Scientists have shown that when rats or healthy people drink a sodium bicarbonate solution, it becomes a trigger for the stomach to produce more acid to digest the next meal and for mesothelial cells to inform the spleen that it is not needed. launch a protective immune response.
Mesothelial cells line the body cavities, such as the one that contains our digestive tract, and they also cover the outside of our organs to prevent them from rubbing. About a decade ago, it was discovered that these cells also provide another level of protection. They have little ‘fingers’, called microvilli, that sense the environment and warn the covering organs that there is an invader and an immune response is needed.
“ Certainly, drinking bicarbonate affects the spleen and we think it is through the mesothelial cells ,” says Paul O’Connor of the Medical College of Georgia (USA) and leader of the work.
The conversation that takes place between the spleen and the immune system – with the help of the messenger chemical acetylcholine – seems to promote a landscape that changes inflammation.
In the spleen, as well as in the blood and kidneys, they found that after drinking water with baking soda for two weeks, the population of immune cells called macrophages changed from those that promote inflammation, called M1, to those that reduce it. , called M2. Macrophages, perhaps best known for their ability to consume junk in the body as weak or dead cell waste, are the first to resort to an immune response.
In the case of laboratory animals, the problems were hypertension and chronic kidney disease, problems that made O’Connor’s lab think about baking soda.
One of the many functions of the kidneys is to balance important compounds like acid, potassium, and sodium. With kidney disease, there is deterioration of kidney function and one of the resulting problems may be that the blood becomes too acidic. The most serious consequences can include an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis.
“It states that the whole system is basically failing,” O’Connor says. Clinical trials have shown that a daily dose of baking soda not only reduces heartburn, but actually slows the progression of kidney disease, and it is now a therapy offered to patients.
When they looked at a rat model with no actual kidney damage, they saw the same response. So the basic scientists worked with researchers from the Georgia Prevention Institute to bring in healthy medical students who drank baking soda from a bottle of water and had a similar response, too.
“ The change from inflammatory to anti-inflammatory profile happened everywhere. We saw it in the kidneys, we saw it in the spleen, now we see it in the peripheral blood,” says O’Connor.
They also saw a change in other types of immune cells, such as more regulatory T cells, which generally reduce the immune response and help prevent the immune system from attacking our own tissues. That anti-inflammatory change lasted for at least four hours in humans and three days in rats.
Reference: Sarah C. Ray et al. Oral NaHCO3Activates a Splenic Anti-Inflammatory Pathway: Evidence That Cholinergic Signals Are Transmitted via Mesothelial Cells, The Journal of Immunology (2018). DOI: 10.4049 / jimmunol.1701605
