Re: testing urine ph

[Guest guest]

-- Knowledge wise... I'm not so sure--LOL! The whole acid-base

thing is mind boggling, and I know I have forgotten a lot. You have

recent " lived experience " . But what you described in makes

sense according to acid-base balance " rules " . It sounds like

's kidneys did just what they were made to do. BTW, Arterial

pH of 7.59 is quite scary. (as I'm sure you know)

The key word in your post is " compensatory process " . Compensated

acidosis/alkalosis is somewhat of a different species of the same

animal, if that makes sense. Then we can throw comp respiratory

alkalosis in there vs. compensated metabolic acidosis... nah, let's

not!! How long did it take for him to go from severe acidosis before

admission to alkalosis? Not minutes, I'll bet. More like hours or

even days. The other thing is... was in a very stressed

situation. Under normal circumstances, I would still doubt the

correlation would be that meaningful. The ranges are so different --

blood pH being very narrow between acid and alkaline (0.5 on either

side of neutral) and urine being quite wide (about 2.0 on either

side). But, you know, exceptions to the " rules " certainly do

happen. The biggest problem with medicine is that it is based

totally on statistics... which it has to be. But, we need to

recognize that because something is statistically so, it doesn't

apply to everybody...just the majority.

Also, when 's urine was highly alkaline and correlated with the

motor status, did you have a blood pH value to compare? Depending on

when you tested, compared to when the status occurred, it could be

very reasonable to see alkalinity in the urine because of chemicals

released during the continued muscle activity.

I guess my whole point in jumping in here is that I don't want to see

anyone misled by potentially false information. People's actual

experience is always valuable. At home, even if a correlation is

seen between alkaline urine and seizure activity, you don't know what

actual blood acidity is at the time. Testing urine ketones has been

the ONLY way to test for blood acidity, routinely on the diet. Even

then, the correlation between urine and blood is not exact, but it's

but it's much closer than pH. Now that we can test blood ketones at

home, the opportunity avails itself to get a much closer value, yet.

Leita-- the multistix are used mainly in the clinical laboratory or

doctor's office to do routine urinalysis... a basic screening test

for overall health. ANY abnormality needs further investigation to

determine if it is significant or not. Not all the squares are

really needed for keto... but they are there. Most keto teams don't

care about urine pH because in normal folks, it usually acidic. In

ketosis it is usually acidic, too, but there could be exceptions.

That would not necessarily mean that blood is also alkaline. It's the

kidney's job under most circumstances to excrete an acid urine. The

most important square is ketones, obviously. The other two that are

helpful are blood (for detetction of possible kidney stones forming)

and specific gravity (urine concentration). I use ketostix (one

square for ketones) twice a day. I use multistix once a week to

screen for blood. To my knowledge, there is no single test strip for

blood. If there was, I would use it instead. If I need specific

gravity (for instance, when my daughter is sick and I'm concerned

about dehydration, I use a refractometer that I borrowed from a lab.

If you want to test for urine pH, go to your pharmacy or Wal-Mart and

buy pH paper. It comes on a roll that you can tear a piece off or in

strips. There is a guide on the package similar to the one on the

multistix can. Considerably less expensive than the sticks!

Remember, you should test it fresh or the results mean nothing.

Cammie