The term “pH” stands for “the potential of hydrogen,” which is the measure of the hydrogen ion in solution affecting the acidity vs. the alkalinity of the body’s tissues and fluids. The pH is measured on a scale from 0 to 14 with 7 being considered neutral. Anything below 7 is considered acidic and anything above 7 is considered alkaline.
The pH of the blood should be around 7.365, a little more on the alkaline side. A shift in the pH of the blood from even a tenth of a percent can be life threatening. It should be anywhere from 7.35 to 7.45.
Most of us are already aware of things which could affect our acid/base balance. Alcohol, drug use, antibiotics, processed foods, and stress all contribute to acidity in the body.
And many of us are now familiar with diets which promote alkalinity. There are slight variations in these diets, but the overall aim is to reduce the acid-producing foods such as foods high in sodium and low in the alkalinizing minerals of magnesium and potassium. Alkaline diets recommend avoiding foods such as refined vegetable and seed oils, refined sugars, processed foods and water with an acid pH and instead recommend a shift towards fruits, vegetables, whole grains, good quality olive oil, ghee, milk and alkaline spring water taken directly from the earth with a pH of 7 or above.
Again, if you have been keeping up with the nutritional news, none of this is new information for you. But I would like to take this discussion one step further where we also consider what happens to the food once we take it in.
For example, once we swallow the food it goes into our stomach, where the pH is 2 due to the high levels of hydrochloric acid found in there. The stomach churns the food into a liquid acid and when it is done, it squirts its contents next into the duodenum. At which point a signal is immediately sent to the gall bladder to release the bile. Why is this step extremely important? Because the bile, with its pH of 8.2 alkalinizes the acids as they come pouring into the duodenum, the first part of the small intestine.
This is a key transition because from this point on the digestive juices are then made alkaline, and these alkaline digestive juices are then absorbed from the small intestines directly into the bloodstream. So think of this: the alkaline pH of the digestive juices next creates the alkaline blood.
So what this means then, is that if the bile doesn’t flow, the digestive juices remain acid and then the blood becomes more acidic. To me this has always been such a critical issue in our body’s capability of maintaining its pH balance, and yet I never read or hear anyone talking about it. Listen to the video I made on the gall bladder where you can learn all the reasons why the bile might not flow, and if you want even more information you can read the chapter I wrote on the gall bladder in my book “Healing the Thyroid With Ayurveda.” It turns out that when the thyroid becomes weak the gall bladder automatically becomes weak due to the acupuncture meridian connections they share. And the real truth is that everyone of us will have lack of bile flow due to bile sludge formation and many other problems with the gall bladder dozens and dozens of times during our lifetime, which is why this is such a critical issue to learn about. And this is also why nature has given us so many herbs which promote the flow of bile out of the gall bladder.
The second thing we need to consider is that in this day and age, with the huge onslaught of chemicals which come into the body through pharmaceuticals, air pollution, pesticides, skin care products, environmental toxins and nutraceuticals, our liver is overwhelmed with very hot toxins streaming into it on a daily basis. And in the same way that the whole earth is warming up (for example the pH of the ocean has dropped from 8.2 to 8.1 due to the CO2 emissions), our liver is heating up from the continual flow of acid toxins circulating through it as well.
Normally, the liver, considered the seat of digestion in Ayurveda, is supposed to process all the food you eat in an intelligent way. But when it overheats it automatically oxidizes the food, which means it turns it into an acid poison which we call ama visha in Ayurveda. The word visha means poison, and now our digestive juices are acidic due to the effects of the angry hot liver. And again, these acidic digestive juices absorb next into the blood stream, setting the stage for both autoimmune diseases and cancer, where the inside of the cells are too acidic. This is yet one more reason to maintain alkalinity.
Here’s another thing we also need to add to this discussion: In Ayurveda, we understand that if the digestion is impaired in any way (say from taking antibiotics, birth control pills, acid reflux medicines, steroids or vaccines) and/or the food is too heavy (such as in eating red meats, hard aged cheeses, cold dairy products, nut butters such as peanut butter and almond butter, to name a few), then the food isn’t processed correctly in the gut and instead of breaking down into very fine particles it can form a residue called ama. Ama is partially digested food that has been too difficult to digest and is now left behind in the gut, clogging this channel. And over time the ama can rot and ferment and turn into ama visha, the highly acidic toxin I just mentioned, which also gets absorbed into the bloodstream.
So the point here is to yes, maintain an alkaline diet the best you can, but at the same time take good care of your digestion, at the level of the gut microbiome, the liver and the gall bladder. By doing so you can further help to keep your pH alkaline which promotes a long, healthy productive life.
And one final thing: the electromagnetic radiation we are surrounded with can also influence our pH due to the fact that it contains a high amount of agni or heat. Normally the prana or life energy coming into the body contains a balanced amount of agni, or warming radiation from the sun, soma, or cooling radiation from the moon, and marut, the space element which circulates the soma and agni around the body. But too much exposure to computers, cell phones, radiation towers, WIFI, smart meters and other forms of radiation can create excess heat in our physiologies due to the fact that the excess agni in these forms of radiation can burn the soma, which is the alkalinizing portion of the pranic energy. And this creates another factor in determining our body’s pH balance.
My teacher and mentor Vaidya Rama Kant Mishra developed a transdermal system of healing where herbalized creams are placed in a highly specific manner to the body’s various marma points. These points both store and circulate the pranic energy to the various organs and glands around the body. He used to demonstrate the effects of the marma treatments by taking the salivary pH of the person both before and after the treatments. It was always amazing how the pH was acidic before the application of the transdermal creams and automatically shifted to alkaline by the end of the treatment as the marma points opened up the flow of prana once again, allowing the body to normalize itself.
It’s impossible nowadays to avoid electromagnetic frequencies altogether, but at least minimize your exposure to this radiation and mitigate the effects of these EMF’s by going out in nature, walking barefoot on the earth, and walking under the moonlight to infuse more soma into your body. I discuss these and many other tips in my free classes and videos on my website.
By keeping a broader perspective on your body’s alkalinity, you will be able to keep your blood alkaline in many other ways besides just following an alkaline diet.
I hope this information helps you as you attempt to be as healthy as you can deep into old age.
Thank you,