Know What You Are Eating - Alkaline And Acidic Food

 

Types of Food
There are 2 main types of food: acidic food and alkaline food. Examples of acidic food are meat, fish, prawns, chicken, bread and flour. Alkaline food are vegetables, milk, seaweeds, fruits and egg white.

It cannot be confused that acidic food contains acid, but rather, it is the end product of this food after digestion and assimilation that contains acid. For example, lemon is acidic initially, but they produces alkaline ash after digestion. The latter is what we are concerned about, as it is the end product that affects our body.

More on the lemon issue, it has to be highlighted that this only applies if the fruit is plucked from the tree in the ripened state. If they are unripe (green) and turn yellow due to rotting, these fruits becomes acidic after digestion.

This fact holds true not only to lemons, but to many others such as pineapples, mangoes, peaches and apples. Be sure to buy fruits that are ripe, and not rotting.

So, back to the topic of acidic and alkaline food, which of the two should we eat? In fact, both types should be taken in moderation for good health. According to Dr. Ragnar Berg of United States, "Everyday's meal should have the proper proportion of 20% acidic food and 80% alkaline food."

Whether your body is acidic or alkaline depends mainly on the food you consume. A healthy body is slightly alkaline (pH7.3 to 7.4). It is highly important that you should know what type of food you are eating so that you can achieve the healthy balance of 80% alkaline and 20% acid.

Recent studies have shown that patients with high acidity in their urine have a slower rate of recovery from various diseases as compared to patients with low acidity in their urine. Experiments have also been done on animals to study on this area. Alkalinized and acidized animals have virus injected into their body. The alkalinized animals were found to have suffered slight damage and quickly recovered. Acidized animals, however, suffered diseases or death.

It can be concluded that a high alkaline body is the first line of defense against diseases and death. An overly acidic body can accelerate the ageing process, reduce immunity to sickness and disease, and cause system degeneration.

Diseases and Conditions caused by acidic body
There are so many diseases and conditions that may be caused by an acidic body. Though this may not the only factor, but it is a major contributing factor.

Some of these diseases are:

• Constipation
• Muscle pain
• Acnes
• Skin Allergy
• Pigmentations
• Kidney diseases
• Heart disease
• Hypertension
• Hyper-cholesterol
• Headache
• Cancer
• Gastric
• Gastro-intestinal disorder

So how do our body gets acidic? When we have high intake of meat, eggs and animal products, this imbalance cause an over-acidic pH. One of the fastest way to ensure proper pH balance is by consuming spirulina, a blue green algae termed as a superfood due to its high density of nutrients. This health supplement is 100% alkaline and can reduce the acidity in your body.

Alvin Ng writes articles on several health topics for Health Session ranging from nutrition to diseases to body systems, and invites you to read more of these articles at healthsession.com

There is no other way to improve your health than to understand what your body needs. Learn with us as new discoveries and researches provide a greater knowledge to better health. Read the original article at Alkaline and Acidic Food.

Getting Alkaline- 7 Cool Shortcuts

 

The concept of "Getting Alkaline" is not the latest health fad, or some trend that will disappear any time soon. It is gaining traction consistently and methodically in the marketplace, and the concept is so fundamental and common sense to health conscious people that they usually have an aha! experience as soon as they hear about it.

So what is it, and how do you do it? Well, the concept is based on the Acid Alkaline balance. The acid alkaline scale starts at 0 and goes to 14. 7 is Neutral, lower than 7 is acidic, and above 7 is alkaline. Babies are born slightly alkaline, at 7.365 on the scale. But as we grow and are exposed to acidic foods, stress, pollution, chemicals and even natural acids like lactic acid, our bodies become acidic. Everything we eat and drink has either an acid or alkalizing effect.

Think of it like a bank account and everything you take into your body is either an alkaline deposit or an acidic withdrawal. For example, soda is a huge withdrawal; green and yellow vegetables and alkaline water are excellent deposits.

When our body is acidic bad things happen. Diseases flourish in acidic environments. Some doctors and nutritionists believe that maintaining a healthy PH balance makes you immune to diseases, even cancer. In his book "Alkalize or Die" Dr. Theodore A. Baroody claims: The countless names of illnesses do not really matter. What does matter is that they all come from the same root cause...too much tissue acid waste in the body.

Eating an alkaline diet offers benefits like:

-Your body will adjust to its natural weight -You will have increased energy -Better sleep patterns -You will gain lean muscle -Drastically lower risk of illness (some claim you can't get sick at all!)

So how do you do it? Here are 7 cool shortcuts to help you get there:

1. Get a PH test kit and measure your PH level regularly. Just by measuring regularly you start to see patterns, and know what things affect your body either positively or negatively. These test kits are inexpensive, and are readily available at your local health food store.

2. Add alkaline water to your diet. This has had more impact for me personally than any other single thing. Hydration itself is critical to getting alkaline, and most people don't drink enough water. Those that do drink lots of water would get a huge boost in alkalinity they drank alkaline water. To determine how much water you should be drinking, just divide your body weight in two and drink that many ounces of alkaline water a day. In other words, a 180 pound man should drink at least 90 ounces of water a day. Then add an alkalizing supplement, and watch how quickly you see positive health improvements!

3. Start each day with a glass of fresh lemon juice. Just take a lemon or two and squeeze the juice into a glass of water. Although lemons are acidic, they have a strong alkalizing effect on your body, as well as good digestive benefits. A little tart at first, but once you're used to it you will learn to love it!

4. Just add salad. Add a salad to your lunch and dinner every day. Spinach salad is particularly good, but almost all green and yellow vegetables are alkalizing. Also, adjust the portion size on your plate. Cut down on the meat, potatoes and gravy, and increase the serving size of your veggies. Not hard to do, but it makes a big difference.

5. Cut back on refined sugar. We already know sugar isn't good for us, but it also causes acidity in our bodies. Did you know a gram of sugar is what's in the little sweetener packs in restaurants? Understanding that, become a label reader, and check how many grams of sugar are in what you're about to eat. For instance, Kellogg's Smart Start cereal (advertised as a very healthy cereal) contains 16 grams of sugar. Can you even imagine starting with an unsweetened cereal and putting 16 of those coffee sweeteners on it?! I doubt it! Start checking how many grams of sugar are in the things you eat- you're in for a big surprise.

6. Add "Super Alkalizers" to your alkaline diet:

-Greens like Kale, Mustard Greens, and Broccoli -Millet or Quinoa instead of wheat -Fish and lamb over beef -Olive oil instead of other vegetable oils -Miso broth. Just dissolve one teaspoon of miso into a cup of hot, not boiling water. -Use fresh garlic in your cooking

7. Add supplements. Enzymes, ionic form minerals, and vitamins A and D are particularly good at helping the body maintain a healthy pH level.

These 7 shortcuts are much more powerful than any diet fad, they are easy to do, and can deliver dramatic , long term health improvements in a very short time.

Dave Sherwin is a full time online marketer and amateur athlete. He believes life is best when you have three things: Health Freedom, Financial Freedom, and Time Freedom, and all of us has the ability to achieve each of these. To learn more about alkaline water: http://www.x2oproducts.com/escape

The Importance of Having an Alkaline pH in Your Body and How To Achieve It.

 

WHAT MOST PEOPLE DONT REALIZE; WE ARE BIO ELECTRICAL ENGINES

In order to accomplish all the many millions of complex functions that occur over the course of the day, your body has to be able to communicate with itself all the way down to the cellular level. And do you know how it does this? Through pulses of electricity. Thats right, electricity.

Your body operates on an electro magnetic current. Believe it or not, all of the organs in your body emit these fields of electrical current. In fact, nerve signals are nothing more than electrical charges.

What creates this electrical power in your body is a very fine balance that exists in your bio chemistry. And of all the systems in your body that depend on this delicate, bio chemical balance, one of the most important is your blood stream. This is where pH comes into play. But what is pH?

WHAT PH IS AND WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO ALL YOUR BODY FUNCTIONS

PH is a scale that measures how acidic or alkaline a substance is. The scale ranges from 1 to 14 with 1 being very acid, 7 neutral and 14 very alkaline.

So what does pH have to do with you and your blood? Well, the pH of your blood is extremely important. The ideal pH level for your blood is right around 7.35 and your body goes to enormous lengths to maintain this level.

Why? Because if your blood pH were to vary 1 or 2 points in either direction, it would change the electrical chemistry in your body, there would be no electrical power and in short order you would drop dead. As you can see, maintaining the right pH level in your blood is pretty important!!

With this in mind a good way to avoid upsetting this delicate bio chemical balance would be to take a look at those things that can compromise the maintenance of the ideal pH level in your body. And what is the main culprit in this case? The answer is the creation of acid in your body.

Before we look at what causes acid, heres a graphic example to give you an idea of what can happen in the blood when your pH drops to less than ideal. Red blood cells are how oxygen is transported to all the cells in your body.

As red blood cells move into the tiny, little capillaries, the space they have to move through gets pretty small. In fact, the diameter of the capillaries gets so small that the red blood cells sometimes have to pass through these capillaries one red blood cell at a time!

Because of this, and because its important for the red blood cells to be able to flow easily and quickly through your body, they have a mechanism that allows them to remain separate from each other. This mechanism comes in the form of the outside of healthy red blood cells having a negative charge. This causes them to stay apart from each other, sort of like when you try to push the negative ends of two magnets together. They resist each other and stay apart.

Unfortunately, acid interferes with this very important mechanism in a pretty frightening way. Acid actually strips away the negative charge from red blood cells. The result is that your red blood cells then tend to clump together and not flow as easily. This makes it much more difficult for them to flow easily through the bloodstream.

But it also makes it harder for them to move freely through those small capillaries. This means less oxygen gets to your cells. Acid also weakens the red blood cells and they begin to die. And guess what they release into your system when they die? More acid.

I could describe a whole list of processes that occur when your system becomes and remains acid but I think you get the idea. The point is that aside from the acid that is secreted into your stomach to aid digestion, acid in your body is bad. Really bad.

In regard to producing energy in the body, heres an easy question for you. What do you think happens to a persons energy level if over time their system becomes more and more acid, their biochemical balance is disrupted and their red blood cells cant deliver oxygen and nutrients as efficiently to all their cells? The answer is simple. Their energy level drops. Dramatically. Are you beginning to get the picture here as to the importance of pH in your body? Good. Now lets take a quick look at what causes acidity in your body and then look at steps you can take to get your body pH back to an ideal level.

WHAT CAUSES ACID IN THE BODY

The primary cause of an acidic condition in your body is from what you put in your mouth. In other words, what you eat and what you drink. And it isnt how acid something may seem when you eat or drink it. It has to do with what is left over when you digest it.

Specifically, does eating or drinking something leave behind an acid or alkaline ash. For example, I dont know about you but I love seafood. Scallops are one of my favorites. However, when your body digests scallops, it leaves an extremely acid ash. In fact, scallops are one of the most acid foods you can eat.

Unfortunately, a lot of the things most people put in their mouths create an acid ash. These include alcohol, coffee and a lot of flesh protein in your diet. Interestingly enough, stress also tends to create an acid condition in the body.

STEPS YOU CAN IMMEDIATELY TAKE TO IMPROVE YOUR PH

Fortunately, it is pretty easy to immediately change your pH for the better and make it more alkaline. The first step is to understand which of the foods you are eating and the drinks you are drinking are acid and which are alkaline. Then its simply a matter of eliminating some of the more acid foods you are eating and adding in more alkaline foods.

However, before you start, its important to get a baseline of what the pH is in your body so that you can see how you are improving or if you need to continue to eliminate more acid foods and add in more alkaline ones.

You can do this by testing the pH of your saliva on a regular basis. This is really simple to do. More details on how to do this are provided on some web pages I have created for you to help you out. A link to these pages is provided below.

In addition to decreasing the amount of acid foods you eat and increasing the amount of alkaline foods you eat, one of the best ways to immediately begin changing your pH is to drink green drinks. You can make these by simply adding a powder that is made up of a whole host of vegetables that are highly alkaline to a glass of water. Information on suggested green drink powders to use is included on pages that I have a link to below.

RESOURCES WHERE YOU CAN LEARN MORE

Clicking on the following link will take you to some pages I created that have more information on alkaline and acid foods, how to test your own pH and what to look for in green drinks.

http://www.ajpip.com/resources/site_map.htm

Start taking the steps described above and you may very well find your energy levels increasing over time. They certainly did for me.

- Andy Long

After years of being extremely fatigued, suffering severe digestive problems and being sick all the time, Andy Long now enjoys energy levels that allow him to windsurf in 30 mph winds for 3-4 hours at a time.

Andy was able to completely regain his health and more by learning in detail how the human body really works and then applying what he learned to his own body.

He now shares with others what he has learned about what it takes to produce lasting energy through his health related web sites.

Learn about ways to create an alkaline pH in your body:

http://www.ajpip.com/resources/site_map.htm

webadmin@bigplanet.com

Alkaline Foods Diet - How To Regain Health & Energy

 

Our bodies were designed to eat foods which were available naturally and were raw. In today fast paced life many of us seem to have forgotten what fresh food is. Most of us suffer from some ailment or the other. The call of time is to follow an alkaline foods diet which will rid us of our diseases as well as regain our lost health.

An alkaline foods diet seems to have the answer to all our physical problems. Our natural body ph is 7.4.It is with this ph that all body functions are carried out smoothly. The heart, the brain, the blood cells, the liver, the kidney all require a body ph of 7.4 to function smoothly and optimally. Only an alkaline foods diet can insure that this natural alkaline body ph is restored. Most of our diet consists of acid forming food such as meats and fats. Many of us have much more than the allowed quantity of processed food. These are also acidic. Jams, butter, cookies, frozen foods, ice creams and almost 90 % of our food intake are acidic foods like these. An alkaline foods diet is the complete opposite of what most of us eat today.

An alkaline foods diet requires one to eat in such a way that about 80 % of the total food intake is alkaline foods. Foods such as vegetables and fruits are highly recommended in an alkaline foods diet. Green vegetables such as broccoli, asparagus, cabbage, wheat grass, lettuce, and so on are high alkaline foods and are highly beneficial to the body. Tomatoes, potatoes with their peels and garlic though not green vegetables are all the same alkaline foods and so on the diet plan for an alkaline foods diet. Almonds, honey and herbal teas can also be eaten when following an alkaline foods diet. But one must stay away from animal flesh, processed food, fats and even lentils. These acidic foods are very bad for the body. Wheat is an acidic food but wheat grass is alkaline. Similarly raw spinach is an item on the alkaline foods diet chart but if you cook it, it gets acidic in nature and is not recommended at all.

Incorporating an alkaline foods diet in our life will lead us up the path of health and energy. Many chronic aliments like cancer, arthritis, osteoporosis, coronary diseases all develop in an acidic environment. Even migraines, dental problems, depressions, sinusitis, and many such seemingly common illnesses have their roots in an acidic environment. Needless to say that when we follow an alkaline foods diet our bodies get alkalinized and the acidic levels gets balanced out thus repelling all germs and strengthening the immune system.

An alkaline foods diet helps shed extra weight but that is just a by product of the diet. The diet is not intended for shedding weight but is intended for gaining health as well as energy. Those who have tried this diet experience great energy bouts with days of doing on the alkaline foods diet plan. Many doctors today promote the alkaline foods diet to those suffering from cancer and other such serious ailments.

Discover How Alkaline Foods Work and Why An Alkaline Diet Is Recommended, including Free Foods Chart: http://www.AcidAlkalineDiet.com/Health

Understanding Acid And Alkaline PH

 

The notion of acid and alkaline is one of the most misunderstood concepts in nutrition. It is commonly referred to as terrain medicine, a reference to treating the whole individual. It has been established that PH in the blood, saliva, urine, and other areas is a critical factor for building health.

How can you determine an acid or alkaline condition?

Blood work, saliva tests, hair analysis, muscle resistance and urine are just some of the tests being recommended by current nutrition experts. Most of these tests can show relative amounts of acid or alkaline, which is very interesting to compare.

But what people do not know is that there are so many varieties of acid and alkaline appearing in the system that to get any conclusive results about acid and alkaline status. It is still best to read the intracellular fluid?a test rarely performed.

Most current diagnostic tests show the acid wastes are present in the body fluids such as blood, lymph, urine, mucus and saliva. The problem with such tests is that they do not show how much acid waste is within the cellular fluids since these fluids are running through tissues and removing acid wastes.

It might be possible to measure the relative acid or alkalinity of body fluids. But it is rare and more complicated to evaluate the acid or alkaline quality of body tissues such as skin, organs, glands, muscles, ligaments, arteries, and vessels. The majority of standard tests focus mainly on saliva, urine, or blood.

What does all these mean?

The tissue quality of skin, organs, glands, muscles, ligaments, arteries, and vessels is the determining factor of your health. When acid wastes are not eliminated, they are reabsorbed through the colon, gets filtered through the liver, and end up being re-released into the general circulation. Simply means that you are re-circulating waste, when it is supposed to be cleansed and rejuvenated already.

Even measuring a person's blood for acid and alkaline variations is not an easy task. When acid is introduced into the blood, alkaline minerals from other parts of the body are immediately mobilized to maintain a crucial pH balance of 7.35 to 7.45. The blood cannot tolerate elevated acidity. It must alkalize.

To do this, it goes on an alkaline borrowing spree immediately, with no intention of paying back the bone, tissue, and digestive juice mineral donors. This means that to do a blood test for an accurate acid and alkaline reading, testing would require your doctor to take blood samples at numerous intervals throughout the day and only after eating one particular food to obtain a good reading.

Very exhausting, costly, and still not that reliable.

A number of nutrition writers suggest testing acid and alkaline levels with litmus paper (saliva) or urinalysis sticks (urine). Determining acid and alkaline though pH testing is assumptive, simplistic, and misleading.

Saliva or urine is not reflective of your overall acidity. Such arbitrary and unpredictable testing does not read the cellular fluid or tissue quality of skin, organs, glands, muscles, ligaments, arteries, and vessels. It can only give in a partial evaluation.

The proof of your body's acid and alkaline condition can best be determined by your own experience, not by peer-reviewed studies, medical establishment support, or static dietary guidelines.

Without getting too technical, the most practical advice would be to experiment for several weeks with a food plan that stays close to the middle of the acid and alkaline scale. Check out some diet that is high on both. You will notice dramatic and positive changes that can only be attributed to your experiment. This will be your best doctor.

There are supplements and products that will help you become less acidic and more alkalinic. Some say that certain health problems can only occur if the body is too acidic. Also look at some charts of common foods and see if what you eat and drink
may be closer to a 2 ph than a 7.Dee Cohen is a publisher and website owner. Study more about health and staying balanced . Visit Wake up Your Health