Visiting Professor Patrick Holford of Teesside University and Head of Science and Education at Biocare has an alternative reality (TM, Dr Aust) in which it is possible for a drink of water to alter the pH of your blood.
Deesside mineral water is supposedly famous for its healing power and particularly praised for its help with rheumatism, skin conditions and stomach complaints.
Two double-blind clinical studies suggest that this water can reduce painful symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. The first study, published in the British Journal of Rheumatology, found inflammation subsided noticeably in rheumatoid arthritis patients who drank the water. This finding was repeated in the second trial, led by Dr David Galloway at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. It is believed that the water’s secret lies in the wide range of minerals, including calcium and magnesium, it contains.
Patrick Holford, nutritionist, author and founder of the Institute for Optimum Nutrition, says: “Aside from strengthening bones, calcium and magnesium are alkaline, so help to reduce acidity in the blood, one of the contributing factors for arthritis and irritable skin conditions.”
Well, we’ve now contacted the Deesside water people twice since April 22 but have not received any response to our enquiry about the references. This is a shame because if people experienced measurable reductions in their symptoms for such a (presumably) modest intervention it is not difficult to imagine that it would be relatively straightforward to devise a water additive that would replicate the effects.[1]
However, as for Holford’s words of disinformation, no, no, no. The pH of various bits of the body is remarkably robust and nicely maintained within its range. Plus, pH is measured on a logarithmic scale which makes it difficult to alter without a substantial intervention. In fact, if the pH of the blood or various tissues is deranged then that is a clear indicator that something is badly amiss because the respiratory and renal systems usually work with remarkable harmony to maintain it with the appropriate range. (The buffering system in the blood is a physiological marvel in its own right but this is not the place to wax lyrical about our ability to tolerate an extraordinary variety of environmental conditions and circumstances.)
How long do you think that we would survive if your body’s finely-honed systems could be disordered by the solutes in a ordinary drink of water (ceasing to breathe – yes – a different matter altogether)? Yet again, just what does Professor Holford teach the keen young minds that are brought before him at the University of Teesside? What do the well-credentialled scientists and researchers at Biocare say when he voices gubbins of this sort?
Update: We refer you to Dr Aust’s previous discussion of where you will discover many interesting things about the body’s buffer systems and delight in more links to a fine collection of water fallacies and what-nots.What could be so fine… as to be alkaline (Warning: Irony)
Notes
[1] Mineral water can contain 30-100 mg or more of calcium per litre of water. The RDA is between 500mg to 1000mg for most adults in the UK. There is some interesting work on the short-term influence of consuming calcium-rich water on the levels of intact parathyroid hormone and bone resorption in healthy young men but it would be good to know more about the effects of long-term consumption for people with disordered calcium metabolism, inflammatory disorders or musculo-skeletal conditions. (Hence our enquiry about the references.)
It isn’t a topic that we follow closely, but we are aware that there is some controversy about whether or not the form of calcium in sulphate-rich mineral water can lead to a greater loss of calcium in the urine with the usual caveats that this study involved healthy women and a calcium-adequate diet.
Related Reading
Ben Goldacre has some lively observations about calcium and magic water in general.
Orac of Respectful Insolence has addressed ‘acid-base woo’ on several occasions. Acid, base, or woo? More recently, Acid, base, or woo (revisited)
A favourite site for the technical exploration of acid-base physiology
The American Thoracic Society has reviewed online acid-base resources.
20 Comments
May 6, 2008 at 1:07 pm
What does he mean by pH of the blood? Does he mean blood plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells, leukocytes, etc? The cells in the blood will display huge variations in pH between different intracellular compartments. Does he think these will be affected?
May 6, 2008 at 1:32 pm
We gave Holford a slight pass on the ‘acidity of the blood’ nonsense as it was a quotation for a newspaper and they would probably not have published a remark that elaborated the components of blood and how pH varies. However, on the other hand, it is difficult to believe that he appreciates that there is any such issue.
When you read stuff like this, it’s a marvel that Holford doesn’t think that all the faffing about in intensive care units to maintain your acid-base levels is just a job creation scheme for ‘medics who like to micro-manage’. After all, if all you need to do is run in an IV of hard water (preferably an IV that contains vitamin C, just to mix it up a little and how dare you bring up the notion of how that is buffered) then why do you need highly-trained anaesthetists and fancy features on ventilators?
That link will also tell you about how Holford plans to prevent catching Bird Flu and how he would treat himself in the event that he caught it.
May 6, 2008 at 3:47 pm
calcium and magnesium are not ‘alkaline’. They are metals.
http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Mg/key.html
http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Ca/key.html
Perhaps Professor Holford is thinking about the fact that magnesium and calciums salts are often basic in solution? Nit-picking, perhaps, but Professor Holford claims to be a scientist, and these things matter.
typical blood pH is about 7.3-7.4. So one’s blood is slightly basic.
Here’s a fun (thought) experiment for Professor Holford to try.
Take pH of some blood.
Drink loads of orange juice (or something acidic).
Take pH of blood at intervals. Plot change in pH as function of time……
I’m sure Professor Patrick Holford (or his staff?) do pop in here to read from time to time – so I hope they can have a good think about what would the effect of drinking a load of orange juice would be on blood pH.
May 6, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Jeez Louise….
…what a crock of shite. Is Patrick really that big a dingbat? (Don’t answer that)
Given his sleek exterior it is amazing what a load of tripe there is inside.
Having spent the first decade or so of my research career measuring intracellular pH in various cells, and having taught pH regulation and acid-base balance for a depressing number of years, I like to think this is a subject I actually do know something about.
Calcium and magnesium carry the title “Alkaline Earth Metals”, but as Superburger points out that is mostly to do with what some of their common salts do as solutions. To call them “alkaline” as if that is saying something important is pretty dim, and has a “net information content” of less than zero (as it imparts no useful information but instead serves to confuse).
And what’s the betting the Deeside magic water study will turn out to be funded by the water manufacturer? I would love to know how they ensured water intake was matched between the groups, an obvious potential “confounding variable”… or what they did about assessing overall divalent ion homeostasis.
BTW, second what DVN said, Dear Patrick is just about OK saying “blood pH”, as this would often be used loosely to mean “pH of plasma”. Though we are all 100% agreed that he has no real clue what he is talking about.
I did actually write about the “magic water and body acid-base balance” in the context of the “Alkaline Water” scam a few months back. (note shameless plug). But perhaps another water-post is needed. Or that one on “acid food” I meant to do..
*sigh*
So much bad science… so little time.
Casting an eye over the article… amazingly enough, the bit with Dear Patrick is not actually the most ludicrous bit of “Water-Woo” on show – read the bit above it about the legendary “Penta Water”.
I think we can assume the journalist responsible for this did not do science A levels.
PS And dontcha just love the way the ThisIsLondon can’t spell “arthritus”
May 6, 2008 at 6:19 pm
“Visiting Professor Patrick Holford of Teesside University and Head of Science and Education at Biocare has an alternative reality…”
I think all might be explained in this new book – link to review:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=103#more-103
“On being certain: believing you are right even when you’re not”
Discusses (inter alia, I expect) “…how certainty interferes with science. “Integrative medicine” guru Andrew Weil set up tests of osteopathic manipulation for ear infections, and when the experiments showed no effect, he said, “I’m sure there’s an effect there. We couldn’t capture it in the way we set up the experiment.” This kind of thinking is rampant in alternative medicine. Burton thinks that if Dr. Weil recommends osteopathy for an ear infection, he should inform the patient that the recommendation is based on an unconfirmed belief…”
That’ll be the day!
May 6, 2008 at 6:27 pm
A quick trawl on PubMed with various search names and words fails to reveal the magic evidence. Funny that.
And it turns out that Deeside Magic Water has previous form for mysteriously vanishing healing powers
May 6, 2008 at 8:49 pm
PS Thanks for the link to the ATS online review of acid-base resources, gang. Hadn’t seen that before.
The place I usually point the medical students to for intro acid-base teaching is the second site on their list, Alan Grogono’s acid-base.com.
I rather suspect, though, that it would be over PH’s head.
May 6, 2008 at 8:49 pm
AArgh! More HTML slip-ups…
May 6, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Besides the Holford quote, the article is full of pseudo science, especially the now closed down Penta water. Pretty old article though, published in 2004.
May 6, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Doogle Doogle – New water woo usually ends up being astonishingly like older water woo but repackaged in some way that retains the magic part but attributes it to something else. There are people in hard water areas who are buying especially calcium-enriched water or who are putting coral calcium in their drinking water and then boiling it to make their herbal teas. Even now, some company in the UK has made a lot of money selling its functional water business to one of the big conglomerates (Pepsi).
It was easier to quote the article because we could link it than faff around with a reference to more recent books or pay-to-view articles that say something similar. It’s also just an interesting pointer to the state of Holford’s actual rather than purported knowledge of physiology and nutrition. The knowledge that formed the case for his visiting professorship and the large sums of money that Biocare handed over before making him such a senior figure.
May 6, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Is it that old? The website seemed to make it look just published.
Rather a blow, that, actually… I was just plotting a Swiftian satirical counterblast.
May 7, 2008 at 12:20 am
Dr Aust – we can’t find a directly accessible link to more of the water woo but how do you feel about this: Detox your body?
May 7, 2008 at 12:34 am
Goodness – what a distinctly toxic mixture of half-digested science and nutritionist hocus-pocus.
I thought Dear Patrick was supposed to be the “scientific” end of nutritionism? That page is just the standard evidence-free “Detox-Balls” favoured by every Nutritionista since the dawn of time (well, since at least the early 1970s). “Everything plus the kitchen sink” springs to mind.
May 7, 2008 at 12:39 am
Evidence-free? But there are references for his recent 9-day detox plan and everything (sadly, I don’t have a copy so I can’t check the relevance).
May 7, 2008 at 9:04 am
“For most of the studies you can click on the link to read the abstract.”
Because reading the abstract is all one needs to do to understand a paper.
I imagine the real academics at Teeside would be extremely unhappy if they thought one of their visiting Professors was of the opinion that reading the abstract alone was enough to absorb a paper’s contents.
Does Professor Holford actually teach or supervise any students at Teeside?
May 7, 2008 at 9:51 am
The Mayo Clinic appears unimpressed by ‘the science of detoxification’:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/detox-diets/AN01334
“…Some people report they feel better, “lighter,” and more focused and energetic during and after detox diets. This may be due to their belief that they are doing something good for their bodies. But it may also be due to eating little — if anything — for several days. Calorie restriction can lead to heightened feelings of psychological well-being.
There is no evidence, however, that detox diets actually remove toxins from the body. Most ingested toxins are efficiently and effectively removed by the kidneys and liver and excreted in urine and stool. …”
May 7, 2008 at 11:10 am
That’s the Mayo – always supporting some hegemony or other and denying the toxicity of the oppressed whom they need to keep poisoned and intoxicated to some nefarious end. I’d report them to the Illuminati Ombudsman if he weren’t such a puppet figure.
[/anticipates clean colon advocate's response]
Holford was supposed to deliver some teaching in January of this year, we still don’t know whether it happened. If we don’t find out we shall have to resort to an FOIA request again which is ludicrous.
He is supposed to be sharing the supervision of a PhD student at Teesside for which FFTB is providing a bursary. Ditto, there is (allegedly) a Masters student who is going to validate the FFTB questionnaire used in last year’s survey: it seemed that this unfortunate would also be supervised by Professor “I see no lines crossing the line of no significance on this blobbogram” Holford.
May 7, 2008 at 1:20 pm
“That’s the Mayo – always supporting some hegemony or other…”
And there was me thinking that “Mayo – God help us!” meant something else entirely -
http://www.mayo-ireland.ie/Mayo/Towns/ClareM/mayo_a_proud_county.htm
May 7, 2008 at 11:10 pm
SB – HW archives reveal at least one occasion where Holford relied upon a (flawed) press report rather than consulting the original paper.
However, it seems as if this behaviour of failing to read the paper and even the abstract is more widespread than we suspected. ‘Professor Jayney Goddard’ spouted nonsense about a couple of papers on the Wright Stuff that even brief perusal of the abstracts would have told you was utterly wrong.
May 7, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Superburger says:
“Does Professor Holford actually teach or supervise any students at Teeside?”
Lets hope not.
There are ‘real’ Professors of Nutrition at Teeside university qualified in the subject (http://www.tees.ac.uk/schools/SOH/obesity.cfm).
They don’t need a ‘pretend’ one, like Holford, with his ‘nutrition qualification’ ‘awarded’ from his own institute.