X-Message-Number: 33186
From: "sbharris1" <>
References: <AANLkTim=CZMQUpyAhgGvo2zOTkOc2h5Wviyn+>
Subject: Re: [LongevityReport] Ray Kurzweil's water woo
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2011 14:42:08 -0800
This pH nonsense was the part of Kurzweil's book and outlook that I criticized
him for in 2004, back when this book was just coming out. This nanowater
clustering is crap. The pH of unbuffered water means nothing (it's the amount of
buffer that counts). Organic acids like citric acid, lactic acid, and even
including carbonic acid, have no effect on your body or urine pH when you ingest
them, because they're metabolized into CO2 and excreted through the lungs and
that's the end of them metabolically and pH-wise (the amount of carbonic acid
you get rid of in CO2-form dwarfs everything else by several orders). If you
take organic carboxylic (COOH) acids in metal-salt form (example: potassium
citrate or lactate) they count as BASES, because they are metabolized down to
bicarbonate, which needs buffering with a metal cation (Na+, K+, Mg++, Ca++), in
the urine. The same is true if you ingest simple carbonate or bicarbonate salts
of these metals. So in that sense, these salts raise the pH of urine (making it
more basic) and help to counteract the mineral acid load that comes from diet
(sodas with phosphoric acid) and from metabolism (phosphoric acid from DNA and
RNA breakdown, sulfuric acid from sulfur amino acid metabolism).
Basically, if you eat a mixed diet (including some meat) your urine will be
mildly acidic, due to having to get rid of the phosphoric acid and sulfuric acid
from your metabolism and diet. There is a grain of truth that phosphoric acid
in sodas make this harder, but the easy way to avoid that is not to drink soda.
Most of the rest of what you eat provides your body with an acid load that it is
well equipped to deal with, without severe consequences. No, you won't get
cancer because your urine pH is 4.5.
If you do want to raise the pH of your urine so it's not so acidic (or even is
alkaline), there's a moderate amount of evidence that doing this helps your body
retain calcium and magnesium, since there's a limit to how acidic your urine
can be, and if you exceed a certain mineral acid load, you need to extract basic
calcium and magnesium salts from your bones and excrete the mineral acid as
partly neutralized acid (this process puts more calcium and magnesium in your
urine).
HOWEVER, drinking Kurzweil's silly alkaline water is not going to help you with
this, because its buffering capacity is nothing compared to the buffers in your
food, or the buffering capacity of just one capsule of a metal salt of an
organic acid. This could be sodium bicarbonate, but since a sodium load is not
good for everyone, and since potassium organic acid salts are not available in
pills (for complicated reasons) that leaves you with magnesium.
If you have insufficient stomach acid, the insoluble magnesium salts (oxide,
carbonate, hydroxide) will not affect your pH because they will pass through
your digestive system unabsorbed (magnesium needs to be in soluble form to be
absorbed). Otherwise (if you have lots of acid), these salts are fine, and will
alkalinize your urine (they neutralize stomach acid, and this allows your body
to excrete less acid into the urine).
Magnesium chloride is expensive, but it's not a base and has no effect on pH, so
Slo-Mag only works as a magnesium supplement, and not a good one at that.
Magnesium sulfate is cheap, but also has no pH effect (and is a worse laxative
than other salts). Magnesium bicarbonate in theory would work as a base (and
it's fairly soluble, even without acid to help) , but I've never seen it as a
supplement. Somebody needs to make it.
That leaves just a few compounds like magnesium citrate, which is an excellent
urinary alkalinize agent and a pretty good magnesium supplement also. More
expensive but just as effective (per mg of total salt) is magnesium lactate,
which is also available. A single magnesium organic acid salt pill (for example,
a tablet of magnesium citrate) has the buffering power of gallons of Kurzweil's
alkalinizing water (and thus a comparatively larger effect on your urine pH),
and is far cheaper.
I got an advance copy of _The Singularity is Near_ at the Accelerating Change
conference in August 2005 and
(http://www.accelerating.org/newsletter/2005/6sep05.html) and I also got to see
_Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever_ then, as I recall. I think
I even got to see some advance e-copies of some of the health advice before the
book was published (I cannot swear to this, but have the idea that I saw all
this in time to help fix it). I was horrified at some of the health advice. It
wasn't dangerous, but on the other hand, it wasn't providing any health and it
was expensive and would do Kurzweil's reputation harm. The acid-base
misconceptions and alkaline nanowater nonsense was, of course, in the Fantastic
Voyage. I attempted to tell Kurzweil (gently) that this part of his health
advice stuff was baloney, and why. Despite the fact that I have a medical degree
(and a B.S. in chemistry also) when I spoke to Kurzweil on these issues at the
conference, he paid absolutely no attention to what I had to say. I gather that
he didn't solicit too many opinions from nephrologists (who really know this
stuff), either.
So, here we are. A lot of Kurzweil's good and perfectly valid ideas about the
future have been diluted by a new-age approach to some health issues that
doesn't even take into account the simple chemistry that we DO know. It doesn't
take nanobots to know about citrate metabolism. And Kurzweil is paying the
price. The people who notice that his notions of homeopathy and acid-base
balance are quackery, will assume the same about the rest of his ideas, which
isn't true. But books are judged (unfortunately) by the worst of their
judgments, not their best.
Steve Harris, M.D.
----- Original Message -----
From: MARK PLUS
To: ;
Sent: Saturday, January 01, 2011 6:26 AM
Subject: [LongevityReport] Ray Kurzweil's water woo
Is Ray Kurzweil Into Homeopathy?
By Jonathan Parkinson
http://www.science20.com/predatory_gastropod/ray_kurzweil_homeopathy
--
Mark Plus
Life is short: Freeze hard!
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