Alkaline Diet

Alkaline Diet

The diet of our ancestors is completely different from what we are so accustomed to these days. With the advancement of technology, the types of foods we consume are dragged along. A trip to the grocery store will shock you with aisles and aisles of processed food items and animal products. You will not have a hard time finding fast food when eating out as practically every corner of the street has one.

Even fad diets are partly to blame, for introducing a whole new eating habit, such as high-protein diets. In the recent years, consumption of animal products and refined food items has increased, as more and more people leave out the daily supply of fruits and vegetables in their diet.

It comes as no surprise why, these days, many are suffering from different types of allergies, bone diseases, heart problems and many others. Some health experts link these diseases to the type of foods we eat. There are certain types of food that disrupts a certain balance in our body that, during such instance, health problems arise. If only we could modify our eating habits, it’s not unlikely that prevention of diseases and restoration of health is achieved.

The Importance of Alkaline

Our bodies need to maintain a healthy and steady alkaline to acid ratio, which is signified by the pH level of our body. The pH scale ranges from 0 to 14, and anything lower than 7 is considered acidic. Processed food items, meat and meat products, sweets, and some beverages and condiments generally produce excessive amounts of acidity in the body.

Acidosis, abnormally high acidity level in the blood and other tissues of the body, is the one thing that several different diseases have one thing in common. And many health experts believe that acidosis is responsible for a lot of fatal diseases that many people are afflicted with these days.

Alkaline, on the other hand, naturally occurs in the body to neutralize excess acidity in the body, which is its main role. However, alkaline also becomes depleted at times especially when there’s too much acid it needs to get rid of, and we do not consume foods that replenish our body’s alkalinity.

Maintaining a Healthy pH Level

As mentioned earlier, acidosis leads to many health-related problems. Dangerous levels of acid get to circulate in our body and break into tissues and organs when not properly neutralized. To prevent this, one must see to it that a healthy pH balance in the body is maintained. And to offset the excessive amounts of acid is to increase your body’s alkalinity.

Determining whether or not your pH levels are prevalently alkaline may be done with easy-to-use pH level strips which you can purchase in drug stores or medical supplies stores. There are pH level strips meant for testing using your saliva, and there are those for using your urine.

Basically, a saliva pH level strip will determine how much acid your body is producing; normally it’s between 6.5 and 7.5 throughout the day. While a urine pH level strip will tell how well you excrete excess amounts of acid; you should get between 6.0 and 6.5 in the morning and between 6.5 and 7.0 at night.

The Dangers of Excessive Acid

If you constantly experience exhaustion, headaches and having frequent colds and flu, then that could be it’s you have high acid levels in your body. But the ill effects of acidosis in the body don’t stop there; you might be surprised at the wide-ranging types of diseases you could get with dangerous levels of acid in your body.

Depression, hyperacidity, ulcer, skin dryness, acne and obesity are some of those linked to excessive acid levels in the body. Then there are those that are more serious such as joint diseases, osteoporosis, bronchitis, frequent infections and heart diseases.

Even if you begin to take medications for these illnesses, the symptoms may be masked, but they will still continue to affect your health as you are not attacking them from their roots. No matter what medications you take pills, anti-inflammatory and the like your body will only become more acidic because of these medications.

Alkaline Diet Approach

To get to the roots of these health problems, the body’s pH level must be brought back to normal. There are alkaline foods that can help replenish the depleted alkaline levels in the body while neutralizing excess amounts of acid. Through an alkaline diet, sufficient amounts of alkaline are re-introduced into the body, thus bringing back the pH level to predominantly alkaline.

So how do you incorporate an alkaline diet into your eating habits First, you can start by cutting down your intake of processed foods. These type of foods contain chemicals that only increase the acidity of your body ones they’re digested. Second, steer clear of meat and meat products, dairies and alcohol. Third, load up on fresh fruits and vegetables, as they naturally are high in alkalinity.

Even acidic fruits like oranges and lemons become alkaline after they have been digested and absorbed by the body. As a general rule, 75% of your daily food consumption should consist of alkalizing foods. The more alkaline foods we provide our bodies with, the more efficient the neutralization of excess acids will be.