The pH Secret to Good Health

The basic chemistry of pH balance

Back in high school chemistry, we learned about pH: acids had low numbers, alkalines had high numbers, and a pH of 7.0 was neutral. And it all meant absolutely nothing in terms of day-to-day life.

It now turns out that we have a better shot at long-term health if our body’s pH is neutral or slightly alkaline. When we tilt toward greater acidity, which can be measured easily, we have a greater risk of developing osteoporosis, weak muscles, heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, and a host of other health problems.

The solution, according to scientists who have researched “chronic low-grade metabolic acidosis,” is eating a diet that yields more alkaline and less acid. Just what kind of diet is that? One that’s high in fruits and vegetables. That might not seem like a big surprise, except for a few unexpected twists and turns.

Acid-yielding foods deplete minerals

If the idea of balancing acid and alkaline foods seems a bit off the wall, it does have a somewhat checkered past. Most people, including physicians, aren’t familiar with the dangers of acidosis, except in the most extreme situations. Those include lactic acidosis, from overexercise; ketoacidosis, when diabetes start burning their own fat; and renal acidosis, which can be a sign of kidney failure.

The original scientific research on acid-yielding and alkaline-yielding foods dates back to 1914 and was remarkably accurate, according to Loren Cordain, Ph.D., a professor and researcher in the department of health and exercise science at Colorado State University, Fort Collins. Then, in the 1930s and 1940s, the acid-alkaline concept was hijacked by early health food “nuts.” Among them, William Hay, M.D., proposed an almost ritualistic eating habit based on food acidity or alkalinity. Since then, most doctors have viewed any discussion of acid and alkaline diets with a skeptical eye.

But the problem with acid-producing eating habits is very real, contends Cordain, a leading expert on the Paleolithic, or Stone Age diet. “After digestion, all foods report to the kidneys as being either acidic or alkaline,” he says. “The kidneys are responsible for fluid balance and maintaining a relatively neutral pH in the body.”

That’s where things get interesting. When acid-yielding foods lower the body’s pH, the kidneys coordinate efforts to buffer that acidity. Bones release calcium and magnesium to reestablish alkalinity, and muscles are broken down to produce ammonia, which is strongly alkaline. By the time the response is all over, your bone minerals and broken down muscle get excreted in urine.

Long term, excess acidity leads to thinner bones and lower muscle mass, points out Anthony Sebastian, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco. These problems are compounded by normal aging, which increases acidosis, bone loss, and muscle wasting. Along the way, calcium and magnesium losses can equate to deficiencies, with many ramifications. Both minerals play essential roles in bone formation and normal heart rhythm. Low magnesium levels can cause muscle cramps, arrhythmias, and anxiety.

The four cases of dietary acidosis

Sebastian, regarded at the top researcher in the field of diet-related acidosis, admits that some of the science, at first glance, appears counter-intuitive. For example, acidic and alkaline foods don’t usually translate into acid- and alkaline-yielding foods. The distinction is subtle but significant. An acid-yielding food is one that creates a lower, or more acidic, pH. Citrus fruits and tomatoes are acidic, but they have a net alkaline yield once their constituents get to the kidneys.

So if acid foods don’t necessarily make for an acid pH, what then happens? Sebastian points to four big issues.

1. Fruits and vegetables are rich in potassium salts, a natural buffer. Eating few of these foods deprives us of potassium, a mineral that protects against hypertension and stroke. According to Cordain’s research, humans evolved eating a 10:1 ratio of potassium to sodium, and he regards this ratio as our biological baseline. Today, because of heavily salted processed and fast foods, combined with a low intake of fruits and vegetables, the ratio is now 3:1 in favor of sodium. That reversal, he says, wreaks havoc with pH and our dependency on potassium.
2. There has also been a similar reversal in the consumption of naturally occurring bicarbonate (such as potassium bicarbonate) in foods and added chloride (mostly in the form of sodium chloride, or table salt). Bicarbonate is alkaline, where as chloride is acid-yielding. Chloride also constricts blood vessels, and narrows blood vessels reduce circulation, Sebastian says. Because the whole body depends on healthy circulation, vasoconstriction contributes to heart disease, stroke, dementia, and probably every other degenerative disease.
3. Eating large amounts of animal protein (including meat, fowl, and seafood) releases sulfuric acid though the metabolism of sulfur-containing amino acids, also contributing to greater acidity. This acidic shift can be offset with greater consumption of fruits and vegetables (rich in potassium bicarbonate), but again, most Americans eat these foods sparingly.
4. Grains, such as wheat, rye, and corn, have a net acid-yielding effect, regardless of whether they are in the form of white bread, breakfast cereal, pasta or whole grains. “Grains are the most frequently consumed plant food in the United States,” says Sebastian, and account for 65 percent of the plant foods eaten by Americans. “In addition to their acid yield, grains displace more nutritious fruits and vegetables,” he adds.

“The real problem is one of alkaline deficiency, more than one of too much acid,” says Sebastian. People eat plenty of acid-yielding animal protein, dairy products, and grains. The missing piece is an appreciate amount of fruits and vegetables, to produce an alkaline yield. Study after study has shown that most Americans — 68 to 91 percent — don’t eat the five recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables.

pH, acidosis and osteoporosis

The strongest evidence in support of maintaining an acid-alkaline balance relates to osteoporosis. “Consider that Americans consume more calcium-rich dairy foods than almost every other nation, and we have one of the highest rates of osteoporosis,” says Cordain. “There’s a disconnect here. Dairy may be rich in calcium, but most dairy foods also produce an acid yield.”

Susan Brown, Ph.D., who heads the nonprofit Osteoporosis Education Project in East Syracuse, N.Y., frames the acid-alkaline issue as one of mineral adequacy and depletion. “It’s a little like over-farming and depleting mineral levels in soil,” she says. “If we eat foods that create an acidic pH in the body, we will deplete our bones of minerals and our muscles of protein.

Brown described a client named Janet whose doctor diagnosed her at age 52 with osteopenia, a demineralizing of bone that often foreshadows osteoporosis. At 55, Janet began following Brown’s recommendations for eating more fruits and vegetables, taking supplements, and exercising. Three years later, Janet was clearly building bone mass in her spine and hip, even while going through menopause.

Meanwhile, Sebastian acknowledges that he may have only scratched the surface when it comes to the health problems related to mild life-long acidosis. He says low-grade acidosis increases insulin resistance, the hallmark of both prediabetes and full-blown type-2 diabetes. It increases the risk of kidney stones and kidney failure. And one study suggests that it might even alter gene activity and raise the risk of breast cancer. He admits that no one yet knows all the consequences of a fundamental shift in the body’s acid-alkaline balance, but he suspects it’s far reaching.

pH & our risk of cancer

Nobel Prize winner Dr. Otto Warburg discovered that cancer cells only thrive in a low-oxygen state. When your body cells and tissue are ACIDIC (below pH of 6.5 – 7.0), they lose their ability to exchange oxygen, and cancer cells are able to thrive.

On the other hand, when your body cells and tissue are ALKALINE (above pH of 7.0) cancer cells find it difficult to survive because of the high amount of oxygen present. Alkaline tissue holds 20 times more oxygen than does acidic tissue and this oxygen rich environment prevents further cancer cell growth. In a pH of 8.0 or greater, cancer cells and cancer-causing pathogenic microbes (viruses, bacteria, fungus) cannot survive.

Maintaining proper body cell and tissue pH is critical for staying healthy and creating an inhospitable environment for cancer cells and virus-bacteria-fungus to multiply. Most people are born into this world with a pH near or at (neutral pH). If you can keep your body tissue pH somewhere between 6.5 – 7.0 it is very difficult to get sick. A near neutral pH (bright blue range) is the goal.

How did my body become acidic?

Nearly all those with cancer have high acidity. There are two main reasons for a high acidic body environment.

The first and most significant is prolonged stress. This causes a depletion of adrenaline in the body’s cells. It is the job of adrenaline to remove / utilize glucose (sugar) from the body’s cells for energy for the body. Depleted adrenaline results in a build up of glucose (sugar) in the body’s cells, and restricts oxygen to cells, causing a break in the krebs cycle of the cell and cell mutation. Pathogenic (harmful) microbes (virus, bacteria, fungus) inhabit cancer cells and feed on this glucose causing fermentation. The body becomes acidic (low pH) due to the waste by-products of these pathogenic microbes fermentating glucose in cancer cells and also fermentation of stress hormones.

The second is poor nutrition / diet. Every food has a pH value from very acidic to very alkaline. Raw fruits and vegetables are very alkaline, while poor foods, beer, soda, coffee, etc are very acidic. This is why those who eat certain types of foods are more or less at risk of certain types of cancers.

What should you eat for proper pH levels?

Nutritional recommendations are as varied as political and religious beliefs and, sometimes, held to just as stridently. Cordain tries to rise about the controversies by looking to our biological and genetic heritage.

He points out that people, until relatively recently, were hunter-gatherers whose diets consisted of a combination of lean animal foods (including fish) and uncultivated vegetables and fruits. Based on his analyses of the diets of 229 pre-modern cultures, Cordain has calculated that the “average” ancient diet consisted of 55 percent animal foods and 45 percent plant foods. The animal foods included healthy fats as well as protein, and the plant foods consisted of leaves, stalks, fruit, seeds, tubers, and roots. Grains and cow’s milk didn’t enter the picture until about 7,000 to 10,000 years ago, too short a time for genetic adaptation.

Cordain’s recommendations, found in The Paleo Diet and The Paleo Diet for Athletes include too many veggies to be a knockoff of the Atkins’ high-protein diet. (Eating very lean meats, he adds, reduces saturated fats amount to only 10 percent of calories.) Nor do you have to be a vegetarian to gain the alkalizing benefits of fruits and vegetables. “It takes about 35 percent of total calories as fruits and veggies to produce a net alkaline load,” he explains. “What’s so hard about one-third of your plate being veggies?”

Still, if you have visions of veggies coming out of your ears, the answer is really simple. Cordain, Sebastian, and Brown suggest cutting back on breads, pastas, and other grain-based foods, as well as “high-glycemic” foods such as potatoes. They’re all nutrient-poor foods, compared with protein and veggies.

“It’s all another scientific justification for what your mother always told you,” notes Brown. “Eat your fruits and veggies.”

How to test your own pH

You can discover the pH of these fluids by using pHion pH Stix™. These pH test strips are made specifically to test saliva and urine, and are the most accurate and economical test strips on the market.

pHion pH Stix™ are unlike most pH test strips or pH papers on the market. Due to the narrow range in pH of these bodily fluids (generally 5.8 to 7.6) it is imperative that a pH test strip give a clear indication in small pH unit increments.

pHion pH Stix™ strips give an indication in .25 pH unit increments, and test a range of 4.5 to 9.0. Plus, pH Stix use the double color indicator method, allowing for a more accurate determination of the pH value of what you are testing. Throw away the pH paper, and pick up the pH Stix.

• True results. Super-sensitive pHion pH Stix give you an extremely accurate reading of how acidic or alkaline your tissues really are.
• No guesswork. Because our strips are separated in small 0.25 unit increments, you’ll know down to the decimal what your pH is.
• Economical. pH Stix are more accurate, more versatile, and easier to read than litmus paper, yet they’re surprisingly affordable.
• Versatile. pH Stix can test both urine and saliva to give you the most complete picture of your pH.
• Practitioner preferred. With all those benefits, it’s no wonder so many practitioners recommend the pHion brand!

How to order

• Click HERE to order pHion pH Stix (pH Test Strips).
• Click HERE to order The Alkaline Cook Book.
• Click HERE to order other Alkaline Supplements & Products

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