Comments Off
The diet of our ancestors is completely different from what we are so accustomed to these days. With technology advancements , the types of foods we eat are dragged along. A trip to the grocery store will shock you with the abundance of animal products and processed food items. Finding fast food is easy since you can find it at practically every corner.
Even fad diets are partly to blame, for sugesting a new eating habit, such as high-protein diets. In the recent years, consumption of animal products and refined food items has increased, as more and more people leave out the daily supply of fruits and vegetables in their diet.
It comes as no surprise why, these days, many are suffering from different types of allergies, bone diseases, heart problems and many others. Some health experts link these diseases to the type of foods we consume. There are certain types of food that disrupts a certain balance in our body, resulting in health problems. If only we could modify our eating habits, it’s not unlikely that prevention of diseases and restoration of health is achieved.
The Alkaline Diet Benefits
Our bodies need to maintain a healthy and steady alkaline to acid ratio, which you can measure with the pH level of your body. The pH scale ranges from 0 to 14, acidic is anything lower than 7. Processed food items, sweets, meat products, and some beverages generally produce excessive amounts of acidity in the body.
One thing that several different diseases have in common is acidosis, abnormally high acidity level in the blood and other tissues of the body. And many health experts believe that acidosis is responsible for a lot of fatal diseases that many people are afflicted with these days.
Alkaline, on the other hand, naturally occurs in the body to neutralize excess acidity in the body, which is its main role. However, alkaline also becomes depleted at times especially when there’s too much acid it needs to get rid of, and we do not consume foods that replenish our body’s alkalinity.
Maintaining a Healthy pH Level
As mentioned earlier, acidosis do lead to many health related problems. Dangerous levels of acid get to circulate in our body and break into organs and tissues when not properly neutralized. To prevent this, one should work on maintaining a healthy pH balance in the body. And to offset the excessive amounts of acid is to increase your body’s alkalinity.
Determining whether or not your pH levels are prevalently alkaline may be done with easy-to-use pH level strips which you can purchase in drug stores or medical supplies stores. There are pH level strips meant for testing using your saliva, and there are those for using your urine.
Basically, a saliva pH level strip will show how much acid your body is producing; normally it’s between 6.5 and 7.5 throughout the day. While a urine pH level strip will tell how well you excrete excess amounts of acid; you should get between 6.0 and 6.5 in the morning and between 6.5 and 7.0 at night.
The Dangers of Excessive Acid
If you have high acid levels in your body, you may experience exhaustion, headaches and having frequent colds and flu. But the ill effects of acidosis in the body does not stop there; you might be shocked at the wide-ranging types of diseases you could get with dangerous levels of acid in your body.
Depression, hyperacidity, ulcer, skin dryness, acne and obesity are some of those linked to excessive acid levels in the body. Then there are those that are more serious such as joint diseases, osteoporosis, bronchitis, frequent infections and heart diseases.
Even if you begin to take medications for these illnesses, the symptoms may be masked, but they will still continue to affect your health as you are not attacking them from their roots. Your body will only become more acidic no matter what medications you take because of these any medications or pills.
Alkaline Diet Approach
To get to the roots of these health problems, the body’s pH level must be balanced. There are alkaline foods that can help replenish the depleted alkaline levels in the body while neutralizing excess amounts of acid. Through an alkaline diet, sufficient amounts of alkaline are re-introduced into the body, thus bringing back the pH level to predominantly alkaline.
So how do you incorporate an alkaline diet into your eating habits? First, you can start by cutting down your intake of processed foods. These type of foods contain chemicals that only increase the acidity of your body once they are digested. Second, steer clear of meat and meat products, dairies and alcohol. Third, load up on fresh fruits and vegetables, since they naturally are high in alkalinity.
Even acidic fruits like lemons and oranges become alkaline after they have been digested and absorbed by your body. Generally, about 70% of your daily food consumption should consist of alkalizing foods. The more we provide our bodies with alkaline foods, the more efficient the neutralization of excess acids will be.
Learn how you can get started with an Alkaline Diet
