Considerazioni sulla "dieta alcalina" [ITA/ENG]

ENG Yesterday, I read a post about a topic, which apparently does not seem very "alarmist", has the potential to instill incorrect ideas, which in some contexts can be very dangerous. I admit that nobody has the truth in his hand, the main solution at the base of everything is in the deep study and in keeping an open mind, but critical to the information that comes to us. Despite the good intentions that some may have, you do not whip up a scientific doctrine, when you do not have the right skills, because as I said, you can create misinformation and misconceptions, which can be dangerous! I do not know how many of you know Mr. Robert O. Young, I call him "sir" not "doctor" (as he is called by some of his supporters), because first of all he is not a doctor. He has been investigated several times and finally in 2017 sentenced to 3 years in prison for abuse of the medical profession! The gentleman in question performed analysis, diagnosing pathologies ("looking at the blood under a microscope"), and prescribed products that he produced himself. Young is known for writing the book "The pH Miracle". Among the practices performed by Young there was also the venous bicarbonate infusion in cancer patients, a very dangerous practice that is only practiced in serious cases of acidosis, also known as "Simoncini therapy" (if you like, I'll talk about it in a future post)!

Others, however, have claimed to have benefited from the "alkaline diet" described by Young, but what is it? And first of all, what does alkaline mean?

Avoiding further technicalities, we return to our topic of interest. The blood, as we know, has a slightly alkaline pH of about 7.4, obviously this value undergoes slight changes (about +/- 0.1) that last a few minutes, but which are promptly brought back to standard by a series of physiological mechanisms called "buffer systems". If these systems do not work and the pH exceeds certain values, it will be called metabolic acidosis for a pH of less than 6.8 or of metabolic alkalosis for a pH above 7.8, so we are in a pathological condition, which in most cases serious can lead to the death of the subject! As we have seen, we could conclude here, but where does the hypothesis of the improvement of health given by the alkalization of the tissues come from? Well, from the "Simoncini Therapy", derived from the distortion of the explanation of the Warburg effect. Otto Heinrich Warburg was a German physiologist, who for his discoveries on the metabolism of cancer cells, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1931[1]. He observed that the tumor has a high consumption of glucose, which occurs through glycolysis. This process leads to the formation of acid waste products that promote tumor growth, as they facilitate corrosion of surrounding healthy tissues and therefore spread to other organs and the growth of diseased cells.[3] This is the reason why some doctors have hypothesized that using a basic substance such as sodium bicarbonate, the neutralization of these acids would be obtained, and a reduction in the cancer's ability to spread is obtained.[2] Consider these hypotheses, is it really useful to eat foods, like some fruits, cereals and legumes, which have a given basicity? Keeping in mind, beyond the acidity or basicity of a food, which reducing the intake of meat and fried foods and encouraging the consumption of fruit and vegetables, obviously improves our general state of health, as we bring more attention to what we consume , the answer No![4,5] It is impossible to increase the acidic pH of the tumor environment by taking foods or substances such as bicarbonate with food, but we should inject it. Bicarbonate injections, however, are very dangerous for healthy organs and is highly discouraged as a practice, except in some cases such as lactic acidosis or metabolic acidosis! However, in the USA, the potential for sodium bicarbonate to increase the effects of chemotherapy is being explored, making treatment more effective. [6,7]