Acidic blood and osteoporosis
Bill Maher said, “If it weren’t for acid, you might not have an iPod, and you definitely would not have some of the best music in your iPod.” In an earlier article, we have gone over precisely the manner in which the increasing acidity in our plasma can hasten the malfunction of our kidneys. In nature, that appears to be almost inevitable for everyone because at age 80, blood acidity is six to seven percent higher than at age 20. Conversely, plasma bicarbonate level is 12 to 16 percent lower. This is according to the literature review that Lynda Frassetto and Anthony Sebastian (University of California San Francisco) reported in 1996 at the Journal of Gerontology. I hope I can find more recent data but there is none.
However, there is one natural mechanism in our body that I could not include in the earlier article due to our limitation in space.
The increasing acidity in our plasma (metabolic acidosis), as we age, does not occur abruptly because of God’s perfect design of the human body. In fact, the body itself has a mechanism to slow down the worsening acid-base balance.
This mechanism is called “bone resorption.” It is the process wherein the bone minerals in our bones are reabsorbed into our plasma.
During acid-base imbalances, such as metabolic acidosis, the high acidity level in the plasma, in the absence of dietary sources of basic (alkaline) dietary sources, the body releases adequate levels of bone minerals, which are predominantly hydroxyapatite (a combination of calcium and phosphate salts), to neutralize the increased acidity.
As you can predict, eventually, increased bone resorption can lead to the weakening of the bones as the bone mass declines which may be blamed for the appearance of osteoporosis. Thus, aside from hormonal factors involved in osteoporosis, acid-base balance in the plasma also plays a significant part.
Stephenie Meyer wrote in The Host (2008): “Perhaps, there could be no joy on this planet without an equal weight of pain to balance it out on some unknown scale.”