Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Alkaline Water

Episode Date: January 12, 2019

As shelves seem to be overtaken by "pH-balanced" beverages, alkaline water has moved from the fringes into the mainstream. This week on Sawbones, Dr. Sydnee and Justin see if every human malady really can be fixed by low-pH water. (Spoiler: No.) Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saw bones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. I'm not a sense the Come for the mouth. Oh. Wow. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Saabone,

Emerald Tour of Miss Guy to Bedison. I'm your co-host Justin McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy. Oh, sorry, sis. These faces, these faces. I know. Is this going to be the whole episode? No, we're doing a Conn-Marie, you know?

Conn-Marie. I know. Marie Condo. We're doing it with you. Listen to the list. Okay. If I say it enough times, they'll understand what I'm talking about. Right. That's the way podcasting works.

Thanks for letting me know how podcasting works. So, just to touch everything in your house and see if it sparks joy, and that's the way the stuff that doesn't are donated or whatever. We've gone through about 15 bags worth of donations and trash, but my allergies are just done, Sid. Yeah. I understand. I feel like, basically, what I feel like right now

is that the pH levels of my body are out of whack. And I feel like if I had something to help me bring it back into balance, then I would be a lot more centered and a lot more ready to do this show. So Justin first mentioned this week's topic to me. He said, I was trying to think of something to do. I was looking through our emails and he said, hey, why don't you talk about alkaline water?

What's the deal with that? And so then I thought, oh, is anybody else suggested this? Because here, this is my confession. I had not heard of alkaline water. I mean, I know what those two words mean, but I had not heard of it as a thing. I didn't know it was something people were buying. I'm just somebody who follows trends in the beverage sector, and it's on an upswing

right now in North America and Asia, so I just, I'd like to keep my finger on the poles. Well, so then I searched our email to see, have a lot of people been recommending this. And between alkaline water, alkaline diet, the whole pH alkaline concept, a lot of people have been interested in this. I don't know how to miss this. I'll call this a zebra sector, apparently. Well, and also diets, which I think like that rung a bell for me, but I wanna thank all the people

who recommended this, including even Hannah and Alec and Cheryl and Jordan and Robert and Christopher and Freddie and Courtney and Amber and Emma and Jamie and Arthur and Amy and Bill and Sarah and Jesse and Warren and Sarah and Anna and Dan. Thank you. And Justin. Hoops. Yes.

Mark Roy. I will say and many of your emails said this that you started to look into alkaline water because someone in your family or a friend said, hey, I'm drinking alkaline water now and it's changed my life in whatever myriad ways. And so you started to look it up to see, is this a real thing? And it took you down a rabbit hole. And I sympathize because I've been there. I have at no this week, I have at least two points, found said with her head in her hands and tears in her eyes, like audibly, like gasping. Sometimes these things, just, I know that this is what we do,

and it shouldn't surprise me anymore, but some of it is so obvious, like so obvious that it's wrong. But then I have the, I went to medical school, so. Well, let's go, let's go hard. All right, so the thing about it is that people never seem to get tired of trying to improve on water. Good. A little water. Like people just have to do something with water because it's not good

enough that water is good for you. And you should probably be drinking more of it because most of us don't drink enough. That's not enough. They had fruit flavors to it. They had like fluoride. Like, come on, this is nature's water. You don't need to be throwing those chemicals in my water. No, wait, no. fluoride's good. As long as it's clean, I mean, it's as long as it's clean. It's just that's, it's fine. Alkaline. Clean non-GMO. No. And it stopped. Alkaline water is water water has a higher pH than water typically does. Do you...

I think most people... The opposite would be acid water, right? Yes. Okay. So, you kind of understand how the pH scale works. I think most of us have some familiarity with it. Basically, it's a measure of how acidic something is or how basic it is or alkaline, either way.

And the lower the pH value, the more acidic it is, the higher it is. The more pumpkin spice lattes, it drinks the more basic it is. Ha ha ha. That's pretty good. No, more alkaline. The higher on the pH scale.

So a neutral pH is seven. If it's lower than seven, it's acidic if it's higher than seven. It's alkaline. That's dumb. What? It's dumb that that's that way. It should be zero. That's dumb that it's that way.

Well, that's just not how it, why would a neutral be zero? And then it'd be negative and positive? That would be more confusing. It's easier to use the, that way you can just use the value, like seven is neutral, zero, one to six is acidic, eight to 14.

Okay, okay, I understand. Yeah. So generally speaking, things that are very acidic or very basic can be dangerous to humans. And the stuff in the neutral range is fine. And even with that, let me point out, like the pH of lemon juice is two. So I mean, within reason, danger, S, obviously you can eat a lemon if you want and you're fine. You know, and the reason that you're fine if you eat a lemon is because pH is one of, if not the most tightly controlled systems in your body. Your body is really good at regulating what your pH level is.

And the reason for this is very simple, because the human body only operates in a pretty narrow pH range. If it starts to get too low or too high, your enzymes, the proteins that do things in your body will start to denature or fall apart. And what follows that eventually is death. Right. Be full. So the way we say it in medicine often is, oh, that pH is incompatible with life. Meaning that person's going to die if we don't do something. Right. Okay. Got it. So the idea that the food and beverage that you take in has influence

on your blood pH level is kind of wild. Because if that were true, then every time you drank lemonade, you would die. I don't. Right. So, so your kidneys and your lungs are mainly in charge of keeping your pH where it needs to be by getting rid of things through your kidneys or keeping things and then blowing off extra-carm dioxide from your lungs. And all of this can be measured with a blood test. We can measure, there's a slightly different pH in the blood in your veins than in the blood in your arteries. We can measure both of those things by taking a sample and figuring out what your blood

pH is. Again, this is very tightly regulated and it's very important that your body keep a pH somewhere between 7.35 and 7.45. Now, obviously, if it goes above or below that, you don't instantly die. We do things. You get sick though. You get sick, you come to the hospital, we do things to help you,

because otherwise, didn't you will die. Water is usually around seven on the pH scale. You know, maybe not absolute seven. Pure natural water is seven. And then water that we drink, whether it's tap water or bottled water, varies around that, right? It's not always exactly seven.

The way that they make alkaline water is to add different minerals that will raise the pH of it. So they add things like calcium, amptacium, magnesium, silica, bicarbonate, they add all that to the water. And then the water that you can buy that's alkaline water is usually like a pH of eight or nine. Okay. Okay, does that make sense?

Yes. Now, the reason that alkaline water exists, the reason that this has been made and bottled and sold is that there is this idea that somehow our North American diet is causing us all to be too acidic, that our bodies are chronically mildly acidic. I want to explain Twitter to be fair. mildly acidic. I want to explain Twitter to be fair. If we were all just acidic all the time. We're just all mildly acidic.

Now if this were true, as I already mentioned, we could detect it on labs, right? If you were really worried that you were too acidic, you could come in and I could do the test that we use often in the hospital for patients that we're really worried about is an arterial blood gas. So they actually have to stick a needle into an artery to get a blood sample to obtain that. It's a very painful lab test necessary, unfortunately, sometimes. But we could do that and we could check your pH.

And if your pH was okay, which if you're not feeling sick and you're walking around and doing fine, it's probably pretty okay. You'd be fine. Now, the argument that people who believe in this concept will make is that this is, first of all, it's just a low level acidity. So, I told you there was that range 7.35 to 7.45. They say that 7.4 is ideal. So, if you are 7.38, you're too acidic. So they will say like, well, but the lab is normal, but we know that that's not okay. It's normal, but not normal. Or they'll say, well, your blood pH may be normal, but what is your body having to do to maintain that normal blood pH, right?

So it's having to make all these sacrifices and make all these changes in different organ systems. So if we were able to test the acidity in your liver or in your kidneys or in your, wherever, your intestines, then we would see that on a cellular level, your body is too acidic. And it's like having to work over time to keep you level. So basically the argument would be that this blood test

is not an accurate representation of your whole body acidity. And the nice thing about something like that, like a concept like that, is that I can't prove you wrong in the sense that I don't know how to go in and sample, you know, from one organ system, from where in the body, what cells are you worried about, which environment, and different parts of the body are acidic. Your stomach, contents, yes, because that's how you break down food.

So it's kind of like, everybody knows this test is accurate. What my book presposes is, maybe it's not. Exactly. So this idea, by the way, is distinct from patients with certain conditions like chronic lung disease or chronic kidney disease are always at risk for a chronic acidosis. Their body works really hard to compensate for that, but they often have to obtain certain medical treatments

to maintain their pH, especially like people who need dialysis. If you don't get dialysis, you could become quite acidic. But you'll know because you'll get sick. We have a distinct cause and a treatment for that. It's not some sort of chronic, untestable, undetectable cause of all disease, which is what it has become. This secret cause of all disease, which is what it has become. This secret cause of all disease, I have seen this concept of low-level acidosis blamed for acid reflux, basically any pain.

One of the main practitioners we're going to talk about, one of the main proponents of this, would simply tell his patients, acid is pain, pain is acid. Acid is the problem. that is the cause of all pain back pain must pain bone pain whatever Cancer and we're gonna get into this has been blamed for all of cancer Okay Any kind of heart disease diabetes gal high blood pressure kidney stones osteoporosis is a big one All this stuff has been blamed on this concept of a chronic low level metabolic acidosis.

And what I'm gonna start off with is the idea that maybe this isn't even a real thing. What? Sid, I didn't see that coming. So just to tell you like where did this concept probably originate, it probably dates back to a study done in 1995 by Dr. Thomas Rimmer and Friedrich Mons who were looking at the effects that diets could have on pH, but not blood pH, the pH of your urine. And the reason for this is that urine pH can be associated with your likelihood of forming kidney stones. Lower urine pH makes

you more likely to have a kidney stone. So they were looking at ways to raise the pH of your urine and prevent kidney stones. That was a whole idea. So they looked at different foods and the way that they were processed in the body and they came up with the idea that some foods are acidic, not like a lemon is acidic, acidic in the sense that they generate acid form acid compounds in your body. And some foods are alkaline. They generate alkaline compounds in your body. And if you could mainly eat foods that are alkaline, you're going to have more alkaline urine, the pH of your urine will be higher, and you'll be less likely to form kidney stones. So this was the whole idea they were going for. And they came up

with this concept of a potential renal acid load, PRAL value, and they gave foods different PRALs, right? Based on how much they would lower or raise the pH of your urine. And like I said, this is not obvious. On this scale, a citrus fruit is actually an alkaline food. Why? Because it is acidic, your body is going to generate alkaline compounds in response. So generally speaking, fruits and veggies were found to be alkaline, meats, dairy, grains are acidic.

Generally speaking on this diet. And so the researchers came to the conclusion that if we can raise your NPH and make it more alkaline, you'll have fewer kidney stones. It had nothing to do with cancer. It had nothing to do with weight loss and nothing to do with heart attacks. It had nothing to do with cancer. It had nothing to do with weight loss. It had nothing to do with heart attacks. It had nothing to do with general wellness or anything else.

They basically said this alkaline diet could help prevent kidney stones. It was mainly like a fruit and veggie based diet. That seems like a lot of work to prevent one thing. What about all the other things? Well, they weren't studying that. They were looking work to prevent one thing what about all the other things. Well they were I mean they weren't studying that they were looking very specifically one thing it's just like that's like saying like. If you eat a diet of all fruits and veggies and bread and bananas then we can help treat your. I don't know athletes foot is like, that's a whole diet for one thing. What about all the other things?

Well, one, I would say everybody's got to study something. Fine. People can't all study all. You have to, you have to focus. And usually that's the way you, you make breakthroughs is by focusing on a thing and working really hard at it. Two, have you ever had a kidney stone? Uh, well, Gryffindon. Mm-hmm. So since you can feel your brother's pain. working really hard at it too. Have you ever had a kidney stone? Guilgiffin did. Mm-hmm. So since you can feel your brother's pain. Just like those two guys from GI Joe. How was it?

Bad. Uh-huh. But like, there's all kinds of reasons to eat certain ways. It just seems like a wild reason. I think if you got, I've had one kidney stone in my life. If I were someone, because there are certain conditions that predispose you to getting kidney stones a lot, and if I were one of those people who knew I was probably gonna get kidney stones on a regular basis,

I might switch my diet around if that would help prevent it. Fair enough. They're really painful. Yeah, fair enough. All right, I won't done all these cats in here. No, I don't think these, I mentioned this study because I think this might have been

the beginning, I mean, we knew about the concept of study because I think this might have been the beginning. I mean, we knew about the concept of acidity and alkalinity, obviously prior to that. But I think this may be where some of this other stuff, like this was the research milieu which gave rise to this alkaline diet that we're going to talk about. So far, things are okay. Scientifically speaking. Yes. We're on solid ground. But we are about to leave Earth and float into the,

into the skies, the realms of fake medicine. Beautiful, let's go. But first, let's make a pit stop at the Billing department. Yeah, we'll get some supplies. Space gas. Let's go All right, Justin, are you ready for this? Yeah, and I last off. I don't mean in like a fun like sports Sports jam way there, okay, you know like

Go ahead, I for pair yourself. Demonstrate. Now I wasn't going to do that. Did you say sports jam? Excellent. Thank you. That'll keep you running for the rest of the day. Thank you. Sports jam.

Jock champs. Is that what you're thinking? Yeah, I can remember. This is the unlicensed, Cinewack Roy presents an unlicensed collection of jock jams. Sorry. You're all ready for something? Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do pump the song pump it out. Okay. We are the winners. My pal. Okay. I'm done with sports jams. A lot of okay. A lot of what follows is probably I'm gonna I'm gonna blame it on this guy because he seems a lot of time looking for the right person to dunk on I didn't I found him one of our listeners named him in an email and then I I looked him up and I

This was the cause of many of my tears Robert O Young is who I'm gonna blame a lot of the song so I mean it wasn't just him I think there was this moment in the in the 90s when there there was this sudden increased interest in the idea that we could acidify, I guess, or alkalinize our bodies. Which again, it's just, it's wild to me. We spend so much time learning about acid-based physiology and like how all that works in the human body and medical school and then applying it in the hospital, which I do frequently, it's, I mean, it's complex. And it takes time, you have to mask.

And it's not something like your body is really good at it. And when it's not good, you're sick. So this idea that like, oh, we could just eat things and check, it's just wild. Anyway, Robert O. Young was not, is not, he's still alive. He's just not practicing whatever he was practicing. You can't call it medicine. He is not, he's still alive. He's just not practicing whatever he was practicing. You can't call it medicine. He is not a doctor.

He was educated primarily at a non-accredited institution called the Clayton College of Natural Health. So the degrees that he received are not know, the educational community at large as indicative of any sort of body of knowledge. He did not have any credentials to be practicing medicine. As I said, he went as evidence for this. He went from a bachelor's degree to a doctoral degree in eight months. Now, that is tempting.

That I do find tempting. Do you? Do you? Do you? So is he doctor Robert a young or? No, he's not. He's Robert a young PhD. No, he's not a PhD. He's nothing. What do you say? He's got a doctoral degree because that, well, they gave him these degrees, but it was, it was, it's not about a month. No, it was like a diploma. I mean, like, he got all these supposed degrees, but he didn't actually have any sort of, one of them was like a, was a naturopathic degree

that he really didn't even have that. He didn't have any. He's not even good at the fake thing. There was one that was like, he got a doctorate of philosophy and nutrition or something. I mean, there, he got a series of wild degrees. He had studied like business. He took like a random biology course here and there.

He had taken some nutrition courses here and there. He had gone to school for a while. He never graduated from an actual accredited university. He just kind of floated around, did some different training, and eventually got these fake degrees. He derived from this, clearly, excellent exemplary education, that all human disease is blamed on acidity.

Everything that's wrong with you is simply the result of too much acid. He's the one who I quoted earlier. Pain is acid, acid is pain. Everything that goes wrong in your body is because you have too much acid in there. So therefore, all cures are an alkaline diet or an alkaline water or alkaline infusion, whatever. Just alkalineize your body, cures anything.

Got it. So it's that simple. Only anything were that simple in medicine. It would be nice. So he also believed, by the way, in a concept just to underline kind of how wild these ideas are. Because sometimes this stuff can sound not too far off. And maybe you think, well, was he just like this really ahead of his time, genius, and

the rest of us are behind? He also believed in a 19th century concept called pliomorphism. This was prior to us learning the germ theory of disease and widely accepting it, the idea that germs that we... Him believing it was not prior to us. No, this theory predates the germ theory of disease when we figured out like, oh, we get these germs from out there in the world or from other humans and they get into our bodies and they make us sick, he believed that bacteria are actually red blood cells

that have been exposed to acid. Now this pleomorphic theory went, you know, out the window after germ theory of disease, but not for young who still believed it. And he would do something called live blood analysis. And I want to mention this because I think you might run into somebody, especially if you're someone who suffers from any kind of chronic illness or who has to see multiple different kinds of doctors or who may be like is looking for a doctor because you haven't had great experiences.

You might run into certain practitioners, especially alternative medicine practitioners, who will do this live blood analysis. This is not accepted by any laboratory, medical organization. This is not a real examination. As far as what it's origins are in this pleomorphic theory. This idea that red blood cells will become bacteria. That was where it came from. The people who practice it will use it to tell you

that you have too much acid in your blood or that you have a vitamin deficiency or all kinds of things that they can then turn around and prescribe you a bunch of supplements that they usually also sell to fix all of these problems. And they will certainly find something wrong. It's one of those tests that they're going to do, and they're going to find something wrong. No one can reproduce it. No lab does it. But he would do this and teach this. He's gotten in trouble for this, as well as other things we'll

talk about. And he basically thought treating diseases like changing the water in a fish tank. That was one of his great analogies. If your fish is sick, do you treat the fish or do you just change the water in their tank? Listen, fish don't cost that much. I'm not sure I would do either, but I see what you're saying. He wrote a bunch of books about his pH theory. There is many, many books about the pH diet and how to, you know, alkalinate your body.

He was on Oprah. He brought a patient with him on Oprah, who claimed that he had cured her breast cancer. How dare he drag Oprah into this Oprah? I guess how dare you put this down a national stage but still I haven't watched the interview. I don't know how I don't know how skeptical or critical she was. I'll get you a second computer so you can throw that one through the window. I know. I just, I couldn't.

Then this poor patient that he brought on with him who, at the time, believed he had cured her cancer, died of her cancer two years later. So he did not cure her cancer at the time. It looked like maybe she was in remission or something, but it obviously did not cure her cancer. He was brought up on charges many times throughout his career for fraudulent claims and false advertising this live blood analysis. He would perform these things and that aren't real tests and then make people pay him money. He eventually started running a cancer clinic out of, I mean, this big ranch that he owned.

He owned this giant ranch out in California. There's like a moat around it and you have to cross like stones to get up to the door. And he basically would bring patients out to his giant fancy ranch and treat them there. And he would treat them with like his diet alcohol. I was all about alkaline just out, you know, me eat this alkaline diet, drink this water. And like a lot of that probably is harmless in and of itself like eat more fruits and veggies.

Okay, that's fine. Does it treat cancer? No, does it cure cancer? No, is it harmful? No, but he would actively encourage his patients not to seek out traditional medicine, but to just go with his cures. He would also do things like infusions of baking soda.

Unhelpful. No, those are unhelpful. Um, and in addition, he would charge people at his pH miracle ranch. Thousands of dollars. People who are the most surprising part you've told me sitting, I never would have seen that part coming. Hachi Machu, what a shock. People who are desperate, who are diagnosed with advanced, incurable, in-stage cancers would come out to his ranch and pay, one patient paid like $77,000 before she eventually succumbed to the cancer. It's just, it's, it's egregious.

It's egregious what, what he, with absolutely no basis for it. So eventually he was just in the last couple years, he was convicted of practicing medicine without a license. He was sent to jail for three years. He's still currently in jail. And he was also sentenced in a separate trial to pay $105 million to one of his patients that he actively encouraged not to seek out treatment for her at the time.

Stage one, treatable, possibly resectable breast cancer, which then by the time this court case was going on, it had advanced to stage four. So I think a lot of like this concept of the alkaline diet and that you can alter your body pH significantly with eating and drinking certain things comes from, I mean, he wrote a whole bunch of books and it's funny as I was looking through all of the books that he wrote, these, like they sounded familiar to me. Like I think I've seen these books out there, you know, like the pH miracle and stuff. I think I've heard of these, I was looking for some of the pH miracle, balance your diet,

reclaim your health, the pH miracle for weight loss, balance your body chemistry, achieve your ideal weight. I feel like I've seen these out there and around, you have to and they're all written by this guy who was a complete fraud who Only was after money and was willing to Let people die in order to I mean get money from them. Great So I think from that not just him but like from all these books he published and all this renewed interest, and focusing on cancer, I think that that unfortunately is a very effective method

for some of these frauds to gain traction is that, you know, sadly, there are many times where a patient will come in with an advanced cancer and a doctor won't have a cure. They'll have treatments, they'll have ways to manage it, but they'll have to be honest and say, this is incurable. And that kind of desperation that causes, I think, it makes people more likely to seek out alternative methods of treatment because what have you got to lose kind of attitude. Your money is the answer and time and your health.

Yes. And so I think that a lot of these frauds will prey upon that specifically because it's not as simple as you come to your doctor, you have high blood pressure, they give you a pill, your blood pressure comes down. Great. I can fix that. Cancer unfortunately is not like that. So from this, a lot of studies were generated looking at this concept of alkaline diet, alkaline water,

alkalineizing the body in some way, there was a lot of interest initially focused on osteoporosis, because we know that in an acidic environment, the body loses more calcium. So the thought was, we'll lose bone density. Our bones will be weaker, we'll be more likely to have osteoporosis in an acidic body. There's been some like correlation studies where they took like postmenopausal women who were more likely to have osteoporosis

and looked at their diet and all this different stuff. And there were some correlations found with diet. But again, we're just looking at diets where like do people eat a lot of fruit and veggies in addition to protein? And like, I mean, fruit, we know fruits and vegetables are good for us. So it's not, that's kind of a hard thing to ask.

Like are there a million other reasons why people who eat a healthy, well-balanced diet would be less likely to get sick than people who don't eat a healthy well-balanced diet? Of course. I mean, right. Everything else that it's been touted for is still under investigation. There's been a lot of evidence that is used to back up these claims from studies that were done on patients who had actual metabolic acidosis.

So instead of this possibly, well, I would say almost certainly completely fake thing, chronic, low-level acidosis that we all might be suffering from because of our North American diet, there are people who have actual acidosis. They're usually in the hospital. I'm usually treating them for something. It's usually a patient with a respiratory or kidney problem. Could be other things though. Diabetes can lead to this.

And they've done studies on those patients to see like, what is that acidic environment? What other problems does it cause in their body? And they're using those studies as evidence for this other thing. But in these patients, their pH was usually 7.2 or lower, true acidosis, not this vague 7.38. Right, exactly. No, these were actually sick people. So these two things are, it's apples and oranges. This has nothing to do with it. And all of this is leading to a lot of conflicting dietary advice, right? Because we live in this age of, I think this is leading to a lot of conflicting dietary advice, right? Because

we live in this age of, I think we're still in a lot of carbs or bad, don't eat carbs, all car, you know, stay away from all carbs, eat a lot of protein. I think we are still very much in that moment in dietary history. Well, this diet says, no, don't eat protein, eat a little, but too much protein is bad for you. So don't eat protein. They both agree whether you're going high protein or alkaline diet, they both agree that grains are bad. It's something. But this diet would argue that you don't don't eat meat.

More protein, don't eat any protein. Okay. Which I know my sister would call me and say that's fine. Okay. She eats protein. Well, she's protein. Don't need any protein. Okay. Which I know my sister would call me and say that's fine. Yeah, she's protein. Well, she's protein. Yeah, you see she wouldn't even be following the alkaline diet. Right. So in general, this concept of low grade metabolic acidosis probably doesn't exist. There are no there's nothing to back up all the claims that it is the secret cause of diabetes and heart disease and strokes and cancer. You'll find that out there. There's nothing to back up all the claims that it is the secret cause of diabetes and heart disease and strokes and cancer, you'll find that out there. There's nothing to back that up.

Because again, if we changed our body pH this easily, we would die every time we drink lemonade. So, for alkaline water specifically, there's no hard evidence that it does anything. I mean, because it's born of this, the reason I give you all this background is this is where this comes from, this idea, this quack guy, and everybody else who wrote books about the alkaline diet, this is where this argument for alkaline water comes in. There have been some suggestions

that maybe the minerals in the water are helpful, so it's not really that the pH is higher. It's that if you have more minerals in the water, you can actually become slightly more hydrated from that water than you can from water that doesn't have those minerals in it. And so maybe your hydration status is improved and so like your exercise tolerance and endurance might be a little better.

Again, this is all investigational. This has just been kind of suggested. Maybe you're better hydrated from drinking alcohol and water. Obviously, they make claims for stuff like has just been kind of suggested that maybe you're better hydrated from drinking alcohol on water. Obviously they make claims for stuff like it will detoxify you and it will fix your gut bacteria and all that stuff. There's no research for any of that. Can it be dangerous?

If you have kidney problems drinking water with all these extra minerals could be bad. I know I talked about the decreased kidney stones with alkalination and all that, but all these extra minerals could be bad for you if you have kidney problems. So anybody with kidney problems should not drink this. Is it better than tap water? I have no evidence to say it is. I really don't. I think that if you're staying properly hydrated with water, and if you are among the people on this planet who have access to cheap, clean water through your tap, why are you wasting your money on bottled water? Why are you wasting the plastic from those bottles? I mean, you're lucky. You're lucky. We're lucky. Speaking of, I know it is foolish of me to look to corporations for leadership and things like this,

but just an also like shame on you to like Pepsi has life water and buy does an antioxidant antioxidant water. And they're both marketed as pH balanced or in by his case like actual like low, excuse me low pH like alkaline water. High pH. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Cause I think life water is not an alkaline water.

It's just exactly like the GMO thing where these corporations wander into these things that they know nothing about and latch on to. You know, it doesn't just have to be a flavor of the season, you know, with the hip flavor is. It's the hip like health thing that has no credence. But when you see the shelves line with things that say alkaline water, you know, you're going to start to it lends credence to these quacks that are ripping people off. I mean, besides the fact that you're ripping people off by giving them expensive water that does nothing. Like that's, that's bad enough, but you're, you're also beefing up the claims of these people, these extremists nut jobs, pardon the expression. And, and I don't know, it's just so unscrupulous and gross. It really is. And alkaline water, some of the things I saw, like it costs like

20 bucks for 12 one liter bottles. So it's expensive water. And there are some brands that are sold in a multi level marketing. Oh, so that's kind of torn up together, kind of doing two together. Yeah. And I mean, I would say this, just drink water, drink clean water, not raw water, drink clean water. If you, I saw one dietician make this case, I like the way my water tastes when it's filtered. So I have a filter and I filter my tap water and I drink that. And I think that's fine. I think that if you prefer your filter water, drink your filter, that's so much better than buying a bunch of

bottled water. I drink tap water, I drink it straight from the tap, I actually like fridge water a lot. Fridge water, my favorite. You like that cold fridge water. That cold fridge water. But I mean, I drink it, I'm not worried about it. Fluoride is good.

I said that, we're gonna get emails. You'll see a lot of the claims, people will tell you how to alkalineize your water at home. You have You have to, well, you have to buy stuff. You have to buy equipment and some of the equipment for, because it usually runs alongside ionization of water as well. I'm not talking about that, right? What else I could do? What was the device that we talked about for water? I don't know. There's one that's like $2,500. No, this is one that hotels use.

Oh, yeah. What was that? Oh. No, that was the air purifier. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's not the water. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you can buy these things online

and I have no reason to think you should. It's a lot of money and I don't think, no, I don't have any evidence that they're doing anything to your water and they'll link it to removing fluoride. And so that's, that to me is a big red flag because fluoride is not dangerous. There is no need to remove fluoride from your water.

So why would you buy a device to remove fluoride from your water? I don't know if you necessarily agree with me on this. I have come, I have, I look at this stuff differently than I did when we first started doing sawbots. I used to feel like, and I probably have said this on the show, like, if you want to spend your money on it and it's not hurting anybody, then, like, go for it.

You know, it's not hurting you, whatever. I now, at this point, feel like it is hurting. It's hurting because you every vote is lending credence that you make with your dollars, is lending credence to these people that want to dismantle science and reason and scientific thinking. I think every dollar you spend on a product that's been marketed as GMO is,

non-GMO is reinforcing to those people that that's an important thing to continue to focus on and spread the word about. And it doesn't matter if it's not hurting you individually, I think that like we are at a point now where highlighting the truth and pointing the finger at actual real lies, non-scientific lies, is more important than sort of like live and let live, you know, if it's not hurting you than it's not hurting.

Well, I would agree completely because I think I saw one statistic as I was researching this that 39% of Americans believe that cancer can be treated or cured by some sort of natural alternative thing. So the idea that there are all these secret treatments that doctors won't give you, I don't know what our agenda is, I don't know why. We have this agenda that people keep placing on us. But there is this secret treatment that doctors won't give you that will cure your cancer. You just gotta find the right person to pay

to give it to you. This idea has taken deep roots in this country and in our medical system. And the sad thing is people will seek this in terms of treatments that would help and they will waste their time and their money. And there are always going to be people like this Robert Young guy who are willing to take advantage of them, which is incredibly sad, but those people will take your money and infuse you with baking soda and then send you home to die. And I mean, the best we can do

is keep telling people to fake. So spread the word, you know, like, tell people that if you see someone mentioned alcohol and water, like don't suffer it quietly in all this garbage. Like tell, like, there's just no point. Like there's no point.

Like if love one, like, speak up, if love ones are like spending thousands of dollars in this trash like tell them Send in this episode telling them to Download it repeatedly tell them to Donate the maximum fun drive don't hesitate To support us financially and just remember how lucky again if you live somewhere because not even everywhere this country, if you live somewhere where you can turn on your tap and get clean water cheaply every day, you're lucky. Don't take that for granted.

It's the same with podcasts. If you can turn on your headphones and get clean podcasts every week, don't take it for granted. Maximumfund out of our first ice donate. I'm going back to water. Flint still doesn't have clean water. Yeah. Folks, thanks so much for listening to our program. Sorry, it wasn't cheerier. We'll get you next time. Hopefully. I'll do something lighter next week. Sorry, you suggested this outline water.

I didn't know where it would take me. I had no idea. That was right. Thank you so much to the maximum fun network for having us as a part of their extended podcasting family. Thanks to folks who have sent stuff to our PO box, Karen, St. Slox and slippers, Lucia sent a book about herbal medicine, Miranda's for the onesie, Jessica for the book, Carrie for the apron and blanket, thanks

to Abel for the drawing of our theme song, Abel has synesthesia and she interprets music like our theme song as a visual imagery, which she then paints, which you can buy at McElroyMurge.com. It's beautiful, you should check it out. I have it hanging in our home, actually. Hanna sent an old book on colds, Audra sent Shakespeare's Medical Language Dictionary, EA case and a book, Sabine Sintepin, Matt for the Caps, Koral for Cross-Titch,

Brittany for Soda, Brian for his letters, many, many letters, and George for stamps. So thank you to everyone for doing that the three-week you're very kind. Thanks to taxpayers for the use of our some medicines as the intro and outro program. And thanks to, is that everybody? Yeah, we'll be at podCon next week. We'll be at podCon next week and we'll be at sketchfest next week.

Yes. Yeah, we'll be at podcon next week. We'll be at podcon next week and we'll be at sketchfest next week. Yes. If you go to McElroy.family and click on the tourist thing, you can find out more about what it does. So we hope to see you there. But until next time, my name is Justin McElroy. I'm City McElroy. And as always, don't drill the hole in your head! Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artists Don't Listen or Supported. Dead Pilots Society brings you exclusive readings of comedy pilots that were never made, featuring

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