I agree with you. I do not think anyone should take things to mess directly with pH balance, unless they have medical reasons to do so. There is such a thing as the alkaline diet, which to me is based on an illiterate reading of the science. The body maintains different pH levels in different areas, and it does not need any help with that usually--just a good diet. The best medicine is healthy food, which will effectively prevent imbalances.

Since I suffer from gout and have had kidney stones, I do keep a little potassium bicarbonate and sodium bicarbonate in the house, which are good for instant removal of pain. I would never take more than one quarter teaspoon of the first or one half teaspoon of the second at a time. But this is rare--I do not have full-on gout attacks these days, and I feel touches of it only about once a couple of months.

As I am going to mention in a future post, I did mix myself a sodium bicarbonate mouthwash to experiment with, but since my mouth pH seems naturally neutral these days there seemed no point. I do not believe in mouthwashes any more.

I think the reason it is foolhardy to mess too much with one's pH is that the ideal homeostatic state is neutrality. Which is very difficult to judge externally. PH rises and falls very steeply, and high alkalinity throws the body out of synch as much as high acidity, as you suggest.