Alkalize Your Body

Getting in Balance - Alkalinity and Acidity

Alkalize Your Body

In it's natural state, the body is slightly alkaline. It must maintain this slightly alkaline state for your very survival, and has developed complex mechanisms to ensure that this balance is maintained.

Most of us are natural alkaline producers in our early years. This is why many children can get away with eating an imbalanced diet and still be healthy and slender right up until they are in their twenties.

But as we reach our thirties and forties, the majority of us have become overly acidic. That's because nearly everything we are exposed to - foods, environmental toxins, even stress - contribute to an acidic condition in our bodies, and our natural buffer systems become less efficient over time at neutralizing that acid. We go from being in a more or less continuous alkaline state to having chronic acidosis, or chronic excess acidity.

An imbalanced pH affects all cellular activity in the body, contributing to the progression of most degenerative diseases, including cardiovascular disease and heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, kidney stones, urinary incontinence, arthritis, osteoporosis, cancer, diabetes, systemic weight gain and obesity.

An imbalanced body pH can also be at the root of many common symptoms such as constipation, digestive problems, heartburn, headaches, frequent colds, fatigue, and sleeplessness, just to mention a few.

7 Good Reasons Why a Balanced pH is Critical for the Body:

1. Proper fat metabolism and weight control.
When the body is in it's natural alkaline state, body weight and insulin production normalize. When we alkalize the body, it works so well at dropping excess weight that many of us lose weight just by eating more alkaline foods, and by adding supplements that alkalize, to our diets.

2. Proper calcium utilization.
The body will do ANYTHING to maintain a balanced pH, including the leaching of important minerals like calcium, potassium and sodium from the tissues. To maintain alkalinity, the body first goes for sodium, then potassium, and then calcium. It literally leaches the calcium from your bones, making your bones porous and fragile. This is a major contributor to both osteoporosis and osteoarthritis.

3. Appropriate cholesterol levels
Balancing your pH helps to maintain proper cholesterol levels so that plaque does not form.

4. Controls cancer cells.
Cancer cells thrive in an acidic environment, and perish in an alkaline one. Cancer cells simply cannot survive in an alkaline environment!

5. Proper electrolyte activity and efficient heart function.
Proper electrolyte activity is crucial to balanced energy levels.

6. Smooth blood flow.
To alkalize helps to remove plaque from the arteries, veins, and heart tissue.

7. Healthy oxygen flow.
When we alkalize the bloodstream, it flushes toxins from tissues and prevents against premature aging.

How do I test my body's pH?

One of the easiest ways to test the body's pH is to use pH test strips. You can get pH paper (also called hydrazine paper) in most drug stores, however, they sometimes lack accuracy. The best pH test strips we have found are made by VAXA, and they have the reputation of being the most accurate.

By testing your pH with test strips, you can determine quickly and easily, in the privacy of your own home, what your pH is.

VAXA's pH Test Strips can be used to determine your urinary pH, which is generally a good indicator of how acidic or alkaline your total body pH is. When urinary pH is continuously between 6.4 in the morning and 7.5 by evening, you're functioning in the healthy range.

How to Counteract Excess Acidity

Diet, stress and our toxic environment all contribute to an overly acidic condition in our body. The good news is, even if you are overly acidic, you can bring your body back into its natural state of balance and health by making a few minor changes in your diet and lifestyle.

The Rx for pH is Eze

There are three main things we can do physically to reverse this trend of the over-acidification of our bodies.

1. Eat a diet that is high in alkalizing foods.

2. Drink good alkaline water or spring water that is pH balanced.

3. Take supplements that alkalize to support pH balance.

1. Proper Diet
Generally speaking, as far as diet goes, most vegetables and fruits alkalize, as do whey, yogurt, soybeans, almonds, buckwheat, millet and quinoa. All meats are acidic, as are rice, pastas, cheeses, soft drinks, coffee, alcoholic beverages, condiments, and most sweeteners except raw, unpasteurized honey.

Roughly 75 to 80 percent of your diet should consist of alkaline-producing foods. Making these changes in your diet will jump-start your health to whole new levels, as an alkaline body is more effective at warding off all kinds of infections and disease. As we have seen, several researchers now believe that chronic acidosis is a major contributing factor to insulin sensitivity problems that lead to diabetes, to the early formation of cancer, and to heart disease.

One of the best books on learning what foods to eat that alkalize and what foods to stay away from that are acidic is called "The pH Miracle" by Dr. Robert O. Young. Another good book is "Alkalize or Die" by Steven Brody.

2. The Importance of Drinking Good Water

Water is the driving force behind all forms of life. Our bodies are over 70% water and all of our body fluids contain it. Even the food we eat is predominantly made of water. Water adjusts the body's temperature and through urination and perspiration rids the body of toxins. Health authorities recommend that we drink at least 64 ounces (8 glasses) of water per day to attain proper hydration. Most of us are dehydrated and dehydration can lead to great physical impairment. Dehydration is especially prevalent among men and women over forty years of age. For the body to function properly, it is imperative that it be properly hydrated.

Drinking enough water is one thing, but the other thing is the type of water we are drinking. Tap water is treated with many chemicals like chlorine and floride, which are toxins to the body. A lot of people these days drink bottled water which could be purified through reverse osmosis, or it is distilled, or is spring water. However, many of the bottled waters on the market we tested were actually acidic as is distilled water. This is because when the minerals are removed the water loses its alkalinity.

The best water to drink is alkalized or ionized water, which is produced by running normal tap water over a positive (anode) and a negative (cathode) electrode. This creates positive and negative ions in the water that are then separated creating two different waters, one that is alkaline and one that is acidic. To ionize simply means to gain or lose an electron. Basically, the ionization process robs an electron from one molecule and donates or transfers it to another molecule. Alkaline and acid water, although very different, each has their benefits. Alkaline water is for flushing out internal toxins, scavenging free radicals, and oxygenating the body. Acid water, which is really a by-product of ionizing water, can be used externally for cleansing the skin, cleaning any surface and feeding your plants.

There are a number of water ionizers on the market that can divide your tap water into acid and alkaline water. The water ionizers were developed in Japan in the 1950's and they were approved by the Japanese Government as "health improvement medical devices".

Water Ionizers

Water ionizers are the "cadillac" of reversing acidity, because not only do they alkalize, they also create water that has superior antioxidant abilities. According to Dr. Sherry Rogers, MD, and author of the book "Detoxify or Die", ionized water is such a good free radical scavenger that it performs as well as the primary antioxidant enzymes that the body makes, namely superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase. And it does an even better job than SOD, because SOD produces hydrogen peroxide which then has to be neutralized, but ionized water does not produce this unwanted free radical. As well, alkalized water suppresses genetic DNA breakage or mutation while it scavenges over four types of free radicals.

Thus, ionized water has several functions: It purifies the water, alkalizes the water, neutralizes free radicals, and protects the genes by preventing DNA damage.

The other great thing about water ionizers is that you use it with ordinary tap water, giving you an endless supply of purified, alkaline antioxidant water. The drawback is that they can be expensive. However, we have found a manufacturer who will give the readers of this web site a significant discount on the purchase of a water ionizer/purifier called Akai from Japan and imported by an excellent company called High Tech Health Inc.

Ionizer Plus Water Ionizer

The Ionizer Plus water ionizer manufactured by Akai and distributed by "High Tech Health, Inc." has the reputation of being the best ionizer on the market. The company has been around for a number of years, and many health professionals recommend their water ionizer. According to the manufacturer, the water from their ionizer is guaranteed to fix digestive problems in 30 days, by eliminating an overly acid condition in the digestive tract. We ourselves tried another alkalizer before switching over to High Tech Health. We found the taste of the water from their machine to be much smoother and "wetter", which makes it easier to drink and enjoyable. The special filter used in the Ionizer Plus unit is the strongest on the market and will last for a usage of 4400 liters of alkaline water (enough for 2 years on average) . We drink alkaline water daily, and no longer need special alkalizing supplements as a result.

High Tech Health has offered readers of this website a special discount of $300.00 off the regular retail purchase price of their water inonizer.
For more information on the water ionizer/filter and it's health benefits please call us or click on the above mentioned link. You can also call High Tech Health directly at 1-800-794-5355 and ask to speak to Sheryl Hickey, who is their excellent product specialist. Remember to mention our name, Zilahy Wellness when ordering the water ionizer (or their saunas) to receive your special discount. As well, High Tech Health offers a 30 day money-back satisfaction guarantee, so you can try it risk free.