‘You’re going to die if you make your body alkaline’

WESTERN BUREAU:

DR XAUNDRE Mohansingh, a general practitioner assigned to the St James-based Cornwall Regional Hospital, is rubbishing the popular idea of having an ‘alkaline body’ as a means of fighting and resisting cancer, saying that such an approach can result in health complications and death.

“If you make your body alkaline, you are going to die. Do not bother with this alkalinisation of your body,” Mohansingh asserted while addressing Sunday’s staging of the West Jamaica Conference of Seventh-day Adventists’ annual ‘Save Your Breast’ symposium, which was held to mark the start of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is observed every October.

In explaining his position, Mohansingh pointed out that the human body has a pH level from 1-13, with seven being the optimal number for the body to function normally.

“If your pH level goes towards 13 you are getting alkaline, and if you are going towards one, you are getting acidic. Regarding all this talk about getting your pH up so you can get alkaline, if your body gets too much alkaline it is going to damage the brain and you are going to die; and if your body gets too acidic, it is going to damage the brain and you are going to die,” said Mohansingh.

“This idea of pH, or acidity versus alkalinity, is important, but it is not for you to manipulate. How do persons know that their body is in an alkaline state? Have they done a blood-gas test to see what their pH level is, or have they just surmised that because they are eating X, Y and Z, then their body is magically alkaline?” Dr Mohansingh added. “It is interesting, because these kinds of myths have pervaded the space so much that people are actively pursuing foolishness and killing themselves in the process.”

At the same time, Mohansingh stressed that medical science is not against the position that persons must adopt a healthy lifestyle to counteract disease.

“Sometimes when we speak about the absence of literature that directly links certain lifestyles to the development of breast cancer or other conditions, people may think we are frowning on the idea of healthy living and that we are discrediting the importance of it, but by no means are we discrediting the importance of it. We are just establishing that there is no direct link between the two, but it does not mean there is no link at all, as there not being a direct link does not mean that there is no link,” the physician argued.

Meanwhile, general practitioner Dr Lori-Ann Bellanfante told the symposium that it is not recommended to look at only one aspect of health in order to ward off disease, as there are multiple factors that can contribute towards sickness or wellness in the human body.

“I know there are persons who explore the more natural route of getting some help and assistance with health, but I would not want to just agree with the idea of it being you changing the pH level alone that contributed to that. There are other things that would have contributed to achieving this kind of response,” said Bellafante. “It is not only because you would have changed the diet, which does make a marked improvement. It is more than likely that there were other factors that contributed as well.”

The medical experts were speaking against the background of statistics from the World Health Organization showing that approximately 2.3 million women globally were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020, with 685,000 deaths resulting from the disease.

Additionally, breast cancer has been identified as the leading cancer among Jamaican women, with 1,208 new cases having been discovered in 2020.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com