since your urine is contained in your bladder and does not affect the pH elsewhere in the body [12]. Thus, even if "body pH" were a primary cause of disease, the strategies the Youngs propose would not influence it in the way they claim.
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