The human body is approximately 20 percent acidic and 80 percent alkaline; with a pH of between 7.35 to 7.45. When the blood becomes too acidic, disease starts to set in. If the blood acidity falls as little at to 7 pH it can be life threatening.
What Happens If We Are Too Acidic?
When our bodies become too acidic from poornutrition, and lifestyle choices, disease can set in and take hold. Our body is always trying to be in a state of balance or homeostatis. It will try to correct the imblance by taking minerals from other parts of the body to neutralize the overload of acid. This is called acidosis. It will leach minerals out of your bones to do this. All the calcium supplements in the world will not help. This can also cause a lack of energy, contribute to depression and disease. What will help? Eating more alkalizing fruits and vegetables and decreasing the amount of acid forming foods. You should strive to always increase these types of foods in your diet.
Remember disease cannot take hold in an alkalized oxygenated body.
The question that arises is why an alkaline diet?… the answer to this lies below.
To maintain blood pH level: Our bodies require a blood pH level that is just slightly more alkaline than pure distilled water: between 7.35 and 7.45. We help our bodies to stay within this level by eating a more alkaline diet with fewer acidic foods.
Fall in stomach Acid: There is a direct connection between eating alkaline foods and reducing the amount of stomach acid, which may help lessen or prevent symptoms of acid reflux, inflammation and other chronic conditions.
Facilitate Weight Loss: In all likelihood if you change your diet to include more alkaline forming foods you’ll lose weight. This is because these foods have plenty of other benefits in them, and most are considered super foods. If these take the place of acidic foods, or heavily processed foods, the result is surely that you will lose weight. Almost all of the alkaline foods we’ve found can also be found in diet plans and weight loss programs. Every diet we’ve seen has advocated the use of spinach and other leafy greens, it just so happens that they’re also alkaline.
Keep Muscles & Bones Strong: According to American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, a seven-year study conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, on 9,000 women showed that those who have chronic acidosis are at greater risk for bone loss than those who have normal pH levels. Many of the hip fractures among middle-aged women are connected to high acidity caused by a diet rich in animal foods and low in vegetables. Another three-year study looking at a diet rich in potassium, such as fruits and vegetables, as well as a reduced acid load, resulted in preservation of muscle mass in older men and women.
Reduced Lower Back Pain: An acidic diet can increase the likelihood and intensity of pain, but a more alkaline diet can reduce this pain, specifically chronic back pain in this case. The results of a study showed that a disturbed acid-base balance may contribute to the symptoms of low back pain. The simple and safe addition of an alkaline multi-mineral preparation was able to reduce the pain symptoms in these patients with chronic low back pain.
High Immunity: Immune cells that are too acid or too alkaline do not produce antibodies or cytokines (chemical messengers to regulate other immune cells), and they have impaired phagocytosis (the ability to engulf and destroy microbes). As a result, the affected individual becomes susceptible to viral, bacterial, fungal and other infectious microbes as well as cancer. Body pH with a slight alkaline bent is idle for immunity and to ward of disease.
Low Risk of Diabetes: An alkaline diet will help you keep your blood glucose levels in check so that you don’t have the sort of spikes you get from high-sugar foods. Diabetic diets that are prescribed by doctors closely resemble an alkaline diet, with beans and vegetables being the order of the day. The chances of getting diabetes while following an alkaline diet is lessened, and it may help you manage your diabetes if you already have it.
Improve Heart Health: The resultant increase in growth hormone with an alkaline diet may improve many outcomes from cardiovascular health to memory and cognition. On the other hand a high dietary acid load is more likely to result in diabetes and systemic hypertension and may increase the cardiovascular risk. Results of recent observational studies confirm an association between insulin resistance and metabolic acidosis markers, including low serum bicarbonate, high serum anion gap, hypocitraturia, and low urine pH.
Lower Risk of Cancer: Eating alkaline foods can help prevent cancer, or can turn it around if you already have it. It’s true that hospitals give their cancer patients special diets that are full of alkaline foods to eat, while not necessarily referring to it as an alkaline diet.
Healthier Skin: Symptoms of an excessively acidic diet include, thin nails, dry skin, cracks at the corners of the lips, dull hair with split ends, and falls out, hives and very pale face. In order to get rid of the following symptoms shift your diet towards an intake of more fruits and vegetables.
The purpose of the alkaline diet is to celebrate that fact and provide the body with all the tools it needs to effortlessly maintain that pH 7.365.
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