Acidity Versus Alkalinity

While I originally started to avoid this subject like the plague, I felt the need to at a minimum address it because there are so many widely differing view points on what this actually means, what to do about it and how this really affects your overall health.

I was very happy to find that the Chief Science Officer at Univera LifeSciences, Steven Cherniske, had published a very informative article, "The Acid Alkaline Mystery Solved", on this very subject. For any of you that have read any of Stephen Cherniske's work, you will not be surprised to see that it comes complete with all the references that you could hope for and the straight hard facts on this very confusing subject. As a result of this finding I am not going to attempt to do the subject justice, by trying to recreate an article of equal caliber. Verses re-inventing the wheel I am going to simply hit some of the high points for those of you who would prefer the cliff notes version. For those that would like to read all of the details I will leave that to Stephen and his article, "The Acid Alkaline Mystery Solved".

First of all what is an Acid or for that matter an Alkaline substance? These substances are measured on a pH scale with water being neutral at 7.0. With values less than 7.0 being acid and the lower the pH value the stronger the acid. As you may have guessed alkaline (or base) substances have a value greater than 7.0 up to a maximum of 14. By now you may be wondering where our bodies should fall on this scale. First of all when we speak of an acid/alkaline balance in the body we are talking about the pH balance of our blood and tissues that should remain in a fairly narrow range of about 7.4 - slightly alkaline.

The real heart of the matter here is the byproducts of the digestion of foods that we consume and absorb. The biggest contributors to the fact that ACIDOSIS is at an all time high are the facts that most Americans are consuming beef and/or poultry multiple times per day, Americans are now consuming more soft drinks than water, consumption of coffee (caffeinated & decaffeinated) and lastly the processing of many of our foods have removed all of the alkaline forming minerals. When thinking about the foods that we consume you can not take the natural state of a food as the prime indicator of how that food will interact with our bodies. As an example, most fruits when consumed will result in an alkaline ash residue once digested even though naturally they maybe very high in acid in their natural state, even oranges.

The primary acid forming foods in your diet contain the minerals, sulfur, phosphorus and iron. Typically you will find these minerals in proteins, such as meat, fish, poultry, eggs, grains, most nuts and soft drinks (due to the high phosphate levels).The minerals potassium, calcium, magnesium and sodium form alkaline reactions in the body and are found primarily in fruits and vegetables, and so these foods are classified as alkaline forming foods. As many of you are aware the consumption of alkaline-forming vegetables and fruit is at an all-time low. This has resulted in an increase of acidosis which accelerates catabolic damage and impairs our bodies anabolic repair processes. One of the best examples is the fact that it has been known for a long time that diets high in protein greatly increase the risk of osteoporosis. While there are many theories on this subject it appears that the body is simply taking from one part of the body to help support other systems that have been depleted due to the body staying in such a high state of acidosis.

In an attempt to help us make this shift in our diet Univera LifeSciences has created MetaGreens™. MetaGreens™ is extraordinary mix of land and sea vegetables, all of which are rich in alkaline minerals. I take great comfort in knowing that these greens are pesticide-free, grown on high-nutrient soil that has never been chemically fertilized. Additionally, Univera LifeSciences takes great care to ensure that the vegetables are harvested at the peak of their nutrient value and then these ingredients are processed by low-temperature dehydration to retain all the raw food goodness and manufactured in small batches to maximize freshness.

While the words "stomach acid" have a negative connotations for many of you it is because you have been brain washed over the years by the non-stop advertisements about how excess stomach acid is causing all of your discomforts. While I would be able to spend days address this issue I will pass. For those of you that want to read a very well presented explanation of why our stomach acids are in fact a good thing please read Stephen Cherniske's article. For myself I continue to rely on Univera LifeSciences Aloe Gold product to help keep my digestive track in order and functioning properly. For those of you that have not tried Aloe Gold take a moment to ask anyone that have used the product and I am very certain you will hear fantastic praises about how it has helped them with numerous digestive track disorders.

I hope that you have found this latest entry to be of interest and most of informative. While I have barely scratched the surface here I hope that I have helped to clear up some of the confusion associated with the Acid Alkaline debate. For those of you that are hungry for more on this I can not recommend highly enough that you read Stephen Cherniske's article the Acid Alkaline Mystery Solved.

Reference:

1) AcidAlkalineMysterySolved.pdf

2) Stephen Cherniske, M.S., The Metabolic Plan, The Random House Publishing Company, 2003, ISBN: 0-345-44102-8,

3) Natural Health School