What About Your pH Balance?
And why is it so important?

Here we will cover, in more detail, an important topic which has become trendy to talk about in the media; pH balance. However, it has been popularized in such a manner that it oversimplifies the complex and elaborate processes used by the body to maintain a proper pH level in the blood. See Acid-Alkaline Food Chart.

pH is a scale or balance system. The term pH means “potential of hydrogen”. In order to understand pH we have to know what pH is measuring: alkalinity and acidity. pH numbers range from 1 to 14 with neutral being 7.0.

What is the definition of alkalinity and acidity? Acidity is the concentration of hydrogen ions or H's. Alkalinity is the concentration of the hydroxyl ions or OH’s. So the difference between acidity and alkalinity is oxygen. The body attempts to maintain a pH of 7.4 in critical body fluids, and as such it must be mildly alkaline. If it is not mildly alkaline, it cannot use oxygen efficiently and if it is unable to use the oxygen effectively, it produces free oxygen radicals.

The alkaline side of the pH scale is called aerobic metabolism, where oxygen burns glucose to create energy. Oxygen burns one sugar molecule via the kreb cycle to produce 36 energy molecules called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). O2 + 1glc -> 36 ATP

This process is called oxidative respiration. It is important to remember that oxygen does not make the environment alkaline; oxygen is the currency, the substance that is used in an alkaline environment to keep you alive.

But there are substances that keep you alkaline called buffers. There are two buffers:

1) Extra cellular fluids found outside of the cell made up of air and water, which produces carbon dioxide (CO2) and bicarbonate (HCO3). AIR + H2O ->CO2 + HCO3

This process primarily takes place in the lungs and kidneys, but there are other organs that can compensate to help manufacture CO2 and bicarbonate but CO2 is injected into the blood by the lungs and the bicarbonate CO2 balance is maintained primarily by the first organ of activity, the kidney. BUT, where does disease begin? Usually at the cellular level inside the cells.

2) Intracellular fluids found inside of the cell contain buffers called hemoglobin (which can handle approximately 20% of the cellular buffering needs), calcium(Ca), magnesium (Mg), potassium (K), sodium (Na), chloride (Cl) and phosphate (PO4). These are the buffers that the body uses primarily to maintain alkalinity.

Did you know your body doesn’t produce Ca, Mg, K, Na & Cl ?

We have all heard of these minerals (Ca, Mg, K, Na & Cl), but the body does not just produce these molecules; you must first bring them into the body.

Minerals bind to other minerals, creating very small compact, tightly bound substances like bone, rock and shells. We are not built to eat things like that, thus, it is difficult for our bodies to dissociate these minerals thru ionization. This has to happen in the stomach. One of the reasons that certain products are sold in the mainstream market place to help acidity is because they buffer so significantly. They suck up a lot of acid because it takes a lot of acid to split these minerals apart. Those kinds of minerals do not exist in the food that we eat (vegetation, fish, poultry and meat). The minerals are bound to organic acids, large weakly bound molecules so that when you put them in your stomach, the stomach acid easily and effortlessly ionizes them because in the blood the minerals are ionic (unbound molecules). So, the ease with which the body can ionize the minerals is an important factor; if you try to eat bones, rocks, or shells, you impose a tremendous challenge on the body’s ability to ionize those minerals; therefore, you reduce the ability to utilize those minerals and you impose some stress. If you take something like a calcium sulphate; it that can actually cause intestinal hemorrhaging. Iron is bound to some of those minerals; making them caustic and damaging to the intestinal lining. As such, we like to use organic forms of minerals, not necessarily certified organic but bound to organic acids like lactic acid, malic acid, amino acids, alpha-keto glutaric acid and citric acid; basically large molecules that are easily ionized so that the body can use them.

On the other side of pH

On the other side of the pH scale is the anaerobic metabolism (without oxygen). Here, glucose is only able to produce 2 ATP molecules. CO2 -> 2 ATP

This reaction uses a kind of fall-back fail system called fermentation. This process is not very efficient because the cells want 36 ATP molecules and are getting only 2, so the cell has to use more fuel to make more ATP. If it was able to make the same amount of energy, it would need a minimum of 18 times more sugar. An increase craving of sugar is due to high acidity of bodily fluids, if you were more alkaline you would not have that need for sugar. As a matter of fact, this system doesn’t work efficiently because lack of oxygen brings decay and death while oxygen brings life.

Interestingly, one glucose molecule equals two lactic acid molecules. Lactic acid damages cell membranes, causes pain, and helps to stimulate inflammatory disorders. As such, the body tries to get rid of it. The medics look for something called lactate dehydrogenase (LDH). High levels of LDH on a chem panel, signifies that the body is trying desperately to breakdown lactic acid in the cells. So this is a byproduct of the inefficiency of this system and is why all cancer cells are bathed in lactic acid. Some other anaerobes include yeast, fungi, mold, bacteria, worms and other parasites.

Cancer cells are anaerobic

Cancer is an anaerobe, in fact, Dr Worburg (1934) demonstrated that if you put cancer cells in an alkaline solution they die within a short period of time because alkaline solutions contain oxygen and oxygen is toxic to cancer cells.

As a matter of fact, there are some clinics around the world that use ozone (O3) to kill cancer cells. Unfortunately, you can kill all the cancer cells you want but the problem with this approach is that it is rather like swatting mosquitoes in order to get rid of a stagnant pond. It simply isn’t going to help; you have to clean up the pond up to finally get rid of the mosquitoes. So to cure disease, we have to correct the acidic environment of the body; not go after the parasite that is associated with an acidic pH.

Many individuals use pH test strips to check the pH of the body, but it must be clearly understood that when you test urine or saliva pH, it is not telling you what the pH of the body is. What it is telling you is the overall burden that the body is imposing on non-critical fluids for buffers to keep blood at a pH of 7.4 If that critical pH level drops a few tenths of a point, you are dead. So checking pH by drawing blood is not useful, unless you’re a medical doctor, because blood pH can’t change that much. If you are deficient in minerals some very interesting things start to happen to your body:

1. It robs minerals from your saliva because saliva is a non-critical body fluid and as such a change in the pH of your saliva will not cause your body to die.ii) It robs minerals from the muscles which are why you get muscle cramps, twitches, charlie horses, leg shakes, night shakes, eye twitching and many other physical disorders associated with electrolyte deficiency or mineral deficiency.

2. It robs minerals such as calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate from the bone, but not the organic forms needed for your diet. The body needs these minerals for pH regulation. So where does it send these minerals in order to ionize them? To the kidney, since the kidney is where acidic and alkaline levels of the body are maintained (CO2 and HCO3), hoping that the acidity of the CO2 will ionize the minerals so that they can be used for the important role of maintaining pH. Calcium is the most abundant mineral in the body and has the most rapid turnover in pH maintenance.

Risk of mineral deficiency

This leaves the individual who is mineral deficient at risk of developing kidney stones, gall stones, bone spurs, calcium deposits, tendon and ligament tears, muscle strains and sprains, muscle scar tissue, heart problems and atherosclerotic plaqing? The sequence of problems begins to escalate, but it all starts with low back pain and large muscle cramping.

For example, finger twitching can occur when writing because the arm is resting on a nerve and there are electrolyte deficiencies in the body. So, you need to consume healthy forms, either ionic minerals or weakly organically bound forms of minerals in your diet. When you take a pill that has minerals in it, for example, one that is proposed to contain 1000 mg of calcium, it comes from substances that are made from bones, rocks and shells; however, that form of mineral is not going to provide the best source of nutrition for you. But if you eat a piece of steak or chicken that contains 1000 mg of calcium, you will be getting your calcium, magnesium, and potassium in your food and/or supplements that contain organic forms and/or in water that has coral calcium in it that is ionized and readily available. For example, when you put the tea bag of ionic coral calcium in water and you shake it up, you ionize the minerals in there (Ca, Mg & K), and it probably doesn’t even have the chance to get to the stomach because it is flash absorbed. It is ionic and looking for a partner with which to bind.

So if you are craving carbohydrates and you are getting muscle aches, muscle cramps and twitches and low back pains and you have headaches, neurological problems and your digestion is down, you know that you are acidic. (See DownWithCarbs.com.) Yeast problems, worms and parasites are all low level symptoms of issues of acidosis. All life exists in a healthy alkaline pH, where oxygen can be efficiently utilized to burn sugar and make energy. If oxygen can not be utilized on the acidic side of the scale, the body produces a lot of free oxygen radicals. If you want to be healthy you have to be alkaline. Does that mean eating alkaline foods? No, it means eating foods rich in fatty acids because fatty acids and minerals work together like “handshakes.” But you need to have the minerals, because the minerals in your food and water help to fund the resources needed to maintain an alkaline pH. Resource: TheWolfeClinic.com

"In my experience as a teacher of Kundalini Yoga, I have observed many
people, young and old, with poor breathing habits. The practice of Kundalini
Yoga (inclusive of the Breath of Fire, Long Deep Breathing, Stretching, Internal
Massage, etc.), and other aerobic exercising, can provide additional and much
needed oxygen for oxygen starved cells, especially in the brain." -- Hari Singh

"In each and every environment, good
health and sustained wellness is dependant
on the rapid removal of waste. In terms of your
personal health, you need to void solid waste two
to three times a day or once between each meal,
without straining, to maintain wellness." -- H. S. Khalsa

Acid-Alkaline Food Chart is next