Acid and Alkaline

A list of Acid / Alkaline Forming Foods

Your body pH affects everything...

Balancing the pH is a major step toward well-being and greater health.

The pH scale is from   0 - 14 0 1 2  3  4  5  6  7 healthy  8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Human blood pH should be slightly alkaline ( 7.35 - 7.45 ).  Below or above this range means symptoms and disease.  A pH of 7.0 is neutral.  A pH below 7.0 is acidic.  A pH above 7.0 is alkaline.

An acidic body is a sickness magnet.  What you eat and drink will impact where your body's pH level falls.  Balance is key!!

Factors like diet and stress cause many people in the western world to have bodies that are too acidic and over burdened with toxins.  This can then cause health problems from minor and major skin irritations to depression, chronic fatigue, back pain, arthritis, osteoporosis to name but a few.

This high concentration of acidity in tissues and the blood are rarely noticed by medical tests.  Quite often you hear people saying that they feel awful but all their tests show up fine.

The No 1 cause of excess acidity is waste products left behind by incomplete digestion.  We need hydrochloric acid to digest our food.  The more difficult a food is to digest, the more acid is required to digest it.

In general difficult-to-digest means acid-forming, and easy-to-digest means alkaline.

• Health is easier to achieve and maintain if one consumes four times as much alkaline food as acidic food. When such an ideal ratio is maintained, the body usually has a balanced body chemistry and strong resistance against disease.
• If our body's pH is not balanced, you cannot effectively assimilate vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. Your body will leach calcium and alkaline from your bones to try to retain the pH balance.  

A healthy blood pH is 7.4 which is slightly alkaline.

SIMPLE SOLUTION: Find out what to eat (and what to avoid) to improve your health! 

Aim to put on your plate, 60 - 80% alkaline and 20-30% acid.

The acidic quality of a food can't be determined by its taste. For example, meat and grains don't taste acidic, but they are. Lemons taste very acidic. After digestion and assimilation, however, lemons produce alkali in the body and, therefore, are alkaline.

pH Tests

Although not as accurate as a blood pH test, you can test your saliva and urine pH balance at home. The first thing in the morning, before eating lunch and just before bed, spit or urinate on a 1-inch pH strip (litmus paper). The paper will turn anywhere from yellow to green to dark bluish black. The optimal pH for saliva is green (6.4 to 6.8). The ideal range for urine pH is 6.0 to 7.0.

Acid is produced in the body whenever you have emotional stress, toxic overload or illness.

To help you get started in improving your health, take a look at list of alkaline and acidic foods.