baking soda is alkaline. alkaline makes the blood thick and the heart work harder.
from Dr. Jarvis
"The knowledge that acids thin body fluids has been brought over from the days when blood-letting was a common form of treatment. We have found in the barn that the milk of a normal cow is weakly acid. When the reaction of the milk changes to alkaline, the milk becomes soup-thick. This thickness will disappear and the milk will return to its normal watery character, however, if and when the cow is given four ounces of apple cider vinegar and four ounces of water by mouth from a bottle, night and morning.
There are other ways of observing this principle in action but this is sufficient here. The point is, no busy executive wants his blood to be on the thick side, like soup; he under-stands that it should be thin, in order to circulate easily throughout the body, making easy work for his heart as it pumps blood with
each beat."