Understanding Acid, Alkaline and the Many Myths on pH

How important is maintaining the acidity in your body? Dr. Berg explains what PH Level means in your body and how to keep it at a healthy level.

You may not know this but, there are various mechanisms in your body that work together to maintain a proper pH balance throughout your body. The acidity or alkalinity of a substance is measured using pH. The pH scale runs from 0 to 14, with 0 being the most acidic, 14 being the most alkaline, and 7 being neutral.

​How to Monitor Your Body and pH Balance Without a Blood Test:

Your body has a natural PH level. As long as the body is in the correct PH range (overall, this should be slightly alkaline), the body will be in homeostasis or balance and will remain healthy.

Your body’s acid/alkaline level is not the same as the acid content of your stomach, so do not make this assumption!
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Now, here’s where it gets complicated; Different internal parts or systems of your body have vastly different PH level requirements. In other words, it isn't like your whole body from head to toe should be at a specific PH level. Let me explain why this is so.

Different parts of your body have different purposes and the processes that go on in these different places require differing PH levels to get the job done.

You know when the stomach is digesting food it is a highly acidic place, usually in the 1 to 3 range on the PH scale. This is similar in acidity to battery acid!

If you use an alkalizing treatment, try not to remain in the 'too alkaline' zone for any length of time.

​As the food mix leaves the stomach and enters the small intestine it becomes alkaline. The small intestine has a PH of 7 to 9, which is neutral to alkaline. It needs to be alkaline to neutralize the mix from the stomach.

The PH level of the blood is the most critical of all. To put it simply, it must remain in the very narrow PH range of 7.3 to 7.4 or you die! Don’t worry though, because it is so important the body has ways of maintaining this range. In maintaining blood PH your body must deal with what you are putting into it.

First the body tries to use buffers to balance the PH level of the body. Minerals, especially magnesium, calcium, potassium and sodium, are the buffers the body uses. If you eat a diet that supplies these minerals the body will use them to regulate PH levels. If you eat a poor diet like many people today, then your body will be forced to leech these minerals from other parts of the body like your vital organs, muscles and bones. Osteoporosis is a leeching of calcium from the bones making them brittle.

Our modern western diet makes us acidic
The typical American diet consists of far too much acid producing foods and too little alkaline forming foods. Sugar, corn syrup, table salt, white flour, smoking, coffee, black teas, sodas, meats (red, poultry and fish), dairy, processed foods, most drugs and artificial sweeteners are all acid forming foods.

Some alkaline forming foods are; most fresh fruits and vegetables, especially green veggies and citrus fruits. Citrus fruits are acidic when eaten but are good alkalizers in the body. Lemons are very acidic but are good at alkalizing the body. Celery, asparagus, sprouts and all melons are great for alkalizing the body. Eat plenty of fresh salads but watch the dressings, most store bought dressings are acidic. Fresh olive oil and a little lem

A diet to fix acid reflux should help you alkalize the body
I personally don't worry too much about this because as you improve your diet to rid yourself of acid reflux, a side effect will be that you also alkalize your body and bring it back towards homeostasis. This is one of the best things you can do for your health.

If you are interested in balancing your acid/alkaline level, you first have to learn how to test your PH level.

pH Test Strips for saliva and urine. Found in pharmacies or this brand found on Amazon.com

​Checking pH is not a Diagnostic Test but it can help you understand your body's alkaline status. 
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pH testing is about evaluating your potential for health. pH testing cannot diagnose or cure disease. However, it can give you a clue that your body is "fighting stress" rather than "fighting disease."

pH is an indicator of the condition of your internal environment, and your internal environment affects your overall health. If you find that your internal pH is higher or lower than "ideal," you won't know any more than you did before about which, if any, disease you may have.

​However, you will have a strong indication that your body's systems and organs are working under extreme stress of toxicity – its internal fluids are being "poisoned" by too much acid. But that does not mean you have a particular disease. It means that unless you change your ways, probably starting with the types of food you eat, you could develop a disease.

1) Urine should be light yellow to clear.
Dark yellow indicates dehydration and serious toxicity.

2) pH Strips:
Purchase some pH strips to test daily the level of alkalinity in your body via both saliva and urine.

The pH scale goes from 0 to 14, with 7 being neutral. Below 7 is acid and above 7 is alkaline.

The blood, lymph and cerebral spinal fluid in the human body are designed to be slightly alkaline at a pH of 7.4.

Urine and saliva pH of terminal cancer patients almost always runs between 4.0 and 5.5 - when the cancer goes into metastases the pH number drops even lower.

3) Bowel movement must be every day.
If not, eat more fiber, drink more water - stay away from cheese and medications, both of which create constipation - and get daily exercise. One or two bowel movements a week is absolutely unacceptable and indicates serious disease, likely resulting in cancer.

4) Weight: 
​Estimated calorie needs for person with cancer is 15 calories per pound of weight if your weight has been stable. Add 500 calories per day if you have lost weight. 

​For Individuals Who are "Healthy"​

Too Much Protein
Recall that your alkaline reserve is made up of neutralizing minerals that keep the strong acid byproduct of high-protein foods from sizzling your innards. After the acid has been neutralized, it and the minerals leave your body in your urine.

Your urine holds clues to whether or not, or how seriously, your supply of alkalizing minerals has been drained. The condition of your alkaline reserve depends on how much high-protein food your body has had to contend with over time.

Keep in mind that we all need protein in our diets. Protein is a building block of cells, body, and health. We need protein. However, we don't need too much protein. That's what we're talking about, too much protein!

What you need:
(1) pH strips/pH litmus paper; (2) notebook and pen to track your results.
pH paper – registers moderately strong acid (pH 5.5) to mildly alkaline (pH 8.0). The thin strip of pH paper changes color when it comes in contact with moist acid or alkaline substances. A color guide on the package shows how each color represents a particular pH number.

CAUTION: If you are seriously ill with a life-threatening disease - or any major illness - do not go on a diet of high-protein foods. Those who are seriously ill already have too much acid in their systems - their bodies are quite toxic; they don’t need a test to tell them that. Putting more acid ash-producing foods in a body that's already toxic from too much acid could have disastrous results.

If your pH is below 7.0, Your body's systems and organs are working under extreme stress of toxicity - its internal fluids are being "poisoned" by too much acid. Unless you change your ways, probably starting with the types of food you eat, you could develop a disease.

Neither meat eaters nor vegetarians are immune to an over acidic system. Many vegetarians are heavy into grains, which are acid ash-producers, as are most nuts and dairy products. Your body doesn't care whether it's fighting too much dietary acid from meat or from grains and nuts. It still goes through the same survival tactics.

So, what to do?

Start activating alkalinity in your body. 
Begin with drinking warm water with juice of a half lemon or lime each morning. Improve your diet slowly by eating more fruits and vegetables, salads, and more conservative acid-ash foods such as brown rice and whole grain breads like Hunza Bread rather than refined white flour breads. 

Drink freshly made juice, preferably green vegetable juice.  Increase the amount of vegetables in your diet. An effective method is to introduce one serving of cooked vegetables to your daily menu. After one week, add another serving of vegetables. Continue the add-a-vegetable-a-week routine for about six weeks. That may sound like a lot of vegetables, but you have three meals a day to work with. In addition, see an alternative healthcare practitioner to help you start a good nutritional supplement program.

Wait one or two weeks before checking your urine pH again. Even on an improved diet, the changes in your results won't be as dramatic as you might like. In fact, for those with high pH the pattern of change will look as though things are going from bad to worse. With an improved diet, the alkaline minerals are finally doing the neutralizing instead of ammonia. 

However, alkalizing minerals aren't nearly as strong as ammonia, so urine pH readings go down before they go up. Your readings should change gradually - one color at a time and you will probably see a dramatic change from your original pH numbers in a couple of months.

What if you have a good diet, but your pH is still poor?

Suppose you've changed your diet, cut down on acid-ash foods, eaten mostly vegetables and fruit, and taken alkalizing supplements, but your urine pH is still locked in. Does it mean that this urine pH business is all a bunch of nonsense? Answer: No. 

There is more to pursuing health than just eating right. Other factors besides toxicity and diet enter into how your body functions. After you've "cleaned up" your diet, if you still do not feel as well as you'd like, it's time to take the saliva pH test to see if emotional stress is leading to physical distress.

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Alkalized Foods

While using Supplement Boost in your water or other beverages, there are many diet guidelines that will assist you in assuring that your body becomes more alkalized.

​There are many books on the subject of keeping a pH balanced body, and you can find some of them on the books reference links. The two charts above will give you a good start and overview as to which foods are alkaline and acidic.