Thursday 29 June 2017

Does The Alkaline Diet Work?

Three people in New Mexico have been infected with plague this month, which is close to the number of plague cases that the state saw in all of 2016, according to health officials.
This week, the New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) reported two cases of plague — one in a 52-year-old woman and one in a 62-year-old woman, both living in Santa Fe County, in the northern part of the state. Earlier in June, the state reported a case of plague in a 63-year-old man, also living in Santa Fe County. All three people were hospitalized, but all of them survived, NMDOH officials said.
In 2016, New Mexico reported four cases of plague over the entire year, and in 2015, the state also reported four plague cases.
Three people in New Mexico have been infected with plague this month, which is close to the number of plague cases that the state saw in all of 2016, according to health officials.
This week, the New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) reported two cases of plague — one in a 52-year-old woman and one in a 62-year-old woman, both living in Santa Fe County, in the northern part of the state. Earlier in June, the state reported a case of plague in a 63-year-old man, also living in Santa Fe County. All three people were hospitalized, but all of them survived, NMDOH officials said.
In 2016, New Mexico reported four cases of plague over the entire year, and in 2015, the state also reported four plague cases.
Three people in New Mexico have been infected with plague this month, which is close to the number of plague cases that the state saw in all of 2016, according to health officials.
This week, the New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) reported two cases of plague — one in a 52-year-old woman and one in a 62-year-old woman, both living in Santa Fe County, in the northern part of the state. Earlier in June, the state reported a case of plague in a 63-year-old man, also living in Santa Fe County. All three people were hospitalized, but all of them survived, NMDOH officials said.
In 2016, New Mexico reported four cases of plague over the entire year, and in 2015, the state also reported four plague cases.
When I was 5 years old, I walked into class and told everyone that Santa Claus wasn’t real. Yep, I’ve been a buzzkill from the start. I remember some kids getting upset, some in outright denial, and some were also onto the same thing.
Now as an adult, I sometimes feel like I’m doing the same thing to people when I tell them that “the alkaline diet isn’t real”. Some people reading this will get upset if they’ve been a proponent of the alkaline diet for a while, some will be in denial, and some will hopefully research the facts and come to the same conclusion. Santa Claus and the alkaline diet both bring us joy, but they simply aren’t real.

What Is The Alkaline Diet?

The Alkaline Diet places food along a sliding scale, between alkaline (pH=14) and acidic (pH = 0), and recommends that people eat more alkaline foods in order to balance their pH and bring it closer to the body’s ideal pH level (7.35-7.45). The diet promises that eating alkaline foods will make people feel more energized, lose weight, get clear skin and more.
Foods that fall into the “alkaline” category are most vegetables, fruits and a handful of nuts, seeds, legumes and grains. Foods that fall into the “acidic” category are meat, dairy, most grains, sweets and some good fats like butter and cashews.
People on the alkaline diet are encouraged to check their pH by peeing on pH test strips. If it is higher than 7, they are led to believe they are in an alkaline state. (Spoiler alert: this just means their urine is alkaline, not their entire body!)

Why The Alkaline Diet Works

Here’s the reason in short: if you tell people to eat lots of fresh vegetables and fruit, and avoid all processed food and sugar, people will feel healthier. This is not because they are eating alkalizing foods, it’s because they are fresh, whole foods that are high in nutrients, fibre, low in calories and added sugar.
Is it any wonder that people love this diet, rave about dropping pounds and feeling amazing?

…But Here’s Why It Doesn’t Make Sense

1. THE PH VALUE VARIES THROUGHOUT YOUR BODY

Did you know that your stomach has a pH value of 2-3.5? That’s because you need an acidic environment to digest food. The pH value of your saliva also ranges between 5.6-7.9.
Urine has a pH value that fluctuates between 4-9, depending on the health of your kidneys and if more acids need to be excreted. So yes, you can manipulate the pH of your urine with food but this is not a reflection of overall health. It is simply an indicator that you ate foods with a lower or higher acidic content.
And lastly, the pH value of your blood is always between 7.35-7.45. No matter what you eat, this will always remain the same.

2. FOOD CANNOT AFFECT THE PH OF YOUR BLOOD

Our internal organs work really hard to maintain homeostasis at all times and keep blood in the 7.35-7.45 pH value range. If your pH ever fell below or above this, you would be dead. Not only can food not affect the pH of your blood, the pH of food doesn’t matter in the first place. It all ends up in the same place.
Allow me to explain: all food must pass through the stomach which has a pH value of 2-3.5, and that it must then be neutralized by digestive juices in the small intestine. This means all digested food will eventually end up with the exact same pH by the time it reaches your large intestine.

3. “ACIDIC” FOODS ARE GOOD FOR YOU

If I were to follow the alkaline diet, I would be avoiding excellent sources of nutrition. For example, walnuts, cashews and sweet fruits. There is nothing wrong with these foods; as always, it’s simply about ensuring that plant-based foods and vegetables make up the majority of the diet. No matter if you’re vegan, vegetarian, paleo, macrobiotic…just eat lots of vegetables.
So there you have it, in an (acidic) nutshell! If you’ve been following this diet, allow yourself to add back some healthy ‘acidic’ foods and continue to eat plenty of vegetables. However, do not be under the misconception that you are “alkalizing” your body!

http://theheartysoul.com/alkaline-diet/

Leave your comment below.
However, the findings of five new studies now strongly disagree with this prior work. "I was outraged that Nature, a journal I highly respect, would publish such a travesty," said James Vaupel, a demographer at the Max Planck Odense Center on the Biodemography of Aging in Denmark. Vaupel co-founded the International Database on Longevity, one of the databases analyzed in the previous study.
However, the findings of five new studies now strongly disagree with this prior work. "I was outraged that Nature, a journal I highly respect, would publish such a travesty," said James Vaupel, a demographer at the Max Planck Odense Center on the Biodemography of Aging in Denmark. Vaupel co-founded the International Database on Longevity, one of the databases analyzed in the previous study.
Vaupel argued that the prior work relied on an outdated version of the Gerontology Research Group's database "that lacked data for many of the years they studied. Furthermore, they analyzed maximum age at death in a year, rather than the more appropriate maximum life span attained in a year — in many years, the world’s world's oldest living person was older than the oldest person who died that year," he told Live Science. "If appropriate data from the Gerontology Research Group are used, then ... there is no sign of a looming limit to human life spans."
Siegfried Hekimi, a geneticist at McGill University in Montreal, and his colleagues similarly found no evidence that maximum human life span has stopped increasing. By analyzing trends in the life spans of the longest-living individuals from the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Japan for each year since 1968, they found that both maximum and average life spans may continue to increase far into the foreseeable future.
Maarten Rozing, a gerontology researcher at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and his colleagues said the authors of the previous study committed errors in their statistical analyses. "We think that the claim that human life span has reached its limit should be regarded with caution," Rozing told Live Science. "Overall taken, there are very strong arguments to believe that our life span is still increasing, and, as long as our living conditions keep on improving, there is no reason to believe that this will come to a halt in the future." [7 Ways the Mind and Body Change with Age]
Similarly, in an analysis of Japanese women, who make up a growing number of centenarians, or people over 100, Joop de Beer, a demographer at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, and his colleagues suggested that the maximum human life span may increase to 125 years by 2070. "There is no reason to expect that a limit to human life span is in sight," de Beer told Live Science. He added that two kind of criticisms can be made about the prior work: "They did not apply their method correctly," and "they did not apply the correct method."
But the researchers did caution that, although the prior work might not have presented a strong argument for a limit to maximum human life span, it does not mean such a limit does not exist. "The evidence is mixed, but at present, the balance of the evidence suggests that if there is a limit, it is above 120, perhaps much above, and perhaps there is not a limit at all," Vaupel said. "Whether or not there is a looming limit is an important scientific question."
"Average human life span is clearly increasing continuously," Hekimi said. "The failure to identify a current limit to maximum human life span suggests that the increase in average life span might continue for quite a while."
Vijg defended his team's October study. "We agree with none of the arguments put forward — sometimes because they were based on a misunderstanding, sometimes because they were plain wrong, and sometimes because we disagreed with the arguments themselves," he told Live Science.
Jay Olshansky, a biodemographer at the University of Illinois at Chicago who did not take part in either the previous work or the new studies, found the rebuttals "a bit amusing." He said the key problem with all of these arguments about maximum human life span is that, of the 108 billion or so humans ever born, "only a handful have ever lived to extreme old age beyond age 110, and it's only in recent times that the number of centenarians has risen."
"The rebuttals are mostly focused on slightly different ways of looking at the same limited data," Olshansky said. "Basically, if you tilt your head a little to the left or right and look at the same old age mortality or survival statistics for all humans, you might come to slightly different conclusions."
Future research should analyze the statistics of human aging as well as the human genome, which "will tell us whether people that have particularly long lives have a particular genetic makeup and whether this makeup changes with changes in the average life span," Hekimi said. "Carrying out such studies and finding out will take a while."
The five new studies are detailed online June 28 in the journal Nature.
Original article on Live Science.
However, the findings of five new studies now strongly disagree with this prior work. "I was outraged that Nature, a journal I highly respect, would publish such a travesty," said James Vaupel, a demographer at the Max Planck Odense Center on the Biodemography of Aging in Denmark. Vaupel co-founded the International Database on Longevity, one of the databases analyzed in the previous study.
Vaupel argued that the prior work relied on an outdated version of the Gerontology Research Group's database "that lacked data for many of the years they studied. Furthermore, they analyzed maximum age at death in a year, rather than the more appropriate maximum life span attained in a year — in many years, the world’s world's oldest living person was older than the oldest person who died that year," he told Live Science. "If appropriate data from the Gerontology Research Group are used, then ... there is no sign of a looming limit to human life spans."
Siegfried Hekimi, a geneticist at McGill University in Montreal, and his colleagues similarly found no evidence that maximum human life span has stopped increasing. By analyzing trends in the life spans of the longest-living individuals from the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Japan for each year since 1968, they found that both maximum and average life spans may continue to increase far into the foreseeable future.
Maarten Rozing, a gerontology researcher at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and his colleagues said the authors of the previous study committed errors in their statistical analyses. "We think that the claim that human life span has reached its limit should be regarded with caution," Rozing told Live Science. "Overall taken, there are very strong arguments to believe that our life span is still increasing, and, as long as our living conditions keep on improving, there is no reason to believe that this will come to a halt in the future." [7 Ways the Mind and Body Change with Age]
Similarly, in an analysis of Japanese women, who make up a growing number of centenarians, or people over 100, Joop de Beer, a demographer at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, and his colleagues suggested that the maximum human life span may increase to 125 years by 2070. "There is no reason to expect that a limit to human life span is in sight," de Beer told Live Science. He added that two kind of criticisms can be made about the prior work: "They did not apply their method correctly," and "they did not apply the correct method."
But the researchers did caution that, although the prior work might not have presented a strong argument for a limit to maximum human life span, it does not mean such a limit does not exist. "The evidence is mixed, but at present, the balance of the evidence suggests that if there is a limit, it is above 120, perhaps much above, and perhaps there is not a limit at all," Vaupel said. "Whether or not there is a looming limit is an important scientific question."
"Average human life span is clearly increasing continuously," Hekimi said. "The failure to identify a current limit to maximum human life span suggests that the increase in average life span might continue for quite a while."
Vijg defended his team's October study. "We agree with none of the arguments put forward — sometimes because they were based on a misunderstanding, sometimes because they were plain wrong, and sometimes because we disagreed with the arguments themselves," he told Live Science.
Jay Olshansky, a biodemographer at the University of Illinois at Chicago who did not take part in either the previous work or the new studies, found the rebuttals "a bit amusing." He said the key problem with all of these arguments about maximum human life span is that, of the 108 billion or so humans ever born, "only a handful have ever lived to extreme old age beyond age 110, and it's only in recent times that the number of centenarians has risen."
"The rebuttals are mostly focused on slightly different ways of looking at the same limited data," Olshansky said. "Basically, if you tilt your head a little to the left or right and look at the same old age mortality or survival statistics for all humans, you might come to slightly different conclusions."
Future research should analyze the statistics of human aging as well as the human genome, which "will tell us whether people that have particularly long lives have a particular genetic makeup and whether this makeup changes with changes in the average life span," Hekimi said. "Carrying out such studies and finding out will take a while."
The five new studies are detailed online June 28 in the journal Nature.
Original article on Live Science.

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