Acidity & Gout

If you look at the blood pH of a perfectly healthy person, you will see that it falls right around 7.3 – an alkaline pH level. If your body varies too much from this normal level, then it is often a sign of disease, especially when the body becomes more acidic. The more acidic the body is, the more tempting of an environment it is microorganisms and disease. Oxygen and nutrients reaching the cells are diminished, and your health starts to falter.

At the same time, an acidic blood level causes your body to leach alkaline minerals from your bones in an attempt to return itself to normal. This can lead to health problems later in life as a result of bone depletion and loss of needed minerals. Actually, too much acidity is an underlying factor in many degenerative diseases — diabetes, arthritis, fibromyalgia and more. An acidic pH environment provides a fertile bed for fungal overgrowth and encourages Candida overgrowth to start and keeps it growing. Therefore: Balance the bio terrain. Do this first, then everything else can begin to come back into balance and health.

HOW YOUR pH BECOMES UNBALANCED:
There are many reasons why your body will become more acidic. One of the biggest reasons is diet. The modern diet is full of acidic foods like red meat and grains. It also includes highly acidic drinks, such as coffee and soft drinks. At the same time, many people miss out on the appropriate alkaline foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables. This improper balance of nutrition can cause your body’s pH levels to become more acidic over time. The one area of the body that needs to be acidic is the stomach – where the acid needs to be high at the time of digestion, and will then weaken when no food is being digested in order to not create heartburn. Probiotics and acidophilus are also acidic (lactic acid) – but this lactic acid in the colon helps flush out the bad bacteria. The Lactic acid from probiotics literally eats away at the tiny hooks on the harmful bacteria where they attach to your colon wall – making flushing them out of the system via normal elimination easier.

OTHER ACID FORMING FACTORS:
Oestrogen –  natural oestrogen, oestradiol, is particularly aggressive and can create havoc inside the cell, reducing potassium levels, increasing sodium levels, with the resultant effect that the cell becomes more acidic, uses less and less oxygen, and powers down´ in the same way as above. Again, the result can be ill health and cancer.
Lack of sleep – after 90 minutes of falling asleep, your pineal gland produces melatonin, which helps put you into a deeper sleep. Apart from being a powerful antioxidant melatonin also helps regulate hormones like oestrogen and IGF-1 in the body. Without melatonin at adequate levels oestrogen levels rise, as does Insulin like Growth Factor 1, which makes your cells grow and divide more rapidly. So poor sleep patterns set up an acid body.
EMF´s – Electromagnetic Forces (cellphone and radio masts etc.) are known to depress melatonin levels. In his book “The Body Electric: Electo magnetism and the Foundation of Life” (pg.327), Becker states: “Three dangers of EMF overshadow all others. The first has been conclusively proven: ELF, electromagnetic fields vibrating at about 30 to 100 hz, even if they are weaker than the earth’s field, interfere with the cues that keep our biological cycles properly timed; chronic stress and impaired disease resistance result. Second, the available evidence strongly suggests that regulation of cellular growth processes is impaired by electro pollution, increasing cancer rates and producing serious reproductive problems. Electromagnetic weapons constitute a third class of hazards culminating in climactic manipulation from a sorcerer’s-apprentice level of ignorance.”
Some chemicals and pesticides – pesticides, and common chemicals contain ingredients which, once inside the body, can mimic the action of oestrogen in your cells. Chemicals like Bisphenol A, Parabens, Phthalates and Toluene to name just a few are found in common usage as plasticisers, as preservatives and in nail polishes.
Stress hormones – all of the above cause acid stress in the body, as do the stress hormones themselves. Hormones like cortisol, produced by the adrenal glands in stressful times affect localized hormones around your cells – these are called eicosanoids. Insulin and steroids also stress your cells in this way.
Low blood oxygen – Dr. Otto Warburg was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1931 for the discovery that, unlike healthy cells in the human body, cancer cells do not “breathe” oxygen. Cancer cells are anaerobic, in other words they function with no oxygen present. In fact, cancer cells cannot survive in the presence of high levels of oxygen. Having a good level of oxygen in your blood and cells helps prevent cancer.

All of the above acid generating, stressful cell conditions lead to lowered cellular oxygen levels. In The Prime Cause and Prevention of Cancer, Dr. Warburg theorised that the way to treat cancer was to saturate the cells of the body with oxygen. This was his priority in treating cancer. The second priority was to avoid further exposure to toxins.

´Acid dumping´ – The toxins point of Warburg is amplified by Morishita. In his theory, as described in his book Hidden Truth of Cancer, it can all work at a more macro level than the mitochondrial and cellular goings on described above. He argues that the body dumps acidic substances from the blood into our cells to keep the blood in its naturally and essentially alkaline state.

This causes the cells to become toxic and acidic, decreases their oxygen levels, and harms DNA. Eventually most of the acidic cells will die. However, some will evolve, and adapt, and survive by becoming abnormal, mutated cells. Malignant cells. These multiply indefinitely and without order. THEY ARE CANCER.

IMPORTANCE OF pH – BY MARK TIMON
pH is a measure of acidity, and it measures the amount of negatively charged hydrogen ions that are in solution. A pH of 7.0 is neutral. Higher numbers on the pH scale are alkaline and lower numbers are acidic. The further away from the central value of 7.0, the more alkaline or more acidic is the solution. Human blood must remain within a very narrow, slightly alkaline range of 7.35 to 7.45. Slipping lower than 7.35 usually depresses the central nervous system. If blood should slip below 7.0, becoming markedly acidic, the central nervous system will become so depressed that coma and death may follow. Of course, we have several buffering systems that work to keep blood within the normal 7.35 to 7.45 range. Foods that promote a healthy pH balance tend to push blood toward the 7.45 side of the normal range.

In general, vegetables contribute fewer hydrogen ions than other foods, and are considered alkalinizing, as they help blood pH move toward 7.45. Given that Green Vibrance is a concentration of vegetable foods, and Field of Greens contains purely nutrient dense Greens, they can be expected to push pH toward 7.45 = alkalinizing. Meat proteins, long maligned as acid forming foods, have a largely neutral effect. Many starches and foods made from grains are primary offenders, with (ironically) brown rice leading the list of acid forming foods, driving blood pH down. Most dairy foods are also culprits. Parmesan cheese and American “cheese” are major contributors of hydrogen ions to the blood. I believe the acidifying effect of grains and dairy foods reflects our genetic heritage. As human biochemistry adapted to the food supply available during our millennia as hunter-gatherers (consuming approximately 3.2 pounds of vegetable material per day), neither grains or dairy foods were abundantly supplied. The grains were nearly totally absent. As a result, human biochemistry never developed a control mechanism to manage the acid byproducts of their digestion. Today we suffer the consequences in many ways, usually manifested through a host of degenerative diseases. Lowered pH is just a tiny effect that may open the door to illness.

Article By: Mark Timon, MS Clinical Nutrition 29 May 2009