How To Balance The pH In Your Body

What is pH?

Balancing the pH in your body is key to maintaining good health. The pH is a measurement of the acid-alkaline ratio in the body and when this ratio is out of balance, many health issues may arise. A neutral pH is 7, below 7 is moving to the acidic side while above 7 is alkaline.

A body that is acidic allows many disease processes to take hold and thrive. Conversely, a body that has a balanced pH allows the body to protect itself from disease. You must maintain adequate alkaline reserves to keep your body strong and able to resist disease. A healthy balanced pH level is a key component into maintaining and improving your health.

How to Measure pH?

The easiest way to measure your pH is to purchase pH test strips and test yourself at home. Most testing strips allow you to test via urine or saliva. The tests strips will change color which you need to match against the color chart that comes with your strips. Follow these guidelines to accurately test:

• Test 3 times per day until you start to see a fairly consistent reading, after this, test once per day.
• Urine testing will show slightly more acidic results than saliva so add .25 if using urine to test pH.
• When testing with urine, use first and second morning urine.
• If you choose to test with urine, continue to test with urine if possible to avoid confusion.
• When testing with saliva, spit into a spoon and then dip the stick into the saliva on the spoon.
• For saliva tests, be sure to test two hours before or after eating or drinking to achieve accurate results.

What Makes you Acidic?

Acidosis is, unfortunately, one result of the typical diet many people consume. The standard American diet is high in foods that are acid producing such as dairy, meat and soda. We also consume far too many processed foods that contain acid producing components such as sugar and white flour. Artificial sweeteners are also very acid forming. It is very important to address your diet when beginning to balance your pH.

How to Change pH?

There are many ways to increase your pH to an alkaline state. The ideal goal is to be between 6.75 – 7.25 when testing saliva and 6.5 – 7.0 when testing urine, however. It is important to remember being too alkaline is also not ideal for the body.

Diet

Diet is a key component in regulating your pH. Foods can be very acidic or very alkaline. By increasing alkaline foods, you can increase the pH.

• Decrease or eliminate sugar and white flour
• Minimize processed foods
• Avoid artificial sweeteners
• Avoid soda
• Watch your intake of red meat
• Increase vegetables, especially leafy green vegetables
• Increase fruit intake
• Drink alkaline water
• Add lemon to your water

Supplements

Increasing pH with diet alone is often a challenge for many people. By adding in supplements, we can often boost the pH into safer levels.

Raw Alkalizing Superfoods are a great alternative when you just can't get enough vegetables into your diet. One such example is pHresh greens®. One tsp. provides the equivalent of 3 to 4 servings of raw greens! You can add it to juice, water or your favorite smoothie.

Magnesium, Vitamin D and Calcium - Vitamins and minerals are often excreted when you are too acidic. By supplementing, we can restore normal levels and also bring the body to an alkaline state. Speak to your doctor for dosages.

To learn more about what foods are more acidic or alkaline, view the pH directory. This information can help you on your quest to alkalinity.