Healthy Living

In order to accomplish the millions of complex functions that occur every day, your body must be able to communicate with itself…even down to the cellular level. How is this done? Through pulses of electricity. That's right, electricity.

The body operates on an electro magnetic current. Believe it or not, all internal organs emit these fields of electrical current. In fact, nerve signals are nothing more than electrical charges.

What creates this electrical power in your body is a very fine balance that exists in your bio chemistry. Of all the systems in your body that depend on this delicate, bio chemical balance, one of the most important is your blood stream. This is where pH comes into play. What exactly is pH?

What is pH And Why Is It Important To All Your Body Functions

PH is a scale that measures the acidity or alkalinity of a substance. The scale ranges from 1 to 14 with 1 being very acid, 7 neutral and 14 very alkaline. Water is considered neutral, with a pH of 7.0.

So what does pH have to do with you and your blood? Well, the pH of the blood is extremely important. The ideal pH level for the blood is right around 7.35, and the body goes to enormous lengths to maintain this level. If your blood pH were to vary 1 or 2 points in either direction, it would change the electrical chemistry of your body. There would be no electrical power, and in short order you would drop dead. As you can see, maintaining the right pH level in your blood is pretty important!!

With this in mind, a good way to avoid upsetting this delicate bio chemical balance is to look at those things that can compromise the ideal pH level. What is the main culprit? The answer is the creation of acid in your body.

The Effect of Acidity on the Body

Before we look at what causes acid, here's a graphic example to illustrate what can happen in the blood when your pH drops below ideal levels. Red blood cells transport oxygen to all the cells in the body. As red blood cells move into the capillaries, the space available for them to move in gets pretty small. In fact, the diameter of some capillaries is so small, red blood cells sometimes have to pass through one at a time! Because it's important for red blood cells to flow easily and quickly through your body, they have a mechanism allowing them to remain separate from each other. This mechanism comes is a negative charge on their exterior. The charge prevents them from joining together.

Unfortunately, acid interferes with this important mechanism in a pretty frightening way. Acid actually strips away the negative charge from red blood cells. The result is a tendency for red blood cells to clump together and not flow as easily. This makes it much more difficult for them to flow through the bloodstream, but it also makes it harder for them to move freely through those small capillaries. The overall result is less oxygen reaches the cells. Acid also weakens the red blood cells and they begin to die. With their death, the red blood cells ironically release more acid.

The bottom line is that aside from stomach acid that aids digestion, acid in your body is bad, really bad. Now, in regard to energy level, increased acidity plays a role as well. Over time as a system becomes more and more acidic, the biochemical balance is disrupted and red blood cells can't deliver oxygen and nutrients as efficiently to the cells. Without sufficient oxygen and nutrients, the energy level drops dramatically.

What Causes Acidity In The Body

The primary cause of acidity in the body is what it is fed. Determining if a food will cause acidity is not related to how "acid" it may seem when you eat or drink it. It has to do with what is left over when you digest it.

Specifically, of concern is whether consuming something leaves behind an acid or alkaline "ash". For example, I don't know about you but I love seafood. Scallops are one of my favorites. However, when your body digests scallops, it leaves an extremely acid ash. In fact, scallops are one of the most acid foods you can eat.

Unfortunately, a lot of the things most people put in their mouths create an acid ash. These include alcohol, coffee and a lot of dietary flesh protein. Interestingly enough, stress also tends to create an acid condition in the body.

Steps To Immediately Improve Your pH

Fortunately, it is pretty easy to change your pH for the better, and make it more alkaline. The first step is to understand which foods you eat and drink are acid, and which are alkaline. From there, it's simply a matter of eliminating some of the more acid foods, and adding more alkaline foods in their place.

Before you start, it's important to get a baseline reading of your body's pH. In this way it is possible to accurately measure if you are improving, or if you need to eliminate more acidic foods from your diet.

You can get a baseline measurement by regularly testing the pH of your saliva. This is really simple to do, and involves putting a piece of pH paper in your mouth for a short time. The ideal pH of your body is 7.4 or 7.5. Your body is acidic if below 7.0, and alkaline if above 7.8. The more alkaline you are, the more oxygen your body has and the healthier you are.

Creating a pH balanced diet is not very difficult. Christopher Vasey has created a helpful reference, "The Acid-Alkaline Diet for Optimum Health" which provides some solid information for identifying the foods your body needs most. In addition to decreasing consumption of acidic foods and increasing alkaline food intake, one of the best ways to immediately begin changing your pH is with "green drinks ". These are simple to prepare; add a powder that is made up of a whole host of vegetables that are highly alkaline to a glass of water.

Start taking the steps described above and you may very well find your energy levels increasing over time. Mine certainly have.