Re: don t understand - alkaline urine
Hi
Basically if someone is healthy, the pH of the urine should be slightly acidic.
Therefore, unless the pH of the urine is “boosted” because of taking for example baking soda, alkaline urine may not be a good indication. There could be many reasons. Excess protein, from which its digestion will produce ammonia then urea, these are alkaline.
Also, a disbalance in the ratio calcium/magnesium/sodium/potassium (too much table salt) may create the loss of some minerals in the urine.
Other examples
From Dr Mercola
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What Causes Kidney Stones?
In the U.S., about 10-15 percent of adults will be diagnosed with a kidney stone in their lifetime. Roughly 1 million Americans develop kidney stones each year.
Once you have had one kidney stone attack, your chance of recurrence is about 70 to 80 percent, and the younger you are when you have your first attack, the greater your risk of recurrence.
Typically, a kidney stone is the result of a super-saturation of minerals and acid salts in your urine, such as calcium and uric acid, which then crystallize and form solid masses. This can happen if you don’t drink enough fluids, and if your urine is highly acidic or highly alkaline.
Certain drugs can also promote kidney stones, such as Lasix (furosemide), Topomax (topiramate), and Xenical, among others.
Most kidney stones contain crystals of various types, with calcium as the key ingredient. However, usually one type of crystals predominates, and determining the type helps you identify the underlying cause.
The most common type is calcium oxalate stones, comprising about 75 percent of all cases. Oxalate is found in some fruits and vegetables, but your liver actually produces most of your oxalate.
You’d think one of the solutions for avoiding kidney stones would be to eliminate or radically reduce your intake of calcium, because calcium is part of the stone, but that is actually NOT a wise strategy.
This is because, normally, the calcium in your diet binds to the oxalate, and helps you excrete it in other ways than through your urine.
Other types of stones, and their underlying causes, include:
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Struvite stones: Found more often in women, these are almost always the result of urinary tract infections.
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Uric acid stones: These are a byproduct of protein metabolism. They’re commonly seen with gout, and may result from certain genetic factors and disorders of your blood-producing tissues.
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Cystine stones: Represent a very small percentage of kidney stones. These are the result of a hereditary disorder that causes your kidneys to excrete massive amounts of certain amino acids (cystinuria).
Two risk factors that elevate your chances of developing kidney stones include high blood pressure and digestive problems.
Signs and Symptoms of Kidney Stones
Most likely you’ll never know you have a stone until it moves into your ureter—the tube connecting your kidney to your bladder. At that point, common symptoms include:
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Pain in your side and back, below your ribs
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Episodes of pain lasting 20 to 60 minutes, of varying intensity
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Pain “waves” radiating from your side and back, to your lower abdomen and groin
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Bloody, cloudy or foul-smelling urine
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Pain with urination
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Nausea and vomiting
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“Urgency” (persistent urge to urinate)
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Fever and chills (indicates an infection is also present)
The pain you feel is a result of distention of the tissues above the stone, since it is blocking the passage of urine, rather than from the pressure of the stone itself.
To diagnose a kidney stone you can collect the kidney stone and have it analyzed for a definitive answer, or you can do a 24-hour urine test. This is a useful strategy to ascertain any imbalances in your urine that contribute and predispose you to develop stones.
Watch What You Eat if You Have Kidney Stones
There are a number of strategies you can use to treat this condition. If you suffer mainly from calcium oxalate stones, you’ll want to minimize the amount of oxalates in your body (as opposed to reducing your calcium intake).
Two foods in particular contribute to creating oxalates, namely soy, and beer. If you’ve read my newsletter for any amount of time, you already know I warn against unfermented soy products for a number of reasons, but preventing the formation of kidney stones is yet another.
Other foods that contain high levels of oxalate that you’ll want to avoid include:
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Spinach
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Rhubarb
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Chocolate
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Parsley
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Beetroot
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Strawberries
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Wheat flour
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Pepper
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Nuts
A diet high in sugar can also set you up for stones, since sugar upsets the mineral relationships in your body by interfering with calcium and magnesium absorption.
Diets high in processed salt are also bad news as salt increases the amount of calcium and oxalate in your urine. Processed foods have notoriously high salt content and should therefore be avoided as much as possible.
Keep in mind that the salt referenced here is processed salt, like your regular table salt, not high quality, unprocessed salts that contain numerous essential minerals that your body actually needs for optimal health.
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From Dr Young
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4) When large amounts of acids, including HCL, enter the stomach from a rich protein meal, acid is withdrawn from the acid-base household. The organism would die if the resulting alkalosis - or NaHCO3 (base flood) or base surplus - created by the stomach was not taken up by the alkalophile glands that need these quick bases in order to build up their strong sodium bicarbonate secretions. These glands and organs are the stomach, pancreas, Brunner's glands (between the pylorus and the junctions of the bile and pancreatic ducts), Lieberkuhn's glands in the liver and its bile with its strong acid binding capabilities which it has to produce.
5) When a rich protein and carbohydrate meal is ingested, the stomach begins to manufacture and secrete sodium bicarbonate (NHCO3) to alkalize the acids from the food ingested. This causes a loss in the alkaline reserves and an increase in acid and/or HCL found in the gastric pits of the stomach. These acids and/or HCL are taken up by the blood which lowers blood plasma pH. The blood eliminates this increase in gastrointestinal acid by throwing it off into the Pishinger's spaces.
7) After a rich protein or sugary meal, the urine pH becomes alkaline. Protein and sugar nourishment then react in acidic fashion in the organism by the production of sulfuric, phosporhoric, nitric, uric, lactic, and acetylaldehyde acids, respectively, but also through the formation and excretion of base in the urine. This is a double loss of bases.
17) After a high protein meal, the free acids formed such as sulfuric, phosphoric, uric, and nitric acids stick to the collagen fibers to remove them from the blood and protect the delicate pH of 7.365. The H+ or proton ions from these acids are neutralized by the next base flood, the sodium bicarbonate produced after the meal. The H+ or proton ion combines with the carbonate or HCO3, converts to carbonic acid, H2CO3, which converts to CO2 and H2O. The sulfuric and other acids from proteins are neutralized as follows where the HR represents any acid with the R as its acid radical (SO4, PO4, or NO3) HR + NaHCO3 <=> H2O + NaR (Ca, Mg, K)+ CO2.
21) The biochemistry is: CO2 + H2O = H2CO3 = HCO3 + H+. The normal subject must reabsorb 4300 meq of NaHCO3 each day! The secreted H+ or proton ions are generated within the kidney cells from the dissociation of H2O or water. This process also results in the equimolar production OH- or hydroxyl ions. The OH- ions bind to the active zinc-containing site of the intracellular carbonic anhydrase; they then combine with CO2 to form HCO3- ions which are released back into the kidney cells and returned to the systemic circulation. Second, the dietary acid load is excreted by the secretion of H+ or proton ions from the kidney cells into the urine. These H+ or proton ions can do one of two things: the H+ or proton ions can be combined with the urinary buffers, particularly HPO4, in a process called titratable acidity (The biochemistry is: H+ + HPO4 = H2PO4), or the phosphate buffering system or the H+ or proton ions can combine with ammonia (NH3) to form ammonium as follows:
NH3 + H+ = NH4.
22) This ammonia is trapped and concentrated in the kidney as ammonium which is then excreted in the urine.
25) The Human Body is an acid producing organism by function. Yet, it is an alkaline organism by design. Eating animal protein and sugar are deadly acidic choices - unless you want to be increasingly sick, tired and fat over time.
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WIEL