Since it is reportedly associated with kidney problems, I suspect that the mild pain I get in my right kidney, when I use it, is not due to detox. I have done various detoxes of different kinds. I never had that experience. It is scary and so I avoid baking soda mostly.
I would think that the pain would be bilateral on the chance that it was a detox effect. Also, what the body does naturally may not be at all the same as what we do through ingesting some man made, manufactured product. If you have no side effects, great it may not harm you at all. But others have had side effects. For us, why take a chance?