The very same baking soda you’re already using to make cookies, deodorize your refrigerator, or make your kid’s science-fair volcano spew “lava” may one day prove to be a safe and cheap combatant against painful and life-impacting illness. But don’t go concocting something on your own just yet.

Using funding from a grant provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), scientists at the Medical College of Georgia have found some of the first evidence that ordinary baking soda promotes bodily changes with therapeutic, anti-inflammatory effects on autoimmune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis. The scientists recently published their findings in The Journal of Immunology.

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The researchers found that baking soda, also known as sodium bicarbonate, or NaHCO3, serves as something of a primer in the stomach. It triggers the production of acid in readiness for an upcoming meal.

Consuming a solution of baking soda simultaneously sends an important message to mesothelial cells of the spleen. The spleen, acting as a blood filter, is an important part of the immune system. In essence, the chemical message baking soda sends is “Chill. This isn’t an attack — so there’s no need to call out the bodily equivalent of the cavalry.”

Baking soda tells the spleen: “It’s most likely a hamburger, not a bacterial infection,” Dr. Paul O’Connor, a renal physiologist in the MCG Department of Physiology at Augusta University and the study’s corresponding author, said in a press release, as Science Daily reported.

Here’s the science: Mesothelial cells are important because microvilli (little “fingers”) on those cells serve as “town criers” for certain body cavities and organs. The cells send out a warning that the body is being invaded — and that an immune response is needed.

The net result of the “conversation” set off by baking soda in the spleen, the blood, and the kidneys is a flip-flop in the population of immune cells called macrophages.

And what do macrophages do, exactly? They’re the clean-up crew responsible for ridding the body of dead or injured cell debris. Some macrophages promote inflammation (M1) — while others reduce inflammation (M2).

The result of drinking a solution of baking soda is a shift from a cell population of primarily inflammation-promoting macrophages to a cell population that consists mostly of inflammation-reducing macrophages.

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The scientists also found an uptick in the number of regulatory T-cells. These help protect the body from mistakenly attacking its own tissues. Paul O’Connor “hopes [that] drinking baking soda can one day produce similar results for people with autoimmune disease,” Science Daily reported.

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The study included both rats and human beings. In the human study, 12 healthy adults drank two grams of baking soda dissolved in 250 ml of bottled water for two weeks.

Toni Baker, communications director at the Medical College of Georgia, describes the results of the studies on lab animals and healthy humans as “promising.” However, she cautions against patients with autoimmune diseases beginning to take baking soda based only on these early findings. “More work needs to be done,” she said in an email to LifeZette.

Michele Blood is a Flemington, New Jersey-based freelance writer and a regular contributor to LifeZette.