The Alkaline Diet

World Wide Web | The Alkaline Diet | The diet of our ancestors is completely different from what we are so accustomed to these days. With the advancement of technology, the types of foods we consume are dragged along. A trip to the grocery store will shock you with aisles and aisles of processed food items and animal products. You will not have a hard time finding fast food when eating out as practically every corner of the street has one.

Fad diets are partly to blame for introducing entirely new eating habits, such as high-protein, low-carb diets. In recent years, the consumption of animal products and refined food items has exponentially increased while people leave fruits and vegetables from their diets.

It comes as no surprise these days that many people suffer from different types of allergies, bone diseases, heart problems and many other ailments. Some health experts link these diseases to the type of foods we eat. There are certain types of food that can disrupt the chemical homeostasis in our bodies, and health problems can ensue. By modifying our current dietary habits, we can achieve a restoration of health.

The Importance of Alkaline

Our bodies need to maintain a healthy and steady alkaline to acid ratio, which is signified by the pH level of our body. The pH scale ranges from 0 to 14, and anything lower than 7 is considered acidic. Processed food items, meat and meat products, sweets, some beverages, and condiments generally produce excessive amounts of acidity in the body.

Acidosis is an abnormally high acidity level in the blood and other tissues of the body, and is the one thing that several different diseases have one thing in common. Many health experts believe that acidosis is responsible for many of the health afflictions that people suffer from today.

Alkaline, on the other hand, naturally occurs in the body to neutralize excess acidity. However, alkaline can also become depleted when our acidity levels are too high, and when we do not replenish our bodies with alkaline foods.

Maintaining a Healthy pH Level

As mentioned earlier, acidosis leads to many health-related problems. Dangerous levels of acid get to circulate in our body and break into tissues and organs when not properly neutralized. To prevent this, one must see to it that a healthy pH balance in the body is maintained. In order to offset the excessive amounts of acid, we need to increase our body's alkalinity.

Determining whether or not your pH levels are prevalently alkaline may be done with easy-to-use pH level strips which you can purchase in drug stores or medical supplies stores. There are pH level strips meant for testing using your saliva, and there are those for using your urine.

Basically, a saliva pH level strip will determine how much acid your body is producing; normally it is between 6.5 and 7.5 throughout the day. A urine pH level strip will tell how well you excrete excess amounts of acid; you should get between 6.0 and 6.5 in the morning and between 6.5 and 7.0 at night.

The Dangers of Excessive Acid

If you constantly experience exhaustion, headaches and having frequent colds and flu, then that could be that you have high acid levels in your body. However, the ill effects of acidosis in the body do not stop there; you might be surprised at the wide-ranging types of diseases you could get with dangerous levels of acid in your body.

Depression, hyperacidity, ulcer, skin dryness, acne and obesity are some health issues that are linked to excessive acid levels in the body. There are also those that are more serious, such as joint diseases, osteoporosis, bronchitis, frequent infections and heart diseases.

Even if you begin to take medications for these illnesses, the symptoms may be masked, but they will still continue to affect your health because you are not attacking them from their roots. Medications cause the body's acid levels to rise.

Alkaline Diet Approach

To get to the roots of these health problems, the body's pH level must be brought back to normal. There are alkaline foods that can help replenish the depleted alkaline levels in the body while neutralizing excess amounts of acid. Through an alkaline diet, sufficient amounts of alkaline are re-introduced into the body, thus bringing back the pH level to predominantly alkaline.

So how do you incorporate an alkaline diet into your eating habits? First, you can start by cutting down your intake of processed foods. These type of foods contain chemicals that only increase the acidity of your body ones they're digested. Second, steer clear of meat and meat products, dairies and alcohol. Third, load up on fresh fruits and vegetables, as they naturally are high in alkalinity.

Even acidic fruits like oranges and lemons become alkaline after they have been digested and absorbed by the body. As a general rule, 75% of your daily food consumption should consist of alkalizing foods. The more alkaline foods we provide our bodies with, the more efficient the neutralization of excess acids will be.

Article Source: EzineArticles