The followers of baking soda often consider it a miracle product. Inexpensive and ecological, it is often used in beauty products (toothpaste, shampoo, skincare, etc.), in maintenance products (anti-limescale, fungicide, scouring powder, deodorant…), but also for health such as sore throat or stomach. Researchers at the Medical College of Georgia (United States) have just found a new use for it: soothing the immune system. Their research has been published in The Journal of Immunology.
Bicarbonate “soothes” the spleen
In autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritisthe multiple sclerosis or even the Graves disease, our own immune system attacks us. Researchers have just discovered that baking soda soothes inflammatory reactions, which could be a new way to fight autoimmune diseases.
Researchers found that when a person drank a solution of water and baking soda, their stomach became more active in digesting the next meal and little-studied cells – mesothelial cells – sent a message to the spleen to tell it that it is not necessary to trigger an immune response: “It is probably a hamburger and not a bacterial infection”, humorously illustrates in a press release Dr. Paul O’Connor, author of the study.
Macrophages change shape
The role of the spleen is to filter the blood and purify it, but also to produce white blood cells, immune cells. “Drinking bicarbonate definitely affects the spleen, and we think it’s through the mesothelial cells,” O’Connor says. But that’s not the only thing they observed.
After drinking baking soda, the macrophages (immune system cells found in the blood, spleen and kidneys) had changed from an M1 form which promotes inflammation, to an M2 form which, on the contrary, reduces it. This would be due to the drop in acidity caused by the ingestion of baking soda. “It is potentially a very safe way to treat inflammatory diseases,” the scientist optimistically concluded.
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