The HAP Acid/Alkaline Principle

An essential tenet of the Healthy & Active Program is that the best way to detoxify your body and prevent illness is to balance the pH in your body using the acid/alkaline pH balance to eating. Whether you are well, or unwell, balancing the pH of your diet is one big major step, that is completely within your control, towards restoring health or achieving optimum wellness. 

Understanding the pH scale

To understand the basic premise behind the Acid/Alkaline principle it is important to understand how the pH scale works.

The pH scale is from  

0 - 14 0 1 2  3  4  5  6  7 healthy  8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Human blood pH should be slightly alkaline (7.35 - 7.45).  Below or above this range means that you are setting yourself up to contract warning symptoms or a disease.  A pH of 7.0 is neutral.  A pH below 7.0 is acidic.  A pH above 7.0 is alkaline. You want to maintain a blood pH rating that is as close to 7.0 as possible. Your body is healthiest when it is in a slightly alkaline pH balanced state that is above 7.0.

An acidic pH state happens in the body when you eat foods that acid forming, experience too much emotional stress, work out your adrenalin glands too much to produce cortisol and or experience a major immune reaction.  The minute that anything happens that deprives your cells of oxygen, the more acidic your blood becomes.  If you are eating a diet that is acidic, your body will store and build up and accumulation acids.  Often the body will try to create balance and compensate for the acidic pH levels by leaching alkaline minerals from your tissues and bones. This is a desperate attempt on the part of your biochemistry to keep your system in balance.

Negative Effects of Acidity 

A consistent acidic pH level in the body will: 

      

·      reduce the body's ability to absorb oxygen, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients that we have not even discovered yet

·      decrease the energy production in the cells and therefore decrease our overall available energy

·      diminish a cell’s ability to repair itself and fight off invaders

·      decrease it's ability to detoxify itself of heavy metals

·      feed tumor cells

   

Maintaining a Healthy pH Balance

To maintain health, the diet should consist of 60% alkaline forming foods and 40% acid forming foods.  To restore health, the diet should consist of 80% alkaline forming foods and 20% acid forming foods.  The more alkaline your diet is, the more able your body will be able to go through its cleansing and repairing cycles.

Alkaline foods include: most fruits, green vegetables, peas, beans, lentils, spices, herbs and seasonings, and seeds and nuts.

Acidic foods include: meat, fish, poultry, eggs, grains, and legumes.

People are most addicted to eating the foods that they like with little consideration of whether or not the food is good for them. One of the goals of the Healthy and Active Program is to get you to recognize when your body is descending into an acidic state. " Continued imbalance of the acid-alkaline state can lead to health problems from inflammation, chronic fatigue, ulcers, back pain and many other illnesses.

For more information about the Healthy & Active Program please visit our website at www.healthy-active.com. You may also call us in Toronto at (41) 440-2217 and ask for Adrienne Wright Bulow or Dr. Michael Rahman or email us at adrienne@healthy-active.com.