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Choosing wholefoods according to whether they are acid forming or alkali forming (alkalising) can have a major influence on staying healthy.

• The entire metabolic process depends on a balanced, alkaline internal environment.
• A diet high in acid-forming foods like meat, dairy, grains, high-sugar fruits and bread, plus stress, causes acid wastes to build up in the body.
• A more alkalising food selection is therefore essential for maintaining a healthy pH balance.
• Most fruits and vegetables, as well as sea vegetables like dulse and nori are alkalising as they are high in buffering minerals.
• Vegetarian foods like miso, umeboshi plums, shiitake mushrooms and watercress are also alkalising.

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Wholefood wisdom

Sandra Dubs

23 December 2009. Posted by WellBeing Natural Health & Living News

The Greek physician Hippocrates (460-357 BC) recognised that food can potentially heal the body, advocating: “Food should be our medicine and medicine should be our food.” In most traditional medicine systems food plays an integral part and common foods are often used for medicinal purposes.

“Nothing can harm you as much as food, yet nothing can heal you more effectively than food. Eating is so primal an act that it is typically overlooked as a healing and transforming tool,” says nutritionist Lino Stanchich in Power Eating Program: You Are How You Eat.

When we experience health-related issues we may explore any number of therapeutic approaches such as addressing personal relationship problems, changing careers, travelling, physical exercise, counselling and meditation. Eventually, we may come to address our eating habits, which is really the simplest way to effect change.

We all have different eating habits, lifestyles, medical histories and attitudes to food. No single eating plan can serve everyone’s needs, so you need to work out what suits you best. Choosing wholefoods according to whether they are acid forming or alkali forming (alkalising) can have a major influence on healing and maintaining health.

Nutritionist Sybil E. Wander says achieving a healthy acid/alkali balance in the body begins with an understanding that “as long as we are acid our body is in a state of degeneration (catabolic). What we strive for is to build up and regenerate (anabolic), at the same time reducing as many stressors as possible.”1

The body’s pH — what does it mean?

All organic matter on the planet has a pH level, including the human body. pH (potential hydrogen) is a measure of the amount of negative, alkali-forming hydroxyl ions (OH-) as opposed to positive, acid-forming hydrogen ions (H+). In terms of energy, pH is a measure of electrical resistance between positive and negative ions in the body. A pH less than 7 is considered acidic, while a pH greater than 7 is alkaline.

Maintaining the correct pH level in the body is vital. Body fluids, including blood, should be alkaline, with a pH between 4.5 and 7.5. The pH of our blood must remain between 7.35 and 7.45. In the blood, a more acidic pH slows the heartbeat, whereas a more alkaline pH speeds it up.

A matter of balance

The pH level of our internal fluids affects every cell in the body. Extended acid imbalances of any kind are not well tolerated. Indeed, the entire metabolic process depends on a balanced, alkaline internal environment.

Every cell burns fuel to create energy. When this fuel has been burned there is some waste left over. This waste is acidic and is released into the blood for elimination via the lungs (as carbon dioxide) and the kidneys (as urine). In this way, the body regulates its acid level so it doesn’t become dangerously concentrated.

Herman Aihara, a leading educator in Western and Eastern health science, wrote the following in his book Acid & Alkaline (1980): “The condition and constitution of body fluid, especially blood, is the most important factor in our life: that is to say, for our health. In man, organs such as the kidneys, liver, and especially the large intestine throw out waste and toxins and maintain our internal environment in as ideal a condition as possible. However, there is limitation for this. If we eat too much poison-producing foods, or not enough materials which are needed to clear out the poisons, then our internal environment becomes beyond control and away from the correct condition in which our cells can live. The cells become sick and die. Many sicknesses are a function of the body’s attempt to clean up this internal environment. Cancer is a condition in which body cells become abnormal due to the abnormal condition of body fluids.”

According to microbiologist and nutritionist Robert O. Young, a chronically over-acidic pH corrodes body tissue, slowly eating into the 60,000 miles of veins and arteries like acid eating into marble. If left unchecked, it will interrupt all cellular activities and functions, from the beating of your heart to the neural firing of your brain. He suggests the over-acidification of the body is the single underlying cause of all disease.2

There are many factors that create an unhealthy pH level in the body, including stress, certain medications, metabolic and muscular functions and the foods and liquids we consume.

In addition, the effect of exercise can be either alkalising or acid producing. Theodore A. Baroody says in his book Alkalize or Die, “Exercising with good aerobic activity to just before the point of exhaustion creates an alkaline response because of the increased oxygenation. If we exercise past that point, the body releases excess stored acidity.”

He also suggests that physiological and emotional traumas are acid forming and that the more imbalanced the body becomes — physically, mentally and emotionally — the more susceptible we are to viruses, fungi and bacteria.