Baking Soda – the Miracle Ingredient

By now, you’ve surely heard everything there is about baking soda’s miraculous benefits. We all have a bag of baking soda at home we commonly used for cooking or cleaning. Sodium bicarbonate has been used in many ways for quite a long time either for cleaning or as a way of treating numerous conditions and diseases. For example, many people use it to treat indigestion and acid reflux, while others use it as a teeth whitener.

The list of disorders baking soda can be used against is long, with science recently adding another one – autoimmune disease.

The Study

A recent study conducted at Augusta University suggested that baking soda is a cheap way to fight autoimmune disease thanks to its alkalizing properties. Many health experts believe that balancing our body’s pH levels is vital for our health – it can relieve inflammation and prevent numerous diseases.

Dr. Paul O’Connor, a co-author on the study, agrees with that view. He says that baking soda is the simplest way to alkalize our body. It does this by raising the production of stomach acid which in turn helps with digestion and limits inflammation. Apart from boosting our digestion, baking soda acts as a buffer for our spleen.

To test baking soda’s effects, Dr. O’Connor and his team administered a baking soda-water solution to both humans and rats over a period of 2 weeks. Following a series of tests, it was revealed that the substance changed the subjects’ immune cells, even in those who were already suffering from inflammation.

How Does It Work?

The study showed that baking soda has amazing anti-inflammatory properties. It relieves inflammation in two ways. First, it boosts our digestion, and proper digestion ensures less inflammation. Secondly, baking soda acts on the spleen (a part of our immune system), relaxing the immune response and reinforcing the anti-inflammatory response. The stomach and spleen cells perform two functions – they tell the immune system that it’s not under attack while disabling inflammation markers as well.

So, while it’s not a miracle cure against autoimmune diseases, baking soda should certainly be considered a possible future cure. More studies are needed, of course. However, with the right approach, science can prove that baking soda may be an effective remedy for autoimmune diseases such as arthritis or even lupus. Given the relatively cheap cost, there’s nothing to lose and very much to gain.