Summary: Renal Physiologist says baking soda also called sodium bicarbonate is good for your kidneys and auto-immune diseases.
With knowledge from other research studies that had found that baking soda reduces acidity in the body and slows down the development of kidney problems, scientists at the Medical College of Georgia (MCG), decided to study the impact of baking soda on hypertension and possible loss of kidney function. They found that baking soda encourages the spleen to create an anti-inflammatory environment that reverses symptoms of inflammatory disease and published the findings of their study in the Journal of Immunology.
Studies done before had found that when healthy people and rats consumed baking soda solution, the stomach responded by making more digestive acids to digest the next meal and the spleen did not mount a protective immune response. Basically, baking soda stopped the immune response by shifting the pH value of the digestive system.
Body cavities, like the digestive tract, and the exterior of organs are lined by mesothelial cells that provide protection through microvilli that sense the environment and warn the organs about invaders, prompting an immune response. Paul O’Connor, Ph.D., a renal physiologist in the MCG department of physiology said about the findings, “Certainly, drinking bicarbonate affects the spleen, and we think it’s through the mesothelial cells.”
In their study, the MSG team found that after two weeks of drinking water with baking soda, the quantity of microphages called M1 (which promote inflammation) in the kidneys, spleen, and blood declined while the quantity of those called M2 (the immune system’s first responders to a call for help) increased. They found the same response even in healthy mice.
“The shift from inflammatory to an anti-inflammatory profile was happening everywhere. We saw it in the kidneys, we saw it in the spleen, now we see it in the peripheral blood,” said Dr. O’Connor.
- The scientists also found a shift in other immune cell types, like T-cells which generally suppress immune response and prevent the body from attacking itself. The shift continued for at least four hours in humans and three days in rats.
The team hope that baking soda will one day have the same impact on people who suffer from autoimmune diseases as drinking baking soda seems to give the body an anti-inflammatory stimulus.
Reference:
http://www.jimmunol.org/content/early/2018/04/14/jimmunol.1701605
