Baking soda, also known as sodium bicarbonate, is a common household item with a variety of uses, from baking and cleaning to treating indigestion. Recently, it has gained popularity as a potential weight loss aid, with proponents suggesting that ingesting baking soda mixed with water, apple cider vinegar, or lemon juice, or even soaking in a baking soda bath, can help shed excess weight. This article explores the claims surrounding baking soda and weight loss, examines the scientific evidence (or lack thereof), and discusses the potential health risks associated with its use, offering safer and more sustainable approaches to weight management.
What is Baking Soda?
Baking soda, scientifically known as sodium bicarbonate, is a slightly alkaline substance commonly used in baking. It becomes activated when mixed with an acid in a liquid, changing the pH level. Some believe that ingesting alkaline substances promotes weight loss, but scientific research has not found evidence to support this theory. The body naturally regulates its pH levels, and what a person eats has very little effect on this process. Therefore, consuming baking soda to make the body more alkaline and promote weight loss is very unlikely to work.
The Claimed Benefits of Baking Soda for Weight Loss: Separating Fact from Fiction
The primary claim is that baking soda has alkalizing effects on the body, which are believed to promote weight loss or prevent weight gain. However, this theory has been debunked. Your body uses tightly regulated processes to control its pH levels, and what you eat or drink has little influence on them.
Another theory suggests that adding baking soda to your bathwater will help you lose weight by replenishing your levels of magnesium and sulfate, two nutrients touted to boost your metabolism and eliminate toxins. Yet, this theory is not backed up by science either.
While baking soda might soothe an upset stomach, as it has the ability to neutralize stomach acid, this chemical reaction creates carbon dioxide, which is a gas that can cause you to burp. While this may give you a feeling of a lighter stomach, it has no direct influence on your total body fat.
Read also: The Truth About Baking Soda and Coffee for Weight Loss
The Reality: Lack of Scientific Evidence
Despite anecdotal claims, there is no scientific evidence to suggest that baking soda directly contributes to weight loss. Some research suggests that consuming more water can help a person lose weight. Weight loss from drinking baking soda with water may be due to the water rather than the baking soda. By drinking more water, people may not feel the need to eat as much. In addition, having higher amounts of water in the body may contribute to a reduction in body fat.
Potential Minor, Indirect Effects
Baking soda may have an indirect weight-loss-promoting effect, mainly due to the liquid you choose to mix it with.
One popular option is to mix baking soda with apple cider vinegar, a liquid that research published in 2014 shows may help you feel less hungry. However, recent studies supporting apple cider vinegar’s weight loss effects are limited.
Baking soda is often diluted in water, either alone, or together with apple cider vinegar or lemon juice. When consumed daily, such beverages may result in larger daily fluid intake. This may improve your overall hydration levels, an effect that studies suggest may reduce hunger, increase metabolism, and promote body fat loss.
It’s important to note that these possible weight-loss-promoting effects have little to do with baking powder and more to do with other liquids. Adding baking soda to the mix appears to offer few additional benefits.
Read also: Does Baking Soda Help You Lose Weight?
Risks and Side Effects of Consuming Baking Soda
Consuming baking soda can cause a variety of side effects. If people ingest baking soda, they will need to urinate more, which doctors call bicarbonate diuresis. By urinating more than usual, the body loses chloride, sodium, potassium, and water, all of which are necessary for normal bodily functions. Other adverse effects of ingesting baking soda may include headache, nausea and vomiting, and muscle pain and twitching.
Too much baking soda can impair the way the kidneys work, potentially preventing the kidneys from filtering out the baking soda properly. In extreme cases, dehydration from needing to urinate and being unable to replenish the water in the body may cause serious complications.
Severe Side Effects
In one case study, an individual experienced hemorrhagic encephalopathy, which involves bleeding and inflammation in the brain, after ingesting a large amount of baking soda. The authors suggested that this may have happened because consuming large amounts of baking soda can cause higher-than-normal levels of sodium in the blood, known as hypernatremia. In severe cases, hypernatremia may cause the neurons and cells in the brain to shrink. This shrinkage may cause brain hemorrhages because it increases the tension on veins in the cranium, which eventually ruptures the blood vessels.
After the body absorbs this sodium, it can cause seizures, dehydration, kidney failure, and difficulty breathing. If the body becomes too alkaline, it works to restore its acidity by keeping carbon dioxide inside the lungs rather than breathing it out.
Another potential side effect of ingesting too much baking soda is stomach rupture, which can happen due to the rapid formation of gas in the stomach. People are more likely to experience a stomach rupture after drinking alcohol or eating a large meal, as these activities increase the amount of gas already in the stomach.
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Specific Health Risks and Interactions
Poison Control recommends that people do not ingest baking soda by itself for any reason unless a healthcare professional directs them to do so. In that case, they should only take baking soda as the healthcare professional recommends. Certain people are more at risk of complications from eating baking soda. People who should avoid it include older adults and people who have alcohol use disorder, a lower volume of blood in the body, or an underlying kidney or lung disease.
Baking soda may also interact with certain medications, so people should tell their doctor about any medications they are taking before consuming baking soda.
Metabolic Alkalosis: A Serious Imbalance
Too much baking soda may put you at risk for metabolic alkalosis, which means the pH of your blood is too high or more alkaline, Prest notes. Alkalosis can reduce blood flow to the brain, damage the heart, decrease the flow of oxygen to bodily tissues, and cause mental confusion, Gans explains. Prest adds that this can also cause “serious medical issues like heart arrhythmias and decreased heart contractions.” Vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration, and seizures can also occur.
A Case Study: The Dangers of Overconsumption
A 50-year-old man with a history of diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and Zollinger-Ellison syndrome came to the emergency department (ED) with a history of increasing vomiting and diarrhea for 1 week and poor oral intake for a few days. He described generalized weakness and lethargy the day before presentation. During the initial ED evaluation, he suddenly had an episode of ventricular tachycardia treated with a single synchronized cardioversion followed by an amiodarone drip. His initial laboratory investigation revealed marked hypokalemia (potassium 2.0 mEq/L), hyponatremia (sodium 122 mEq/L), hypochloremia (59 mEq/L), and elevated serum bicarbonate (46 mEq/L). Arterial blood gases revealed a pH of 7.6, pO2 100 mm Hg, pCO2 59 mm Hg, and calculated bicarbonate 60 mEq/L. On further questioning, it was discovered that the patient had been experiencing persistent heartburn and gastric upset for the past 7 years following gastrinoma removal and had been excessively consuming baking soda as an antacid.
This case highlights the potential dangers of excessive baking soda consumption, leading to severe electrolyte imbalances and life-threatening cardiac events.
Safe and Sustainable Weight Loss Strategies
People are more likely to reach and maintain their goal weight by losing weight gradually and steadily. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that people lose no more than 1-2 pounds (lbs) per week.
Setting Realistic Goals
An important step for weight loss is setting realistic goals. The CDC suggests these goals should be a mix of long- and short-term. For example, losing 10 lbs could be a long-term goal. A short-term goal could be the number of steps a person aims to take each day to lose that weight. Other short-term goals could be walking to and from work or going for a 20-minute bicycle ride over the weekend. Short-term goals should be specific and realistic.
For one reason or another, such as a longer day at work or family commitments, people may not reach their short-term goals. This is completely normal, and people should just try to set new, achievable goals as soon as they can.
Regular Physical Exercise
Regular physical activity can help a person to achieve or maintain a moderate weight. However, it also offers other benefits, such as lowering the risk of certain health conditions and improving stress levels, cognitive function, sleep, joint mobility, and balance. Adults should aim to get at least 150 minutes of aerobic activity and two days of muscle-strengthening activity each week.
Healthy Eating Habits
Healthful eating habits are vital for losing weight in a sustainable and safe way. Changing eating habits can be challenging, but it is possible to do. People should avoid sudden, drastic changes to their diet, such as only eating a salad at every meal. Although this approach may lead to short-term weight loss, it is challenging to stick to and may not give people all of the necessary nutrients.
Instead, the CDC suggests a three-step approach for developing more healthful eating habits:
- Reflect on eating habits and identify any triggers for habits that are unhealthful.
- Replace less healthful eating habits with more healthful ones.
- Reinforce the new eating habits.
For example, if a person realizes that they eat too quickly, they can consciously focus on eating more slowly by purposely putting down their eating utensils between bites. Another strategy is to make a healthful meal plan and then meal prep for the following week. A person can make all of their meals for the week during the weekend. Doing this can help reduce the temptation of buying takeout or fast food.
As with physical activity goals, it is important that people do not think that one day of eating with their old habits means that all of their efforts are pointless. Setbacks do happen, but it is important that people start afresh the next day and continue reinforcing their new, healthful habits.