The Alkaline Body and pH Balance

Archive for March, 2009

We all know the benefits of eating a healthy balanced diet and consuming more fruit and vegetables, but what many people don t know is that vegetable juice helps to maintain the critical pH balance of the body. But what s so important about maintaining the body s pH balance?

There is so much research out there in support of and alkalizing diet based on whole food, organic vegetables and fruit. Here is another study that shows how to maintain muscle mass. VEGETABLES = PROTEIN, A MUCH MORE EASILY ASSIMILATED PROTEIN THEN IN MEAT. John Wayne had about 40 lbs. of undigested meat in his colon on autopsy when he died. Elvis had even more. Health is a choice we make every day!

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Fruits and vegetables contain essential vitamins, minerals and fiber that are key to good health. Now, a newly released study by Agricultural Research Service (ARS)-funded scientists suggests plant foods also may help preserve muscle mass in older men and women.

The study was led by physician and nutrition specialist Bess Dawson-Hughes at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston, Mass.

The typical American diet is rich in protein, cereal grains and other acid-producing foods. In general, such diets generate tiny amounts of acid each day. With aging, a mild but slowly increasing metabolic “acidosis” develops, according to the researchers.

Acidosis appears to trigger a muscle-wasting response. So the researchers looked at links between measures of lean body mass and diets relatively high in potassium-rich, alkaline-residue producing fruits and vegetables. Such diets could help neutralize acidosis. Foods can be considered alkaline or acidic based on the residues they produce in the body, rather than whether they are alkaline or acidic themselves. For example, acidic grapefruits are metabolized to alkaline residues.

The researchers conducted a cross-sectional analysis on a subset of nearly 400 male and female volunteers aged 65 or older who had completed a three-year osteoporosis intervention trial. The volunteers’ physical activity, height and weight, and percentage of lean body mass were measured at the start of the study and at three years. Their urinary potassium was measured at the start of the study, and their dietary data was collected at 18 months.

Based on regression models, volunteers whose diets were rich in potassium could expect to have 3.6 more pounds of lean tissue mass than volunteers with half the higher potassium intake. That almost offsets the 4.4 pounds of lean tissue that is typically lost in a decade in healthy men and women aged 65 and above, according to authors.

Sarcopenia, or loss of muscle mass, can lead to falls due to weakened leg muscles. The authors encourage future studies that look into the effects of increasing overall intake of foods that metabolize to alkaline residues on muscle mass and functionality.

The study was published in the March issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Czech newspapers are questioning whether the shocking discovery of vaccines contaminated with the deadly avian flu virus — distributed to 18 countries by the American company Baxter — were part of a conspiracy to provoke a pandemic.

Because of laboratory protocols that are routine for vaccine makers, mixing a live virus biological weapon with vaccine material by accident is virtually impossible.

Baxter flu vaccines contaminated with H5N1 (the human form of avian flu) were received by labs in the Czech Republic, Germany and Slovenia. Initially, Baxter refused to reveal how the vaccines were contaminated with H5N1, invoking “trade secrets.” After increased pressure, they then claimed that pure H5N1 batches were sent by accident.

But in the Czech Republic, reporters are investigating whether the contamination was part of a deliberate attempt to start a pandemic.

The fact that Baxter mixed the deadly H5N1 virus with a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses may be the smoking gun. The H5N1 virus on its own has killed hundreds of people, but it is less airborne. However, when combined with seasonal flu viruses, which are more easily spread, the effect could be a potent, airborne, deadly biological weapon.

Articles and studies like this show why it is so important to educate oneself in wellness and take responsibility for one’s total health. If you leave it up to the so called experts you are leaving it in the hands of the special interests who don’t have your interests in mind at all. Being healthy can be so simple if you choose to take responsibility for yourself. Following an alkaline lifestyle for 8 years now has given us the security and freedom to not ever have to worry about studies like this one. Learn more about the pH Secret Lifestyle at www.phsecret.com.

By RON WINSLOW, The Wall Street Journal

Heart disease is among the most studied illnesses in all of medicine, yet just 11% of more than 2,700 recommendations approved by cardiologists for treating heart patients are supported by high-quality scientific testing, according to new research.

About half the medical recommendations for heart patients have limited scientific backing, according to a study published in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association. Instead, they are based mostly on expert opinion — subjective viewpoints where consensus is often lacking.

For instance, people who previously have had a heart attack and take an aspirin daily to help avert a second such incident can rest assured that the treatment is supported by rigorous scientific studies. But there is much less certainty around another common recommendation that patients treated with artery-opening stents remain on a potent blood thinner for a year to avoid a rare but potentially life-threatening blood clot. The downside: Patients who stay on blood thinners for an extended time risk potential complications if they need urgent surgery.

The findings from the JAMA study reflect the challenge doctors and patients face in choosing the best course of treatment for a variety of conditions. And they underscore that even though drug and device companies, government agencies and philanthropic groups have spent billions of dollars developing and testing new treatments in recent years, much of what happens in the doctor’s office or the hospital operating suite might not be based on rigorous scientific evidence.

“In most situations that we encounter when we see patients, it isn’t so clear what is the best thing to do,” says Pierluigi Tricoci, a cardiologist at Duke University’s Duke Clinical Research Institute and lead author of the study.

For more than two decades, health-policy experts, health insurers and employers have been beating the drum for evidence about what works and what doesn’t in medicine in an effort to reduce wide variation in medical care, cut health-care costs and develop standards by which to measure the performance of doctors, hospitals and health plans.

This month, the Obama administration and Congress budgeted more than $1 billion of the economic stimulus package to fund research for comparing the effectiveness of different treatments in head-to-head studies aimed at providing evidence to clinicians and insurers on the best treatment strategies.

“We need those studies to make the kind of changes in health care that are being talked about — being sure we get the best possible care for our patients in the most cost-effective manner,” says Sidney Smith, a medical guidelines expert and cardiologist at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and senior author of the JAMA paper.

The American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association have been jointly issuing guidelines to doctors on care of cardiovascular patients for more than 20 years. Recommendations based on multiple randomized clinical trials, in which patients are randomly assigned a treatment, are considered having the highest level of evidence. A single randomized study or non-randomized studies comprise the second level, while recommendations backed by expert opinion or case studies are considered having the weakest evidence. Guidelines are also ranked by whether empirical evidence or general opinion supports that a treatment is useful and effective or not.

For instance, strong evidence of benefit based on several randomized controlled clinical studies is behind guidelines calling for use of aspirin, cholesterol medications called statins and other pills called beta blockers among heart patients to avoid a second heart attack. Similar rigor is behind recommendations that patients who arrive at the emergency room with a major heart attack get treated with an angioplasty balloon within 90 minutes.

Experts Disagree

But such examples are the exception. For a variety of other conditions, treatment recommendations rely largely on non-randomized studies or expert opinion. For instance, it’s unclear at what point patients who suffer excess bleeding during a heart procedure should get a blood transfusion, Dr. Tricoci says. And debate rages among cardiologists over two new tools for assessing a patient’s long-term risk of a heart attack. When does a blood test for a marker called C-reactive protein aid in making such a prediction? How about a scan to check for calcium buildup in a patient’s arteries? Mounting evidence supports each test, but more data are needed to determine how they might best be used, Dr. Tricoci says.

Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist at Yale University School of Medicine, says doctors should disclose to patients the strength of the evidence behind the care they recommend. “Treatment decisions are often made very dogmatically even when the level of evidence isn’t very strong,” he says.

One reason for the lack of stronger evidence is that the large “megatrials” that have dominated cardiovascular research in the past decade were sponsored by drug and device companies. While those studies provide an important source of information, they are typically designed primarily to win approval for a treatment or to widen the market for a therapy already on the market, and not to guide treatment decisions, according to the JAMA study.

Limitations of Studies

Clinical studies also typically exclude patients with complicated illness, which can limit the ability of doctors to apply findings to many of their patients. For instance, many heart patients also suffer from kidney disease. But contrast agents typically given to patients undergoing a diagnostic X-ray called cardiac catheterization can be harmful to kidneys.

Dr. Tricoci says he and his colleagues also observed that guideline writers are picked for their expertise in the field — but they are also often those who consult regularly with industry. Such possible conflict of interest raises the potential to introduce bias into the guidelines, undermining their credibility.

Please take time to watch this documentary film about Monsanto’s plans and progress in gaining total control of the world’s Food and Seeds. Share this information as far and wide as you can so that people become informed and take action to prevent this catastrophy from happening. All our lives depend on it. Sadly, their plans have already unfolded farther then you may be aware of.