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Whether caused by an ulcer or by the occasional food upheaval, indigestion has led to a variety of diet fads and home remedies. The faddists include finicky types who do not eat certain foods, especially fruits, "because they're too acid." Or they do eat mildly acid citrus fruits because they have convinced themselves that orange juice, for example, produces an alkaline reaction in the stomach. Some drinkers avoid highballs with a soda mix, claiming that the carbon dioxide that turns the stuff fizzy also turns their stomachs acid. Contrariwise, others take a glass of plain soda to settle their acid stomachs. Many sufferers gulp black coffee, which actually stimulates an empty stomach to produce more acid, and may be irritating; coffee with cream is "buffered."
As people get older, their ability to digest certain components of everyday foods seems to change (there may be a decrease in certain enzymes, but no one is sure). So some make a fetish of avoiding chocolate, or uncooked cucumbers, or all cucumbers, or uncooked cabbage, or all cabbage. Then there is the fellow who loudly proclaims, "I can eat anything"—and then slips off to the bathroom for a dollop of soda bicarb.
Faltering Kidneys. Sodium bicarbonate is at once the commonest, cheapest, most misused and most dangerous of antacids. In normal people, an occasional half-teaspoon in half a glass of water will probably do no harm. But a teaspoonful of bicarb in half a glass of water is enough to neutralize highly acid stomach contents, with some bicarb left over. The leftover can be dangerous, particularly to a person with an unsuspected kidney ailment. The excess bicarb is absorbed into the bloodstream through the walls of the small bowel, causing excessive alkalinity in the blood. It is the kidneys' job to remove this excess, but diseased kidneys may not be up to it, introducing the danger of death from alkalosis.
Though most laymen have never heard of alkalosis, it may be more dangerous than acidity, because doctors are not on the alert for it. And even when they suspect it, it is hard to diagnose. Its symptoms are the same as those for which the patient was taking antacids—nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain. In its later stages, alkalosis may bring on muscle spasms, fever, coma, and finally death.
Helping Steak. Nearly all physicians now avoid sodium bicarbonate. The most up-to-date thinkers among them are coming to the conclusion that the best neutralizer for excess stomach acid is nature's neutralizer—food. They prescribe small meals about every three hours. It matters little, they say, what the ulcer patient eats—he may have steak and French fries with catchup and a cucumber salad with vinegar dressing—provided only that he eats a little at a time and often. The tide has turned against the insipid Sippy diet of milk and light cream: doctors are beginning to find that for some ulcer patients this "cure" is worse than the disease—like bicarb it throws them far enough over on the alkaline side that they can develop alkalosis.