Extracellular pH and Bone
It has been known for some time that acid base balance plays a large role in bone metabolism. At the heart is the fact that our bodies use calcium as a buffer for acids in the blood. When calcium in the blood drops (an otherwise potentially life threatening situation) the body quickly moves to correct the drop.
The best depot of calcium in the body is bone. So, in an acid situation, the body will reach calcium from the bone to keep the pH of the blood steady. Keeps us alive short term–destroys bone long term. This is one of the reasons I have always had an issue with the way we treat osteopenia and osteopororis in medicine today–almost exclusively by blocking bone turnover.
An approach to bone health is multifactorial, including exercise, alkaline diet, optimal Vit D levels and an anti-inflammatory lifestyle. In addition, this study found that at acidic pH, the bone matrix actually becomes more soluble, resulting in further bone loss.