The Acid-Alkaline Debate-Part 1-Does Your Body's pH Cause Cancer and Other Diseases

 

Understanding your bodys pH and its effect on your health is a critical component for a successful anti aging strategy. In fact, some would consider your bodys pH the single most important item to pay attention to for both optimal health and disease prevention. Over the next several articles we are going to look at this health issue, try to make sense of it, and give you a plan of action. But before I get into the details, let me set the stage for this discussion.

With a 60% Increase in Life Expectancy, Why Do We Rank 48th in the World
In the early 1900s the life expectancy in the United States was under 50 years of age. Over the last 100 years our life expectancy has increased to approximately 80 years of age, a 60% increase. Most experts in this area would attribute this increase to lower infant mortality, better diet, and improved hygiene. However, an interesting trend is occurring. With all the medicine and prescription drugs available to us today, especially here in the United States, we are continuing to move down on the life expectancy charts when compared to other countries. We are currently 48th in life expectancy. To highlight this trend, the health risks from obesity have now overtaken the health risks from cigarettes. We are literally eating and drinking our way to an earlier death and creating an environment that leads to an increased risk of disease.

Why Can Certain Cultures Live Relatively Cancer Free And We Cant
The Hunza people frequently live to between 120 to 140 years of age and, for the most part, remain healthy. In 1904 only 1 out of 24 Americans developed cancer in their lifetime. Currently, the cancer rate is 50% for men and 60% for women. For the year 2006, it is expected that nearly 1.4 million Americans will have been diagnosed with cancer and more than 550,000 will have died from it. Granted most of the people back in 1904 didnt live past 50 but is there a common cause for cancer and many of the diseases that are impacting our society today Let me share with you the following quotes:

It is natural for physicians to focus on treatment. A far better focus is prevention.
Giulio J. DAngio, M.D., former Chairman of the Department of Radiation Therapy, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Each time a patient comes in and needs cancer therapy, you could say it was a failure of prevention.
Dr. Samuel Broder, former Director of the National Cancer Institute

Knowledge is the Precursor to Prevention!
Notice the common theme for each of these prominent doctors. The theme is prevention. Prevention is taking the steps before hand to prevent something from occurring. If we want to prevent cancer, or certainly reduce our risk from cancer, then we need to educate ourselves and then take the necessary steps to apply that information. Most people want the federal government, the managed health care industry, the pharmaceutical companies, the food manufacturers, and the fast food chains to come up with the solution. Prevention starts with you and ends with you! As Dr. C. Everett Koop, former Surgeon General of the United States, said, The best prescription is knowledge. I want to help give you that knowledge.

The Great Debate!
The Acid - Alkaline Debate is one of the central issues in this increased health risk from cancer. And, as you gain knowledge in this area, you will also see how it affects obesity, diabetes, heart disease and a whole host of other health issues. To understand The Acid - Alkaline Debate we will need to understand pH and a little Chemistry 101. Im going to try to make this easy to understand.

The pH Scale as a Measure of Your Health!
The pH scale measures the degree of acidity or alkalinity of a substance and ranges from 0 to 14:

 0 is complete acid
 0 to 6.99 is acidic
 7 is neutral or the perfect balance between acid and alkaline
 7.01 to 14 is alkaline
 14 is complete alkaline

The lower on the scale below 7 the more acidic something is and the higher on the scale above 7 the more alkaline something is.

Got Math
Now this is what gets most people confused. The pH scale is not arithmetical but logarithmic. Logarithmic means that the values separating each unit are not of equal value along the scale but increases in proportion to their distance from a pH of 7. For example, a pH reading of 6 is 10 times more acidic than 7, but a pH of 5 is not 20 times more acidic but 100 times more acidic. If youre catching on, then a pH reading of 4 is 1000 times more acidic than a pH of 7. Given this fact, what would seem like a small change in pH and be no big deal is, in reality, a big deal to your body.

Although some organs and organ fluids (like the gastric region) have a higher or lower pH than what is normal for the body, your body functions best when the pH of the internal biochemical environment (your blood, lymph and intracellular fluids) is between 7.365 and 7.390. If you understand the pH scale above, then you can see that the body likes to keep itself slightly alkaline and in a very narrow range. Anything outside this range causes stress on the body. The farther outside this range, then the stress on the body goes up exponentially. Although a person may occasionally become alkalosis (a reading higher than 7.390), most people lean toward becoming acidosis because of the food they eat. This acidification of the internal terrain of the body has been directly and indirectly linked to the following ailments:

 Lack of Energy or Chronic Fatigue
 Poor Circulation, High Blood Pressure and Heart Disease
 Weight Gain or Loss and Obesity
 Irritability, Nervousness and Leg Cramps
 Inflammation, Joint Fatigue, Arthritis, Rheumatism and Gout
 Gastro Intestinal Disorders, Acid Reflux and Irregular Bowel Movements
 Diabetes and Kidney Stones
 Allergies and Skin Disorders
 Osteoporosis, Candida and Cancer

Although this isnt a complete list it does give you a picture of how acidity can affect your body. In fact, if you Google search death by disease you will find a strong correlation between the two lists. Some people will go so far as to say that an acidic body is a breeding ground for all disease, that no disease can exist in an alkaline environment, and the primary cause of cancer is lack of oxygen and an acidic environment. In reviewing the literature for this article I cannot completely endorse those statements. But it is quite clear that an acidic environment creates a much more favorable environment for diseases of all types to flourish.

So, how do you know if youre a walking flask of acid and are creating the potential environment for disease Ill cover that in Part 2 of The Acid  Alkaline Debate!

Dan Hammer has a background in biology, chemistry and exercise physiology. He used to run one of the largest health club operations in the Chicagoland area and has been helping people with their wellness issues for more than 25 years. His website http://www.AgingNoMore.com provides current information on how to slow down the aging process. He offers a free daily email that breaks this information down into actionable steps that are easy to understand and implement.