Hi everyone, a lot of health students have issues with looking at acidosis or alkalosis. This is determining whether the blood is acidic or basic compared to its normal blood pH. Now, there's different types of acidosis and alkalosis. You can have respiratory or you can have metabolic.
Now, what I want to talk to you about today is what makes one respiratory-based acidosis-alkalosis or metabolic-based acidosis-alkalosis. So like I said before, your blood pH needs to sit between the range of 7.35 and 7.45. That's the range it needs to sit within. If it goes below this particular range, acidosis.
If it goes above this particular range, alkalosis. That's the first point. Next point is when we measure pH. The H simply stands for hydrogen ions. That's all we are measuring in this case. But when we do bloods to have a look, When you get medical professionals taking bloods to have a look at whether somebody has acidosis or alkalosis, they don't just look for the pH, they also look for some other factors to tell it, whether it's respiratory or metabolic.
Let's take a look. Alright, first thing is you must know this equation. The equation is that when you breathe, you produce carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide will inevitably get into your blood and blood is filled with water.
So when carbon dioxide mixes with water, it produces something. The thing it produces is called carbonic acid, which is H2, there's the H2, C from there, O3, because there's two there and one there. Now, carbonic acid hates itself and splits itself apart, and it produces these two things.
It produces bicarbonate ion, and it produces hydrogen ions. Again, when we measure pH, we're just measuring this. So, if somebody has acidosis, it means that the quantity or concentration of this is going up, right? If they've got alkalosis, the concentration of this is going down. Now, think of this on a seesaw.
If you increase carbon dioxide, this goes up and everything falls in this direction, producing more acid. So, the more carbon dioxide, the more acidic. the more acidic it means it's going down in this direction and the person has acidosis. Usually the body is very good at compensating and it will bind with that and roll back down in this direction and you'll breathe that carbon dioxide out. All right, let's talk about acidosis alkalosis different types.
When we look at respiratory based acidosis alkalosis, it's looking at this end of the equation. When we look at metabolic, it's looking at this end of the equation. Now, when somebody has respiratory acidosis, what happens is it's respiratory based.
Something to do with breathing carbon dioxide is the only thing here that we truly breathe. We do breathe out a little bit of water, but mainly carbon dioxide, right? So if somebody has respiratory acidosis, the carbon dioxide levels must be increasing.
Respiratory acidosis. increased carbon dioxide because this means it bonds with the water, produces carbonic acid, splits apart and produces hydrogen ions. This is acidic. That's respiratory acidosis. So what happens with the pH?
It goes down. dropping down in this direction. All right, that's respiratory acidosis.
What about respiratory alkalosis? Well, it's going in the opposite direction. So in respiratory alkalosis, we're not producing enough CO2.
So it's not binding with water, it's not creating carbonic acid and we're not producing enough hydrogen ions, which means we've just got an overabundance of bicarbonate, comparatively, and it becomes more acidotic. So it's a drop in CO2, which... results in an increase in the pH. This is respiratory acidosis, respiratory alkalosis. What about metabolic?
Metabolic acidosis is referring to what's happening here. Now think about it. Metabolic acidosis can happen either if you increase the amount of hydrogen ions or if you decrease the amount of bicarbonate because bicarbonate binds the hydrogen to mop it up and get rid of it. So if that's gone, gone, you're just left with a whole bunch of free hydrogen ions.
So when you do the bloods to check for this, in metabolic acidosis what you'll find is a drop in bicarbonate, this again is if it's uncompensated, and an increase, and a drop sorry, in the pH because it's acidosis so it's going down. In metabolic alkalosis, What's happening is it's producing too many bicarbonate ions, or again it could be the fact there's not enough hydrogen ions, maybe one or the other. But what we do know is that in alkalosis, there's more bicarbonate ions if it's uncompensated. And what happens is the pH goes up as well.
So this is just a very quick run-through of what happens in respiratory-based acidosis-alkalosis and metabolic-based acidosis-alkalosis.