>the problems were hypertension and chronic kidney disease,
It's interesting that these are both conditions usually normally associated with excess sodium in the diet. However, baking soda, as the name suggests, contains sodium! So that it would prevent these diseases is surprising. But sodium is normally consumed as a component of salt, which, in addition to sodium, contains chloride.
That raises a question I'm surprised I can't answer: how do we know that any of the problems we blame on sodium are not in fact the result of chloride? I found this:
My guess is that the real explanation for this conundrum is that “associated with” is not the same thing as “caused by”. Nutrition science and especially reporting on nutrition science makes too much of correlation because randomized controlled trials are expensive.
It's interesting that these are both conditions usually normally associated with excess sodium in the diet. However, baking soda, as the name suggests, contains sodium! So that it would prevent these diseases is surprising. But sodium is normally consumed as a component of salt, which, in addition to sodium, contains chloride.
That raises a question I'm surprised I can't answer: how do we know that any of the problems we blame on sodium are not in fact the result of chloride? I found this:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/222/4628/1139
http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/2168457
I definitely did not expect to find that much support for this idea when I started this. I'm not convinced yet, though.