Acidosis and CF Pathology
I homeschooled my sons and we watched a lot of dinosaur shows when they were young. From that I learned that a hard skeleton was essential to having life leave the ocean and venture onto land not only because you need the structural support but also because you need a store of calcium in the body to mediate the pH of the blood when you leave the mineral-rich ocean.
Your body will strip the bones of calcium to keep the blood pH within a very narrow range. If it goes outside that range, you can die fairly rapidly -- they hospitalize diabetics who develop ketoacidosis because they can be dead within 72 hours of developing it.
I thought my realization that people with CF are prone to being too acid was some major scientific discovery. I later learned that it's common knowledge and just no one takes it seriously as anything anyone really needs to treat and if you say "Hey! Acidosis is DEADLY!" they act like you are a nutter.
We know rapid and extreme acidosis -- a la ketoacidosis -- can kill rapidly, but we act like the slow boiling of the body in its own acid with CF is somehow magically unrelated to the tendency to die young. (insert mystified shrug)
If you have CF, they only treat the acidosis if you develop specific symptoms. For example, if you develop bad acid reflux, they will put you on antacids to treat that and I have talked with people with CF who told me that, yes, if they missed a day of antacids for their stomach issues, it made their lung issues worse.
I treated the high acidity as a primary cause of my symptoms. I ate a lot of lettuce for a time to help reverse my acidity and also avoided peanut oil, among other things.
People with CF are prone to ending up with osteoporosis as early as their teens and people with CF are known to hoard calcium inside our cells. I have talked to people who tried to avoid dietary calcium because they believed the high levels of calcium in our cells meant calcium was bad for us.
I think it's a little like saying "Don't invite any fire fighters to your home. That's when houses burn down!"
Um, no. Firefighters show up BECAUSE the house is burning down. They don't cause it to burn down. Their presence is not indicative that they are arsonists.
People with CF also hoard high levels of glutathione, which is an antioxidant. I think we hoard calcium and glutathione to buffer the cells against chemical derangement and the reason high levels of calcium are associated with apoptosis (cell death) is because they are probably associated with serious chemical derangement.
High acidity promotes biofilm and bleeds. It also causes gut issues and lung issues, both of which are major issues with CF.
Everyone in the CF community -- patients and doctors alike -- know that CF is associated with excess acidity. They just don't think that's medically significant so they just don't bother to treat it.
I treated it and this was a very large cornerstone of my efforts to reverse my symptoms.
Your body will strip the bones of calcium to keep the blood pH within a very narrow range. If it goes outside that range, you can die fairly rapidly -- they hospitalize diabetics who develop ketoacidosis because they can be dead within 72 hours of developing it.
I thought my realization that people with CF are prone to being too acid was some major scientific discovery. I later learned that it's common knowledge and just no one takes it seriously as anything anyone really needs to treat and if you say "Hey! Acidosis is DEADLY!" they act like you are a nutter.
We know rapid and extreme acidosis -- a la ketoacidosis -- can kill rapidly, but we act like the slow boiling of the body in its own acid with CF is somehow magically unrelated to the tendency to die young. (insert mystified shrug)
If you have CF, they only treat the acidosis if you develop specific symptoms. For example, if you develop bad acid reflux, they will put you on antacids to treat that and I have talked with people with CF who told me that, yes, if they missed a day of antacids for their stomach issues, it made their lung issues worse.
I treated the high acidity as a primary cause of my symptoms. I ate a lot of lettuce for a time to help reverse my acidity and also avoided peanut oil, among other things.
People with CF are prone to ending up with osteoporosis as early as their teens and people with CF are known to hoard calcium inside our cells. I have talked to people who tried to avoid dietary calcium because they believed the high levels of calcium in our cells meant calcium was bad for us.
I think it's a little like saying "Don't invite any fire fighters to your home. That's when houses burn down!"
Um, no. Firefighters show up BECAUSE the house is burning down. They don't cause it to burn down. Their presence is not indicative that they are arsonists.
People with CF also hoard high levels of glutathione, which is an antioxidant. I think we hoard calcium and glutathione to buffer the cells against chemical derangement and the reason high levels of calcium are associated with apoptosis (cell death) is because they are probably associated with serious chemical derangement.
High acidity promotes biofilm and bleeds. It also causes gut issues and lung issues, both of which are major issues with CF.
Everyone in the CF community -- patients and doctors alike -- know that CF is associated with excess acidity. They just don't think that's medically significant so they just don't bother to treat it.
I treated it and this was a very large cornerstone of my efforts to reverse my symptoms.
