How to make your insides pHabulously clean, lean and healthy

Are you acid or alkaline? Have you ever considered that you might be able to influence the pH balance of your body?  What’s more, did you know your body actually has a pH balance?  And what the heck is a pH balance anyways?!

PH is how acid or alkaline our bodies are. So, the baddy is acid, the good guy is alkaline (within reason).  p stands for potential and H stands for hydrogen.  Yep, I know, clear as mud innit?!

pH refers to the amount of acid or alkaline contained within our bodies. For optimal growth we need a blood pH value of 7.365.  The pH scale is measured from 0 to 14. 0 is super acidic and 14 super alkaline.  Neutral measures 7.0.

Why acid or alkaline?

So why am I telling you all this? Because our bodies love a blood pH value that is ever so slightly alkaline: 7.365, but the foods we tend to crave (donuts, cakes, biscuits, tea, coffee, booze etc) give us an acid tendency which puts our bodies into stress.  When we’re in stress, we release cortisol (stress hormone) and our bodies hang on to fat in a bid to protect us from the acidic invaders.  So, we create blubber.  If sumo-wrestling is your thang, you may as well stop reading this now!

When you’re tending towards an acidic environment, you might suffer more break-outs, psoriasis, acne, yeast infections, migraines, arthritis and other inflammatory disorders, bad circulation, tiredness, irritability, digestive problems such as IBS, a compromised immune system and even cancer.

It’s much easier for our bodies to err too acidic due to our natural internal processes, but when we also eat acidic, we can easily overburden our BODs leading to some of the nasties I mentioned above.

What to do if you want optimal health

Acid or alkaline, that is the question.  If like most of us, you want optimal health so you shine vibrantly and have boundless energy as you skip through the meadows on a balmy summer’s day with Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” wafting across the acres, you need to be eating and drinking foods that keep you lean and slightly alkaline.  By adding more plant foods to your diet, reducing dairy, processed snacks, refined carbs and meat protein gives your body the alkaline advantage and you’ll leave your acidic pals creaking, groaning and puffing their way through the mud.

Our bodies need power minerals to function optimally.  As we can’t create them ourselves, we need to get them from our food.  Foods rich in calcium, magnesium and potassium create alkalinity in our BODs.  So, make sure you try and avoid foods rich in phosphorous and sulphur.

What happens when we miss out on healthy minerals

It’s worth remembering that when our bodies are lacking the good minerals, it will start to leach those minerals from our bones, teeth and tissues – not good if you want to avoid osteoporosis, tooth rot and an imbalanced hormonal system. Contrary to popular belief, drinking cows milk creates acid in our bodies. The milk board has been very good at encouraging us to believe that drinking milk will keep our bones and teeth strong, but too much of it is a bad thing.  Casein, the protein found in cow’s milk has been linked to numerous cancer diagnoses.  Furthermore, cow’s milk makes our insides more acidic. As a matter of fact, anything that comes from an animal tends us towards an acidic environment. You’re far better to get your calcium from fresh and leafy greens.  If you want to learn more about the negative effects of animal protein in our diet, I urge you to read The China Study by T. Colin Campbell. It will likely change how you eat and could very well prolong your life. What’s more it will tell you all you need to know about hosting an acid or alkaline body.

How a plant-based diet can save our lives

As you may have guessed, we need to eat raw, unprocessed, whole foods to keep us healthy.  Foods like fresh and ideally raw vegetables (try and eat from a spectrum of colours to get the most benefit from the foods), wheatgrass, seaweeds, nuts, seeds, fresh juices all heal our bodies with chlorophyll, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, phytonutrients, fibre and oxygen. The more oxygen in our cells, the greater their chance of fighting off cancer.

Check out Dr Otto Warburg who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 for his studies on the metabolism of cancer cells.  He suggested that cancer cells are anaerobic and thrive in an oxygen-poor environment and they cannot live in an oxygen-rich environment.  So, make sure you drink your daily wheatgrass and kick every day off with citrus water to set you up for your good health habits.

Which foods are alkaline?

Here’s the rundown on some of the top alkaline-inducing contenders to line your shelves, fruit basket and fridge:

• Good quality water (crazy that I even need to write good quality, but unfortunately, such is life as we know it).
• Raw nuts and seeds: almonds, brazils, walnuts, hemp seeds, chia seeds.
• Avocados.
• Wheatgrass, alfalfa grass, barley grass. Out of the 102 minerals found in soil, wheatgrass has all 102!
• Green drinks.
• Green veggies: especially leafy greens such as kale, chard, spinach, watercress, cabbage, endive, cucumber, broccoli celery.
• Lemons, limes and grapefruits.  Although outside the body these fruits are acidic, inside they have an alkalizing effect which is why I start every day with the juice of a freshly squeezed lemon inside a pint of warm water.
• Lentils, chickpeas, adzuki bean, mung beans etc.  Generally, all legumes have an alkalizing effect on the body.  Sprouted legumes have even more nutritional punch – 30x more powerful than their non-sprouted cousins.  (Rinse your bean of choice, drain and add to a glass bowl. Cover with cling film and leave in warm, light spot for a couple of days and see what happens!)
• Raw tomatoes – cooked tomatoes are acidic.
• Root vegetables: sweet potato, carrots, beetroot, potatoes, onions.
• Seaweed: samphire, kobu, nori, dulse, arame.
• Algae: spirulina, klamath, chlorella. These can add a power-punch to your green smoothies too. I add chlorella and spirulina to my daily nutri shake for extra turbo supergirl powers.

Do you need to make a few changes?

So, I hope I’ve inspired you to be more aware about adding alkaline foods to your diet and restricting the baddy acidic ones.  When your BOD slips into the acidic range you put yourself at risk of all kinds of nasties.  It’s also worth remembering that fresh, alkalizing foods also keep your skin looking radiant because they help you fight free radicals by boosting your enzymes and oxygenating your radiant shrine.

The choice is yours! Now you’ve read this, will you make different choices about what you ingest or do you already prioritize your inner glow?

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