What Is the Alkaline Diet? Facts, Benefits and Myths!

The Alkaline Diet - also known as the alkaline ash or acid diet - has been a household name among celebrities, often bearing positive results. Of course, what works for celebrities doesn’t always seem to work with us, normal folks. This is because we don’t have an array of professional exercise and nutrition professionals at our disposal.

It is based on the idea that the nature of metabolic waste in our body can alter our body’s pH. This diet is supposedly meant to make it more alkaline than acidic. Although this claim hasn’t been proven to be true, there’s probably no harm in trying it out.

How the Alkaline Diet works

Metabolic waste are food remnants that don’t get used up during daily metabolic processes. This waste can be alkaline, neutral, or acidic. The theory is that acidic waste makes your blood more acidic, while alkaline waste increases its alkalinity. This, in turn, improves health.

pH is a measure of acidity or alkalinity of something. Different parts of our body have varying pH levels, with the stomach more acidic than the rest. The kidneys and lungs are primarily responsible for maintaining balanced pH in the body. The kidneys produce bicarbonate ions that neutralize acids, and then bind to the acids to form carbon dioxide. This is then exhaled while breathing, or excreted through urine.

The pH of urine varies but not that of blood. Image via Pexels/Artem Podrez

Blood pH generally ranges from 7.2 to 7.4. Although the pH of urine varies depending on several factors, the pH of the blood cannot be changed, especially just by following a simple diet.

Acidic foods (pH 0 - 6.9): meat, poultry, eggs, dairy, fish, grains (rice, oats, pasta, cornflakes), alcohol

Neutral (pH 7): natural fats (olive oil, butter, milk)

Alkaline (pH 7.1 - 14): fruits, nuts, seeds, vegetables, legumes, soy products

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This sounds vaguely like the Keto diet, another famous crash diet that promises big rewards.

Basically, acidic foods include protein, phosphate, and sulphur. Meanwhile, alkaline components include calcium, magnesium, and potassium

components include calcium, potassium, magnesium. Image via Pexels/Oyster Haus

The foods allowed in this diet are good for you and may help regulate issues caused by bad health habits within the body. But in no way do they alter the pH level of our blood. The diet is not all bogus, however, as it turns out, it may be useful for certain populations.

Benefits and myths of the diet:

While this plan won’t deliver major weight loss results, it is believed to help with a number of issues, even chronic health problems.

The diet is suitable for individuals looking to

• maintain heart health

• improve brain function

• increase bone density

• reduce blood pressure and hypertension

• lower cholesterol

• prevent kidney stones

various health benefits are provided by this diet. Image via Unsplash/Tara Clark

Contrary to popular belief, this diet is not a cure for cancer. This theory is based on the idea that cancer only grows in acidic environments, and doesn’t affect individuals whose bodies don't have as much acidity.

This theory cannot be true as cancer cells develop in body tissue, which is relatively alkaline in nature (pH 7.4). Moreover, cancer cells feed off the acid that they develop themselves.

While this diet may seem harmless, you will get stripped off various nutrients. This plan is restrictive of animal protein. This not only creates a dip in protein intake, but also strips one’s diet of essential amino acids and other micronutrients. It’s definitely not the first diet to turn to if you want weight loss results, but there are several others for that!

If you’re curious of the benefits this diet provides, give it a shot and let us know how it went!