Understanding how to balance your pH is a major factor in maintaining good health and healing from chronic illness. From the perspective of biological medicine, pH is the most significant factor in addressing the biological terrain. If overlooked and not properly addressed, it may be holding you back.
Many of you have likely heard of the importance of an alkaline diet, or how too much acid will damage our body. Perhaps you’ve tried a number of alkalizing therapies to no avail. Or maybe the whole concept is confusing and hard to comprehend.
Even the health community varies in opinions on this issue. Acid-alkaline balance is one health topic that causes much debate among experts.
The focus should be on the fact that our body is made to function within very specific parameters of pH. Different regions of our body function in different pH ranges. Changes to one area will affect changes to the other areas. If anything falls outside of these ranges, our optimal functioning begins to fade.
The abbreviation pH refers to “potential of hydrogen,” and its measurements range from 0-14. The higher the value, the more alkaline the substance, whereas lower values point to more acidic substances.
Our blood holds an extremely narrow pH range at an almost neutral value of ~7.365. The stomach can withstand an acidic environment, during digestion, around a pH of 1.
A fully regulating, and optimally functioning, body will normally produce a certain amount of acids.
Imbalances to the acidity-alkalinity of our body begin to form when our lifestyle shows imbalances. Toxic exposures to anything in our life (e.g. heavy metals, relationships, foods, thoughts) tip the scales out of our favor and toward acidity.
Balance Your pH to Create a Healthy Biological Terrain
In particular, our biological terrain takes the brunt of any imbalance. From a biological medicine perspective, proper regulation of our body depends most upon the terrain. The single most influential factor for the terrain is to balance your pH.
This biological terrain is the lay of the land for our internal environment. It surrounds all of our cells and supports the microbes that support us. The terrain is the structural element that allows for distribution of nutrients and oxygen, elimination of waste, and immune support to every cell.
Inability to maintain optimal pH balance causes our fluids to thicken, slow, and coagulate. I find the visual Dr. Thomas Rau describes to be helpful, “Think what happens when you stir lemon juice or vinegar into milk: it curdles.” 1 This is essentially the same situation that forms in our body when it becomes more acidic.
Minerals such as magnesium and calcium are pulled out of our bones to neutralize the increased acids. Like an overdrawn bank account, our bone structure becomes weaker. Magnesium is then excreted through the urine and calcium is deposited into our tissues and arteries. As a result, they become more rigid and less vital.
Heavy Metal Toxicity and Hyperacidity
Once minerals have been removed from their location within bone, connective tissue, and terrain, it creates an attraction and bonding site for heavy metals to accumulate.2 In particular, mercury, aluminum, and lead are more likely to attach, creating greater heavy metal toxicity complications.
Red blood cells begin to stick together, reducing the oxygen delivery to cells and slowing circulation.
As lymph fluid thickens, it slows and dampens our immune response. Nerve impulses will slow further hindering the body’s communication.
Once helpful microbes begin to mutate (via pleomorphism) into pathological forms, they incite deeper disease states.
The kidneys are the primary organs that maintain our acid-alkaline balance. However, as hyperacidity challenges the kidneys, other organs have to overwork to keep up with the demand.
The colon, skin, and lungs must overcompensate to keep the balance. The extra energy expended by these organs unleashes a multitude of symptoms.
Common symptoms of hyperacidity:
- Chronic fatigue
- Poor healing
- Acid reflux
- Abdominal bloat
- Joint and muscle pain
- Sinusitis
- Asthma or restricted breathing
- Eczema
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Insomnia
De-acidifying the body can be a lengthy process. Similar to the way a garden may take a few growing seasons before gaining its momentum, clearing the biological terrain takes persistence.
6 Ways to Balance Your pH
Here are six effective ways to balance your pH, providing a proper terrain and improved healing:
Build Up the Flora
The trillions of microbes in our gut serve as our first line of acid removal. These friendly bacteria transport acids from our body into the bowel for elimination.
Most of these bacteria are from the Bacteroides family, which cannot be found in any probiotic. To best build up our microbiome, taking probiotics is only the start. We must feed all our good gut microbes with a variety of fibers from vegetables of all colors as well as healthy fats and proteins.
Breathe Deeply
Deep breathing is significantly undervalued and overlooked. Prolonged sitting, too much time in front of screens, and mismanaged stress have trained us to take shallow breaths.
Nice, relaxed, deep belly (or diaphragmatic) breathing not only curbs the effects of stress, but also helps the lungs to do their part to de-acidify the body.
Support Bile Flow
If the gut flora is our first line of defense for ridding acids from the body, then bile flow is the second. Bile never conjures up pleasant thoughts when mentioned. However, it is a marvel of efficiency to balance your pH. This one fluid enables us to eliminate toxins and digest our food at the same time.
While bile is made in our liver, it is stored and concentrated in our gall bladder. Supporting these two organs will keep our bile flow in good order.
Try a cocktail of the juice from ½ a lemon, 1 tsp of extra virgin olive oil, and 8 oz warm water each morning. The phytonutrients from the lemon and olive oil give both the gall bladder and liver a boost.
Coffee enemas can also support bile flow as well as increasing the “mother of antioxidants,” glutathione.3
More Alkaline Foods
The key here is more alkaline foods, not only alkaline foods. The fact is, the more vegetables we eat the better we feel.
Yes, adding more alkalinizing foods like leafy greens, lemons, walnuts, berries, and apple cider vinegar can bolster the pH balancing process. But don’t forget the benefit of phytonutrients by eating from the full spectrum of color that nature offers.
Reducing your animal protein is one of the most significant ways to improve your pH and your terrain. Too much protein loads a considerable burden on our pH balancing systems.
Positivity
Harness the power of intentional positivity and optimism. Negativity and pessimism create a more acidic environment, believe it or not. Their incoherence, created between our heart and brain, ripples out to our body. Each strand of DNA receives this signal, perceives it as a stressor, and our biochemistry shifts to producing more acid as a byproduct.
Nutrient leverage
Bodies weakened by long-term pH imbalances will need added support of nutraceuticals.
- Minerals are very helpful in alkalinizing. Magnesium will give you the most mileage here. Look for more readily absorbable forms such as magnesium malate or magnesium glycinate.
- Antioxidants offer a neutralizing punch to damaging acids. The hardest working antioxidants are glutathione (reduced form), resveratrol, and molecular hydrogen. 4
Interested in learning more about the impact your diet has on the pH level of the your body’s bioterrain? Check out this blog.
References:
- Rau, Thomas, MD. The Swiss secret to optimal health: Dr. Rau’s diet for whole body healing. New York City: Berkley, 2007.
- Rau, Thomas, MD. Biological Medicine. Hoya: Semmelweis Institute, 2011.
- Environ Mol Mutagen. 2004; 44(4): 265-76.
- Free Radic Res. 2010 Sep; 44(9): 971-82.
