An essential component to living a healthy lifestyle is maintaining your body’s pH balance. pH is a measure of acid and alkalinity in your bodily fluids and it affects every cell in your body. It is measured at a range of zero to fourteen – zero being the very most acid and fourteen being completely alkaline. So, because 7 is right in the middle, 7 is neutral. 

And isn’t it interesting that your blood, which is your life-giving force, is 7.365, which is slightly alkaline? 

You want your whole system to be slightly alkaline because your body functions better when it’s in that state. 

Your goal is to stay a little above 7 on the pH scale. You don’t want to be acidic because dis-“ease” loves an acidic environment.  That’s where disease proliferates.  And conversely, disease cannot exist in a more alkaline environment.  Granted, various organs in the body have their own unique pH to function optimally.  

For example: for digestion, the stomach is highly acidic. It has to maintain a pH of around 2 to digest your food.  Then as your food moves on to your intestines, the pH is 7.4  Despite this difference, maintaining a positive acid/alkaline balance in your body is one of the most important factors in health.  

When acidic food is consumed, it produces toxins that the body must process.  This begins with digestion and happens all the way to elimination. Today’s highly refined and processed foods lack usable nutrients and thus have the greatest negative impact on pH in the body.  

To help your body fend off disease, your first objective is to “alkalize”.  Click here to see the product I like to use to help supplement this process.  You can read more about it in my blog on Green Qi.

The challenge is that a whole lot of things that we subject ourselves to create a very acid environment in the body. 

For example, the foods that we eat. Meat, dairy products, sugar, carbohydrates and processed foods are all highly acidic in our systems. Let me tell you about some of the health challenges that are created by a system that’s too acidic.  

First of all, acid weakens or destroys the negative charge that protects your red blood cells. When this happens, the red blood cells tend to mutate, and you can see it in a live blood cell analysis. They’re no longer round, healthy, plump, self-contained cells. 

They’re sludgy and deformed and they glom together.

Acid is also a cause of pain and stiffness because it’s the result of a lack of oxygen. 

Acid fills up in the joints and creates pain. Acid goes to the weakest part of the body. If you’re trying to lose weight, and you’re not making your system more alkaline, you really are swimming upstream. The body, in its wisdom and protective ways, will sequester the acid in our systems away to the fatty areas of the body in order to move it away from the vital organs. 

This is a big problem for people that are trying to lose weight. Even if they diet and exercise, if their systems are running too acidic, the body is going to hang on to the fat to protect itself.

Acid also causes water retention. 

There has to be a lot of water retention to offset the acid. Even if it’s not physically noticeable, it’s occurring. The thing is that, because our bodies have such a strong will to survive, there’s a hierarchy in performance. 

The body will simply rob from other systems, if necessary, to support the systems that are the most vital. An important thing that the body strives to do is neutralize acidity and maintain a more alkaline environment by calling up its own calcium reserves. 

Calcium and magnesium are very alkalizing minerals. 

The body regulates blood to always remain neutral as this is required for us to live. However, if we are always consuming acid forming foods or we encounter stress from other sources, our body must take measures to maintain a neutral blood pH. So, if the body becomes very acid, it will literally deplete your calcium stores from your bones and muscles to offset the acidity. 

Weakened muscles and osteoporosis are two more results of a system that’s too acid. Acid has also been linked to headaches. Many headaches are a result of acid being released and put back into the bloodstream. Last but not least, acid is a major contributor to heart disease. 

Another thing that being too acidic does to your system is it eats at your muscles and it makes them flabby – not something you want. 

When we have a more acidic environment in our body, we are also prone to fatigue. Acidity is a stressor, causing cortisol levels to rise.  This results in our sleep quality diminishing, which starts the cycle over again.

There are countless ways in which acid is damaging to the body. 

Your health demands a means to maintain your body’s alkalinity. If you do so, you are going to see a whole range of improvements to your general health. 

To prove that you’ve created a healthy alkaline environment, you can test with pH balance strips. Get a pack of quality pH test strips from your health food store and follow the instructions for testing. Do this before altering your daily regimen and I would bet that your initial results will come up acidic. Keep on testing after making lifestyle changes and watch the difference. 

I’m sure you’ll be delighted and amazed.