Question

A fifty-five-year-old woman suffering from osteoporosis (bone loss) Is Interested in how her diet affects her blood pH. She has read that consuming acidifying foods and drinks, such as meats, sodas, and grains, decreases her blood pH, which in turn decreases her bone density. But she really likes to eat those foods, and she's skeptical that what she eats could really affect her body's pH. To test the idea, she purposefully eats an acidifying diet for a limited time, knowing that a short study won't have a major effect on her health. First, she buys some pH strips, and then tests her urine pH four times each day. Five days later she constructs the graph below. Based on the graph, she concludes that her diet is contributing to osteoporosis. Do you agree with her conclusion? Why or why not? No, because she only measured urine pH, she can only make conclusions about how food affects her urine. No, because her urine became less acidic through the experiment. pH of urine No, because many of the error bars overlap, she cannot be sure that the change that she saw was not due to chance alone. 1 2 3 Day 4 5 Yes, because the marker on day 5 is lower than the marker on day 1. Yes, because the error bar above the marker on day 5 is lower than the bottom error bar on day 1. Reset

Answer 1

Answer: No, because she only measured urine pH, she can only make conclusions about how food affects her urine.

Blood pH is maintained in a very narrow pH range. Urinary pH may or may not correlate with pH of the blood. Hence, there is no point measuring urinary pH.