Content area
Full Text
Balancing your body's pH for better health
You had low-fat yogurt, mango, and a cup of black tea with honey for breakfast. Lunch was a turkey-breast sandwich, and yousnacked on grapes and organic peanuts. You're trying to eat healthy so why don't you feel healthy? Why are you fatigued, sick, or unable to lose those last ten pounds?
The truth may be that your "healthy" diet is not so healthy after all. Rather, it's filled with acidic foods like meat, sugar, white flour, tea, and dairy. Eating too many of these foods and not enough alkaline ones-vegetables, tubers, olive oil, quinoa-can cause an acid imbalance in your body. And that's a problem, says Christopher Vasey, ND, author of The Acid-Alkaline Diet for Optimum Health.
"Our bodies need both acid and alkaline compounds to function properly," says Vasey. "An acid condition, or acid imbalance, means that the blood and cellular fluids in the body have an acidic pH [the relative proportion of acid to alkaline] and not enough alkaline compounds to balance them."
Chronically acidic blood (acidosis) can cause a variety of conditions, including fatigue, foggy thinking, weight gain, and heartburn, and may increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease, according to research from Austria. Other studies link the condition to bone loss and increased levels of the stress hormone Cortisol, while 2007 research published in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine found that acid imbalances elevate the risk of chronic diseases. A 2006 study published in the International Journal of Oncology and a 2010 review published in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine linked acidosis and chronic inflammation to an increased risk of cancer.
Many staples of the American dietprocessed foods, meat, dairy, eggs, fish, corn, peanuts, chocolate, refined sugar, artificial sweeteners, and wheat-are acidic. Alkaline foods balance acidic foods, but most of us don't consume enough alkalizing choices or participate in activities to reduce acidosis, such as exercise and stress management.
"Most people have a tendency toward overacidity," says Susan Lark, MD, author of Eat Papayas Naked: The pH-Balanced Diet for Super Health and Glowing Beauty. "It's the unfortunate result of the typical American diet and lifestyle."
Understanding your PH
A food...