This is about Acid/Alkaline balance. Here is what Rey Allen learned at Viva Mayr:

1. As we know, an excessive amount of acidity reduces the body’s minerals, vitamins, trace elements, and sustains inflammation in the body. Stress, lack of rest and certain foods or food combining cause our body’s to become more acidic. An acidic environment is what cancer, degenerative diseases, inflammation, gout, leaky gut syndrome and my personal favorite, bad breath thrive in.

One way to diagnose high acidity is to look at your tongue. If your tongue has any kind of coating on it and/or you can see, even the slightest hint, teeth impressions along the side of your tongue -your pH is off.

Foods that are acidic, obviously including meats, coffee, and sugars, combined with other acidic foods (carbs and starches) create major problems for us. We have to always combine the acid and alkaline foods when eating in a 2:1 ratio; two alkaline foods to every acidic one. Starch is considered acidic and must be combined as if it were acidic like meat. If you are going to eat meat combine it only with veggies only, potatoes only with veggies, rice only with veggies but not chicken & rice nor meat & potatoes- bad news bears unless you are absolutely healthy. The funny thing about meat and potatoes is that starch and meat require different lengths of time to break down in the stomach before moving on, through the duodenum where the bile and pancreatic juices do their thing, then onto the small intestines. This sequence is very important to understand. See, between the stomach and the digestive track is the pyloric valve which is a sphincter and will only open, letting the stomach’s material pass through if the food is properly broken down. Now pay attention, starch only needs less then an hour to move on while meat requires 2-3 hrs for breakdown. What happens when these two are ingested together is that the starch will cause the pylorus to open too early causing the animal by-products to enter into the system. This then puts a huge demand on our intestinal flora to do the rest of the digesting which is not ideal nor efficient for extracting all its nutrients.

And for those of us who have prescribed to the raw food craze, watch out, raw foods requires a good portion of the day to break down because it must first ferment in the gut which is high acidic. Not that you cant eat raw foods, god bless you, but that you should never eat raw foods in the evening, before going to sleep, this will push your whole system towards acidity making a raw food diet actually dangerous for some.

2. The stomach stores most of the acidity for breaking down the foods, as it should, and as a result there is a by-product called Sodium Bicarbonate which is released into the body via the blood stream. Sodium Bicarbonate is Alkaline. This is good. This alkalinity reduces inflammation in the body. After food passes through the stomach it mixes with pancreatic juices and bile salts which are alkaline. The small intestine fluids are entirely alkaline. Having alkalinity supports the digestives systems and its ability to eliminate. Also, being stressed and eating improperly for long periods of time increases the amount of acidity in the stomach. The stomach has a threshold on how much Sodium Bicarbonate it can produce. So when the acidity remains high for long periods the Sodium Bicarbonate reserves for the body run out. Inflammation and other healing processes are stalled or exacerbated. Sadly, the majority of us have this problem.

3. The other important factors that is stressed here is chewing of our foods. We have all heard this before but these guys are on the ball and are wanting every last drop of our saliva partaking in our digestive process. With every meal that would be a soup or a broth or something you can eat that doesn’t require chewing they make sure we have spelt bread so to keep our jaw in motion.

4. We have all heard that drinking water with meals dilutes the stomach juices. But the real issue is drinking fluids with meals dilute our saliva. The saliva is one of the most important elements for the “proper” digestive process. So, no fluids while eating people. You’ll need your spit.

5. The Kidneys eliminate the acids but must use a buffer agent, Phosphates, to both keep the environment of the kidneys healthy and to neutralize acidity. Phosphates are of course alkaline. Phosphates are stored primarily in the bones, so if too many phosphates are required to reduce the high acidity in the body it reduces the Phosphate’s presence in the bones. Important to understand about Phosphates is that it pairs with Calcium so when the Phosphates are drawn out of the bones, to assist the kidneys, so to is the Calcium drawn out of the bones. This of course weakens our bones and creates the environment for an early development of osteoporosis. People that eat an excessive amount of meat without proper “food combining” are found to eliminate 70% more calcium then people that pair their foods properly. And a myth about Calcium, milk can never replenish our supply. In fact we now know that milk actually reduces our stored calcium. I can’t explain it but physiologically it’s a known fact. (The dairy industry has been bullshitting us for 80 years and we have just bought into it from the beginning. )

Now of course we don’t have to always eat this way. The body is designed to take on more foods and in random order but I was told this is the best way to regulate and/or restore our health . If we can live most of our lives within these parameters then we can get sloppy drunk and recover in a reasonable amount of time rather then just adding to the problem.

5. A few ways to reduce acidity in the body:
-Drinking water eliminates the body’s acidity. Only drink between meals though. Also important to know, lots of fluids = lots of pooping (and peeing of course).
-Learn to pair your foods.
-But the #1 way a person can eliminate the acidity in their body……. is through exercise, breathing that is! Your exhalation is made up of CO2 which is all acid. So, heavy breathing actually balances the body’s pH balance. Let me stress, this is the #1 way to reduce our acidity.
-Oh, and the one thing that creates a highly acidic body, SMOKING! Put it out people.

Thanks Rey, for your great notes.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 10:18 am and is filed under Research & Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.