Acid / Alkaline

High acidity can become a dangerous condition that weakens all major body systems. It makes your internal environment conducive to disease. A pH-balanced environment, on the other hand, allows proper metabolic functioning and gives your body resistance to disease. A healthy body maintains alkaline reserves that are used to meet emergency demands.

pH measures the balance between positively and negatively charged ions in the body fluids, i.e. blood, urine and saliva. A low pH number (below 7) indicates that your body fluid is on the acidic side. A high pH number (above 7) indicates you have alkalinity. A pH of 7.0 is considered neutral; this is the pH of distilled water. This delicate balance can be an important indicator of overall health.

Researchers find that most people are at least slightly “acidic”; their pH is low. If your pH is too acidic, your body borrows minerals – such as calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium - from vital organs and bones to neutralize and remove the acid. Although high acidity may not be outwardly noticeable, it can severely affect overall health in a negative way. Alkalinity in the body is much more rare, but just as potentially serious. It often takes longer for a person who is “alkaline” to achieve balance than one who is “acidic.”

The concept of acid alkaline imbalance as the cause of disease is not new. In 1933 a New York doctor named William Howard Hay published a ground-breaking book, “A New Health Era” in which he maintains that all disease is cause by autointoxication (or “self-poisoning”) due to acid accumulation in the body:

“Now we depart from health in just the proportion to which we have allowed our alkalies to be dissipated by introduction of acid-forming food in too great amount… It may seem strange to say that all disease is the same thing, no matter what its myriad modes of expression, but it is verily so.” William Howard Hay, M.D.

More recently, in his remarkable book Alkalize or Die (see recommended reading), Dr. Theodore A. Baroody says essentially the same thing: “The countless names of illnesses do not really matter. What does matter is that they all come from the same root cause…too much tissue acid waste in the body!” Theodore A. Baroody, N.D., D.C., Ph.D.

Understanding pH

pH (potential of hydrogen) is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of a solution. It is measured on a scale of 0 to 14 — the lower the pH the more acidic the solution, the higher the pH the more alkaline (or base) the solution. When a solution is neither acid nor alkaline it has a pH of 7, which is neutral.

Water is the most abundant compound in the human body, comprising 70% of the body. The body has an acid-alkaline (or acid-base) ratio called the pH, which is a balance between positively charged ions (acid-forming) and negatively charged ions (alkaline-forming.) The body continually strives to balance pH. When this balance is compromised many problems can occur.

It is important to understand that we are not talking about stomach acid or the pH of the stomach. We are talking about the pH of the body’s fluids and tissues, which is an entirely different matter.

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