Acids are solutions and liquids that are below a pH of 7.0 and anything above a pH of 7.0 is considered alkaline. It’s important to keep the body’s fluids, such as saliva, urine and blood, on the alkaline side. The normal pH range for saliva is 6.2 to 7.6. The pH of the urine should be 4.5 to 7.8. The pH of the blood should be in the very narrow range of 7.35 to 7.45. Even slight variations from this range are considered life-threatening. If we become too acidic our bones will give up calcium to keep the blood alkaline, which, over time, could lead to osteopenia and osteoporosis. If the pH of your saliva drops below 5.5 the acids in your mouth start to demineralize and break down your tooth enamel. If the tooth enamel becomes too thin it can expose the dentin layer leading to discomfort when consuming hot, cold or sugary drinks. Too many acids in the digestive system can lead to acid reflux, burning and ulcers. An acid pH in the intestines could burn off some of the friendly bacteria lining the gut. The same thing can happen in the bladder if the urine becomes too hot and acidic. Once the friendly bacteria die off infection can develop. Many times I help women overcome their frequent UTI’s by showing them an alkaline diet, but the UTI quickly returns if they drink alcohol, wine or coffee, all of which acidify the urine, burning off the friendly bacteria and allowing bacteria to overgrow again. By now you’ve probably seen all the alkaline diets which are out there. There are slight differences amongst the diets but in general we know that eating organic fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes can keep us alkaline while junk food, excess red meat, fried foods and too much sugar and alcohol tend to make us more acidic. I would also like to point out however that it is not just a question of eating a more alkaline diet. There are some other things to consider as well. Let’s take a look at these other factors which help to keep us alkaline beyond just the food that we are eating. For example, you can be eating a nourishing alkaline diet but if you don’t digest it well, it can ferment in the gut turning into a highly acidic inflammatory toxin known as ama visha in Ayurveda. This can happen if your digestion is weak and/or the food is too heavy. We also need to consider the gall bladder in our discussion on acidity. This is because when we first swallow the food it goes into the stomach, where the pH hovers around 2. Our bodies are very wise to bring the food from outside of the body directly into extreme acid conditions. One basic reason is because the food coming in from outside will have bacteria on it, no matter how much we wash it. These stomach acids will kill the bacteria. This is why many people nowadays are winding up with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (known as SIBO) after prolonged use of acid reflux medicines which reduce the stomach acids. Now once the acidic liquids leave the stomach, they squirt into the duodenum where a signal is sent immediately to the gall bladder to release the bile to neutralize the stomach acids as they come into the duodenum. Here’s the problem though: many many times in the course of a lifetime, the bile will get too thick and/or the sphincter of Oddi in the gall bladder can become too tight and won’t relax to allow the bile to squirt. If either of these two things happen, and the bile doesn’t flow when the stomach acids come pouring into the duodenum, the pH of the digestive juices traveling through the rest of the intestines can become quite acidic. These digestive juices eventually absorb into the blood, so if they are acidic, the blood can become acidic. This is why we identify and fix any problems with the bile flow in all of our patients. Nature was wise to give us so many herbs and foods to keep the bile thinned out and flowing because sooner or later everyone of us will experience problems with our bile. And of course we have lots of therapies to allow the sphincter to relax when we eat to allow the bile through. Also, consider this: the liver is known as the seat of digestion. It has to process all the food that you swallow. However, it is also the seat of detoxification, responsible for filtering all the toxins which come into the body, most of which are acidic. If too many toxins overwhelm the liver, it can become quite hot and if it does, when the food comes into it to be processed the hot liver can turn the food immediately into ama visha, a hot inflammatory acidic toxin. This acid toxin can ultimately affect the pH of the digestive juices, blood, urine and sweat. Also if you are experiencing long-term grief or emotional upset your liver will automatically convert your food into ama visha no matter how healthy it is. You should also know that 70% of all the cells in your body are made up of water. In ancient times the water fresh from the earth had an alkaline pH. Nowadays much of the groundwater, especially in highly populated areas are acid from the acid rain. Which is why we have our patients try to consume alkaline spring water. Water coming from the earth which is alkaline from picking up the minerals as it flows down the mountain streams. Not water with some synthetic minerals added to the filtered acidic tap water. We can take this concept a little deeper and state that the cytoplasm, which is the thick solution inside of our cells and is enclosed by a cell membrane, is composed mostly of water. The inside of your cells need to be alkaline to promote all the activities that take place within the cells. The cellular environment inside our cells also has a pH of 7 to 7.4. And let’s go a little deeper here: The mitochondrial matrix, the area around the mitochondria is even more alkaline with a pH of around 8.0. A physiological drop in pH decreases mitochondrial function. Research has shown that keeping the matrix surrounding the mitochondria alkaline will increase ATP synthesis rates in the mitochondria. This is significant because ATP is the energy-carrying molecule found in the cells of all living things. ATP captures energy obtained from the breakdown of the food molecules we eat and releases it to fuel all the cellular processes in our bodies. Which means ATP supplies energy required for muscle contraction, circulation of blood, various bodily movements, and basically fuels all cellular functions. All living cells rely on ATP’s energy. The pranic energy we get from nature — the cooling soma from the moonlight, the fiery agni we get from the sunlight and the etheric energy known as marut travels to the deepest levels of our cells. Now here’s the thing: the cooling lunar energy transforms into kapha and ojas once it comes inside of our bodies. The hot agni becomes pitta, allowing for the digestion of foods and all transformations to occur. And the marut becomes vata, which controls all of our bodily movements. We need to keep a balance of all 3 throughout our lives. In this day and age the stress of rushing, staying up late, constant exposure to the hot and fiery EMF’s, eating fast foods and taking too many nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals makes our cellular system very hot. So in this modern era we have to reduce the things that promote more heat and trend towards the more cooling foods and activities. This means we must take less synthetic vitamins, take pharmaceuticals only if it is a life-threatening situation. Learn how to bring your body back into balance using good food, herbs, spices, and plenty of rest. Resist the popular fads which promote the use of fermented beverages such as kombucha, eating too many fermented foods such as sauerkraut, drinking acids such as vinegar, taking capsules of turmeric or curcumin, and intermittent fasting which heats up the liver as its 5 digestive fires rage out of control looking for food to burn up. Don’t take capsules of garlic and synthetic vitamins which also heat up the liver. Don’t deep fry your foods either. Instead introduce more somagenic foods such as sweet juicy fruits, warm non-homogenized milk from grass-fed A2 cows or goat’s milk, ghee, olive oil, organic grains, vegetables and legumes. Get out in nature and have direct contact with the earth without your shoes on to allow the prana from nature to infuse into your body to mitigate the side effects of being around computers and cell phones all day. It’s important that we keep up our levels of soma since soma has a big job — it has to transform into both kapha and ojas. Kapha lubricates our joints, the stomach lining, our brain and spinal cord, nourishing and protecting it and ojas is found deep within every cell of our body, supporting the intelligence within the cells. Ojas is our neurotransmitters and hormones, dictating whether we are emotionally balanced (the result of the cooling alkalinizing soma) or hot and angry and fiery (the result of an overload of agni driving our cellular systems). This is why stress can make you acidic. There are many stressors that we can’t control but we can control our bedtime. If you go to bed past 10:00 PM at night, in the Pitta time of day, you can become more acidic as your liver struggles to function and the pitta or heat rises in your body. That’s why the ancient doctors repeatedly recommended an early bedtime for optimum health. So you can see that the pH of the various fluids in the body is something we want to be aware of. But this means that you must not only eat an alkaline somagenic diet, but make sure your digestion is working properly so that the digestive juices become alkaline. Also make sure you keep your liver clean and cool as you go through life, don’t forget to go to bed later than 10:00 PM and always drink pure alkaline spring water. All these recommendations will go a long way to keep your body alkaline and functioning smoothly.
Thank you,