Hey there, viewers!
How good are you with hot food?
There’s nothing like a serving of spicy wings from your favorite restaurant to leave
you feeling like your stomach’s on fire.
If you get this feeling frequently, even after a bowl of soup, you have some serious stomach
acid to blame.
This is where alkaline foods come to the rescue.
Let’s discuss the effects of acid and alkaline diets on your body?
Is grabbing a scoop of ice cream useful for acid reflux?
What about fizzy drinks?
Let's talk about it...
What is an alkaline diet?
A pH scale determines whether something is acidic or alkaline.
It’s measured from 0 to 14, 7 being neutral.
This scale can tell the pH of your blood, urine, and saliva.
The pH of your body lies within the range of 7.36 -7.44 on the pH scale.
Anything less than this can make your body go extremely acidic.
Anything more than this will make your body alkaline.
The alkaline diet has some other popular names like the acid-alkaline diet or alkaline ash
diet.
Let me explain why it’s called the “alkaline-ash” diet.
Compare the digestion of your food to fire.
After things are burnt, they leave ashy residue.
Similarly, your body produces ash-like byproducts after digesting the food.
The ash in your body is the waste that is thrown out of your body when you go to the
bathroom.
Both these processes break down solid mass with the help of chemicals.
Chemical reactions taking place in your body are very slow and controlled, unlike fire.
Your body's pH is decided depending on whether the ash is alkaline, neutral, or acidic.
Tell us about that one particular food that gives you bad acidity.
What do you do to bounce back from acid reflux?
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Acidic ash is bad because it’s believed to cause serious illness.
On the other hand, alkaline ash can protect you from the same diseases.
An alkaline diet claims to reduce acidity and increase alkalinity in your body.
It's a no-brainer as to which one you’d choose.
But does this mean we need to stop eating acidic food altogether?
In reality, you need your stomach acids.
You know, there are some good things about acid.
Let’s take a look at some of them.
Stomach acid is the main ingredient used to break down complex foods that we consume.
This watery, colorless fluid is produced by the mucosal lining of your stomach.
Concentrated digestive juice is very acidic.
Hydrochloric acid with a pH of 2 to 3.5 is always floating in your stomach.
Foods that are difficult to digest are easily broken down by this concentrated acid.
Without any stomach acid, your intestine will not be able to absorb all the essential nutrients
and minerals from your food.
This gives you no nourishment.
But here’s the catch.
Too much acid causes heartburn, vomiting, bloating, loss of appetite, weight loss & stomach
aches.
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Now without going into this massive list that takes an hour to finish, let’s talk about
the foods that fall under each category...
Acidic foods include meat, poultry, fish, eggs, grains, alcohol, and dairy.
Alkaline foods involve fruits, nuts, legumes, and veggies.
Foods like protein phosphate and sulfur are known to produce acidic ash, while calcium,
magnesium and potassium produce alkaline ash.
Natural fats, starches, and sugar fall under the neutral category.
Actually, different types of sugars have different pH values.
They can range anywhere from acidic to neutral.
So the next time you’re bloated or nauseated from acidity, don’t just gulp down soda
or ice cream.
Both of these contain sugar.
Ice cream will have dairy, which just makes your situation worse.
A few conditions like chronic alcoholism, diabetes, and starvation can give the body
a low pH level.
If you’re not revived from this acidic shock, the conditions could be fatal!
Before we continue, have you suffered from long-standing acidity?
Take a quick look at these 9 acidic foods you should stay away from.
Now back to our discussion on Acid Vs. Alkaline...
Now let's see how pH affects your urine and blood.
As we saw at the very beginning, the pH of your body is maintained at a very tight range.
It remains pretty much the same for your blood.
The shift from the normal values will not allow your body to function at the cellular
level.
Acid-alkaline imbalance is not a joke, and can kill you if left untreated.
That’s why your body tries to balance out the pH any way it can.
This is called acid-base homeostasis.
The pH of urine is influenced by what you eat.
Going pee is one of the main ways your body regulates blood pH.
It’s almost impossible to change the pH of your blood solely through diet.
However, tiny changes within a normal range are quite possible.
Nowadays, pH-indicating strips are available over the counter for home use.
Lots of people do these tests at home and find they have an acidic body after testing
their urine.
The same goes with salivary strips indicating acidity in your saliva.
These are not the true indicators of your body or blood pH.
Many factors other than diet play an important role in your general health and pH.
You’ll be happy to know you can enjoy your favorite steak without the fear of making
your body acidic.
Your body will remove the metabolic acids out through your urine in just a few hours.
But that shouldn't be a thing to worry about.
Is there any relation between acidic foods and bone weakening?
Your bones are made up of minerals.
Osteoporosis is a serious bone disease that can take all the essential minerals out of
your bones.
This leaves your bones more prone to fractures.
It’s a common occurrence in postmenopausal women.
Alkaline minerals like calcium are found in your bones.
People who stand by an alkaline diet believe our body extracts calcium from the bones to
buffer the acids from acidic foods.
This is how they think the body maintains a constant blood pH.
It’s believed that the standard Western diet is full of acid-forming foods and can
cause a rapid loss of mineral density in the bone.
But this theory is pretty flawed.
It doesn’t even acknowledge the function of your kidneys in the body.
The kidneys throw acid out of your body through urine and regulate body pH.
They produce specialized chemicals known as bicarbonate ions that have the power to neutralize
all the acids in your blood.
Your lungs also participate in neutralizing body acids.
The bicarbonate ions produced by the kidneys combine with blood in the lungs to form carbon
dioxide, which is exhaled.
Water is also formed as a byproduct that is thrown out when you pee.
Osteoporosis mainly occurs due to a deficiency of many factors.
Researchers have found that low levels of collagen are enough to cause osteoporosis.
If you fail to get the proper vitamin C, you may also develop the condition.
This is because of acids that are in the Vitamin C.
This is totally strange, and goes against the acid ash hypothesis.
One thing’s for sure...
Acidic foods do not deplete your calcium levels.
This type of diet will actually repair your muscles quicker, as well as your bone function.
Does acidic food cause cancer?
Cancer-causing cells grow faster in an acidic environment, but the claim that an acidic
body is a home for cancer cells is absolutely baseless.
The cells create their own acidic environment.
People claiming to treat cancer through an alkaline diet haven’t considered the fact
that food plays a pretty insignificant role in blood pH.
Also, there was no direct link found between cancer and diet-induced acidic conditions.
A few experiments have also been done with alkaline pH to check whether cancer cells
grow in an alkaline environment.
The results were positive and showed the rapid growth of cancer cells in an alkaline environment.
The bottom line is you may get cancer regardless of whether you’re into an acidic or alkaline
diet.
Do you wonder what our ancestors ate?
This is pretty interesting.
We have some mixed results.
A study says that almost 87% of pre-agricultural humans ate an alkaline diet.
Another recent study showed that 50% of the pre-agriculture humans consumed acidic diets,
while the other 50 consumed alkaline.
One thing observed was that the ancestral diets of people living far from the equator
were predominantly acidic.
The alkaline diet has been popular for quite a while, and should be encouraged.
It primarily focuses on wholesome foods like fruits and veggies while restricting processed
and junk food.
A low protein, alkaline diet may help people with kidney disease.
We often ignore the needs of our kidneys.
But why?
After all, they help reduce acidity!
Watch and learn about 13 foods that make your kidneys healthy.
And don't forget about your liver either.
Here are another 13 foods avoid at all costs if you want a healthy liver.
Go ahead, click one.
Or better yet, watch both, and learn more about how to become healthier.
Have you ever given the alkaline diet a try?
Let us know in the comments below.