What are acidosis and alkalosis? How do they relate to the pH of blood?

Answer 1

Assume you have a normal pH range for blood.

If the pH of the sample is below the normal pH range ("more acidic"), then you have acidosis (pH lower than normal)

If the pH of the sample is above the normal pH range ("more alkaline"), then you have alkalosis (pH higher than normal)

Answer 2

Acidosis is an increased acidity (i.e. hydrogen ion concentration) of blood plasma. Generally acidosis is said to occur when arterial pH falls below 7.35, while its counterpart (alkalosis) occurs at a pH over 7.45. Arterial blood gas analysis and other tests are required to separate the main causes.

Strictly speaking, the term acidemia would be more appropriate to describe the state of low blood pH, reserving acidosis to describe the processes leading to these states. Nevertheless, most physicians use the terms interchangeably. The distinction may be relevant where a patient has factors causing both acidosis and alkalosis, where the relative severity of both determines whether the result is a high or a low pH.

The rate of cellular metabolic activity affects and, at the same time, is affected by the pH of the body fluids. In mammals, the normal pH of arterial blood lies between 7.35 and 7.50 depending on the species (e.g. healthy human-arterial blood pH varies between 7.35 and 7.45). Blood pH values compatible with life in mammals are limited to a pH range between 6.8 and 7.8. Changes in the pH of arterial blood, and therefore the extracellular fluid outside this range, result in irreversible cell damage

Alkalosis refers to a condition reducing hydrogen ion concentration of arterial blood plasma (alkalemia). Generally alkalosis is said to occur when arterial pH exceeds 7.45. The opposite condition is acidosis.

Answer 3

You speak of acidosis that there are too much H+ ions in a solution. For you it is blood. Alkalosis is the opposite

For the blood pH is expresse by the formula Henderson-Hasselbach


pH = pK (6.3) + log [bicarbonates]/[CO2]

If the numerator increases pH increases