Sodium Bicarbonate and Precautions When Treating Cancer Tumors

In May I published that University of Arizona Cancer Center member Dr. Mark Pagel will receive a $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the effectiveness of baking soda therapy to treat breast cancer. He wrote me recently saying that his NIH grant award will NOT fund a clinical trial:

Instead, my research focuses on pre-clinical studies in a laboratory setting. More importantly, my research primarily focuses on the refinement of my method for measuring tumor acidosis using non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging methods. One application of this method is to monitor changes in acid content (pH) in tumors and normal tissues following baking soda treatment. But there are other applications as well. For example, tumor acidosis causes chemoresistance to common anti-cancer drugs such as doxorubicin and paclitaxel. Determining whether an individual’s tumor is acidic can aid in selecting the appropriate chemotherapy for that individual patient, leading to “personalized medicine.”

He also said:

Second, baking soda is NOT necessarily safe as your article claims. It is known from pre-clinical studies and mathematical oncology modeling that too much baking soda, and/or baking soda treatment that is continued for too long, will be harmful to normal tissues, especially kidney and bladder tissues. The problem is that the level that is “too much” and the time that is “too long” is unknown, and probably differs for different people (for example, older patients with limited kidney function are likely more sensitive to baking soda treatment). Therefore, there is a real concern that too much baking soda applied for too long may harm a patient.

The good doctor is absolutely correct and that is one of the reasons to not jump into serious bicarbonate therapy without studying the subject in depth. In my book Sodium Bicarbonate—Rich Man’s Poor Man’s Cancer Treatment these issues are raised along with the absolute need to use daily pH testing as a guide to determine dosages.

The key to safe use of sodium bicarbonate is the monitoring and testing of both urinary and saliva pH with pH test paper or an electronic tester. I recommend people do this every morning and chart their results, and whenever taking strong baking soda baths, do the same thing soon after getting out of the tub. We do not want the urinary pH to go over 8.0, and Arm & Hammer suggests right on the box to stop therapy to let the pH drop back down after a week of high use.

One can overdo anything! When I say baking soda is safe, I mean it is exceptionally safe if you compare it with overly strong poisons found in chemotherapies. Sodium bicarbonate is a strong medicinal, one of the strongest, and it will drive pH levels up quickly throughout most of the tissues, and that is why it is so effective.

Dr. Pagel also said:

Furthermore, there is some evidence that pH-neutral tumors do NOT respond well to baking soda treatment. This is plausible because tumors that are not acidic don’t need to be neutralized by baking soda (however, this preliminary evidence is not yet proof that pH-neutral tumors will not respond to baking soda treatment). Thus, a patient may have a pH-neutral tumor and experience no benefit from baking soda, and yet take too much baking soda for too long and cause damage to normal tissues. That would be unacceptable. This concern that normal tissues may become alkalinized provides additional justification for developing a non-invasive imaging method to monitor pH throughout the body.

The first point to address here is that the justification for using bicarbonate does not center solely on its tumor controlling or reducing role. If a person is bicarbonate deficient, which means too acid, if the deficiency is addressed, the entire body including the immune system will work better and this can only help in cancer treatment. Every physiological process in the body is pH sensitive. Doctors should know by now (unfortunately they don’t) that patients will always do better with cancer treatments of all kinds when they are slightly alkaline.

Everyone’s bicarbonate level declines with age and it would be quite unusual to find a cancer patient without a generalized bicarbonate deficiency no matter what the pH of the tumors are. If there are tumors that are actually alkaline it would indeed be a rare condition because the respiration of cancer cells creates acid conditions.

Dr. Pagel is studying a personalized approach to cancer treatment that involves the use of toxic chemotherapy agents. The context of Natural Allopathic Medicine’s cancer protocol is all-natural and if the bicarbonate does not get the cancer, other natural heavyweight medicinals will.

There is no hiding the fact that baking soda, the same stuff that can save a person’s life in the emergency room in a heartbeat, is a primary cancer treatment option of the safest most effective kind. I never suggest it should be used out of the context of a full cancer protocol of medicinals that support bicarbonate’s cancer eliminating role.

To depend on baking soda or anything else as a sole cancer cure is misguided and risky. But when used as a primary anti-cancer agent with other anti-cancer agents is intelligent.

When taken orally with water, especially water with high magnesium content, and when used transdermally in medicinal baths, baking soda becomes a first-line medicinal for the treatment of cancer, kidney disease, diabetes, influenza and even the common cold. One hundred years of clinical use and research support this statement and even the Arm & Hammer Company promoted its medical use in a small booklet published by them in 1926.

Dr. Robert J. Gillies and his colleagues have already demonstrated that pre-treatment of mice with sodium bicarbonate results in the alkalinization of the area around tumors. The same researchers reported that bicarbonate increases tumor pH and also inhibits spontaneous metastases in mice with breast cancer.[1] It also reduces the rate of lymph node involvement.

One does not have to be a doctor to practice pH medicine. Every practitioner of the healing arts and every mother and father needs to understand how to use sodium bicarbonate. Bicarbonate deficiency is a real problem that deepens with age so it really does pay to understand and appreciate what baking soda is all about.

Doctors of course would disagree that they are not needed for this but in the case of using baking soda, it is the pH testing paper that is needed, not them. I always hope that people will read my book so that they completely understand what they are dealing with, especially the possible side effects when using too much for too long a period.