There are certain numbers that we all know about that the body has to maintain within a very tight range to be healthy, and to be alive. Our body regulates its temperature at 98.6, our blood pressure at 120/80, blood sugar, cholesterol, etc.
Usually your doctors are monitoring those for you when you go for a checkup. Well, there is another number you MUST know about that you are probably not tracking - the pH of your body (saliva and urine). And if you are having trouble with your energy and other things, this is probably a number you should be looking at.
The human body thrives when it maintains a slightly alkaline pH. The pH scale goes from 0-14, where 0 is pure acid (burning a hole through steel), and 14 is pure alkaline. 7 is neutral. The pH of our blood ALWAYS regulates itself at 7.365, and that will NEVER change. You might be asking, if my pH is always 7.365 and can’t change, why do I need to eat alkaline?
The purpose of eating and drinking alkaline is not to try and raise the pH of your blood. The whole purpose of eating and drinking alkaline is to prevent the body from having to do the regulating. Your body will do WHATEVER it needs to regulate a constant pH of 7.365, and that is where the problem lies.
When you have an overly acidic diet and lifestyle, your body and blood will deplete its own resources (minerals!) to neutralize all that acid to maintain a healthy pH level. Alkalizing every day with organic greens and minerals will give your body the necessary nutrients it needs so that it doesn’t have to drain and deplete its own resources.
The pH of your saliva and urine, which is a direct indication of the health of your body tissues and what you have been doing over the past 24 hours does NOT remain constant like your blood. It will fluctuate for better or worse based on how you eat, drink, think, and move.
In our ideal state, our urine and saliva pH should be slightly alkaline at 7.2 – 7.4. If you are below 7.0, you are overly acidic and lack the necessary alkaline buffers to neutralize all that acid.
How you achieve that pH balance is by eating the right balance of foods. It is important to immediately start increasing your alkalinity with more vegetables high in calcium, magnesium and potassium.
To keep it simple, think of your diet like a math equation. In this equation, alkalizing foods (mainly organic greens and low-sugar fruits) all score well ABOVE 7.0. Acidifying foods which include just about everything else we eat (sugar, soda, processed grains, meat dairy, coffee, bread, packaged foods, pasta, etc) all score UNDER 7.0.
Claim your Ultimate Alkaline/Acid Food Guide
Click here to get our FREE Ultimate Alkaline/Acid Food Guide. I know you will find this chart very useful, as it is a quick reference guide for the most commonly used Alkaline and Acidic foods.
There are a number of foods and drinks that at first look would seem to be alkaline or acidic, when in fact the OPPOSITE is true! This easy to follow guide will help you make better choices when it comes to your food and beverages. Make sure to print a copy and bring with you the next time you go to the grocery store - it will come in handy!
In order to ensure that the body is at an alkaline pH, you have to eat more alkalizing foods than acidifying ones. You don’t have to be 100%, in fact, I’m not even 100%! Remember, it’s not about deprivation, it’s about moderation! I recommend 70/30 (alkaline/acid respectively), or 80/20.
If you are an overachiever, go for 90/10. Either way, this will give you the right ratio to keep your body alkaline and healthy. In our next blog, you will learn how to MEASURE and TRACK your body pH, so you can get on the road to optimal health and energy!
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Today I’m going to give you the real deal on oxalates, calcium absorption, and the “Kidney Stone Myth.”
You see, there’s a lot of misinformation out there about high oxalate vegetables such as spinach and their supposed effects on calcium absorption and kidney stones.
We’ll break this all down and let you know how to protect yourself from kidney stones.
What are Oxalates?
Oxalates are anti-nutrients that are found in certain foods, and they’re incredibly common. They’re found in:
The Supposed Concern About These Foods
They are thought to interfere with mineral absorption, such as calcium. However, it would take a very high amount of these oxalates to cause any calcium absorption loss that would pose a significant deficiency to your body.
Plus, since these foods like spinach are highly nutritious and alkaline, their upside negates any small potential downside of these anti-nutrients.
So just to be clear, we shouldn't stop eating spinach.
These foods aren’t going to lead to an increased risk of kidney stones.
However, for argument’s sake, let’s assume this claim is true for the moment. Let’s say you’re eating a lot of foods with high oxalate levels.
If you have a healthy gut, any potential loss of calcium absorption would be completely avoided.
Why? Well remember, like all minerals, calcium absorption happens in the large intestine with the help of vitamin D3.
When you have a majority of healthy bacteria taking residence, these oxalates will be broken down by them before the oxalates have the potential to bind to any minerals, including calcium, farther down the digestive tract.
One of the most important strains, Oxalobacter formigenes (and lactobacillus acidophilus, and bifidus to a lesser degree), actually uses oxalates as an energy source and is heavily responsible for their breakdown.
It significantly reduces the amount of oxalates your body absorbs.
Here’s the KEY factor…This is WHY you ideally you want to maintain at least 85% good healthy bacteria (or more) in the gut, and no more than 15% unhealthy bacteria.
This is why we all should be supplementing with a good probiotic, as the research shows we have 1/1,000,000 (yes, that was 6 zeros) the healthy bacteria that our per-agricultural ancestors maintained.
Make sure to switch up your probiotics every 30 days to get a variety of strains, they should be acid-stable, and need to be refrigerated.
Some patients ask about that because it’s not convenient for their lifestyle, so what you need to realize is that the refrigerated brands can last out of the fridge or freezer for up to 7 days.
What’s the real problem behind oxalates?
So, this is NOT an oxalate problem, it's an acid problem!
Why? Because what destroys the healthy bacteria in the gut are acid forming foods, and other dietary, chemical, and environmental toxins.
The biggest culprits are sugar, gluten, artificial sweeteners, and the mother of all bacterial killers, antibiotics.
Did you know that one dose of antibiotics will clear out your healthy bacteria in the digestive tract like napalm for 2 years?
Gut health is directly tied to your immune system and level of susceptibility to sickness, so this is crucial. So if there are any oxalate concerns, the true concern needs to be in the gut, addressing the bacterial imbalance caused most likely by an acidic diet.
If you’re taking probiotics and you still don’t have optimal gut health, there are two courses of action that I recommend.
The first is to DETOX or CLEANSE! The terrain may be so acidic that the probiotics won’t even take or have any effect. So clean up the terrain, and then all else will follow.
I call it WEED, SEED, and then FEED.
WEED phases is to detoxify. And what better time of year than the holidays to do the Alkamind 2-Day Detox Challenge. Anyone can do 2 days, and the results you will get in terms of energy, losing a couple pounds during ‘toxic season’ will be well worth it.
Now that things are clean and less toxic, the SEED phase can be. Now, reinoculate the microbiome (gut) with a good probiotic, and you will find it will be so much more effective.
Then, FEED the digestive system with 100% healthy, organic, alkaline whole-based foods.
An additional second option is Molecular Hydrogen. If you’re not familiar with this, it’s a supplement that repairs your gut faster than even antibiotics can kill it.
Molecular hydrogen can stimulate anaerobic microflora in the gut, which can quickly reestablish the good bacteria and gut health. It’s really beneficial for people with inflammatory bowel disorders, like Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Crohn’s Disease, Celiac, and diverticulitis.
The Kidney Stone Myth
If you are having challenges with kidney stones, what you need to know is that they aren’t a calcium problem or a vegetable problem. They signal an acid problem!
For people who form calcium oxalate kidney stones, dietary oxalates only account for 10-15% of the oxalate that is found in their urine. The rest, 80-85%, occur in the body metabolically (aka. ACID).
One of the largest and longest studies on kidney stones and oxalate vegetables was published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. It studied the subject for 44 combined years and 240,681 people.
It concluded, “The relation between dietary oxalate and stone risk is unclear.” Let me translate – kidney stones are NOT caused by calcium or oxalates.
Avoiding these vegetables is worse than throwing the baby out with the bath water!
Not only are they not implicated as a major risk factor for kidney stones, these veggies have so much to offer nutritionally.
Vegetables like spinach are the antidote to the known causes of kidney stones:
What do these foods have in common? ACID!
So the focus for preventing kidney stones needs to be on minimizing the acid in your diet and increasing the alkalinity. In fact, a Swiss research study found a diet rich in alkaline vegetables is associated with a lower risk of kidney stone formation.
How do you minimize the acid?
Remember to DEMAND organic, especially when it comes to those chlorophyll-rich greens. They can be very high in pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and GMOs.
Still concerned?
If you want to err on the side of caution, doing a flash steam, sauté, or blanch boil for less than 4 minutes of your oxalate vegetables. This accomplishes 2 things: first and foremost, it preserves all the enzymes, and the spinach for example, will still be raw and highly alkaline.
Second, lightly cooking will breakdown the oxalic acid molecules by up to 90% as well as increase the amount of bio-available vitamin K1, which is indirectly important for calcium absorption.
Another way to minimize oxalates’ interference with calcium is to eat oxalates foods along with tomatoes, lemons, limes, and/or grapefruit. These foods are high in vitamin C, which blocks oxalates from binding to calcium, encouraging further absorption. Vitamin C also changes the form of iron in spinach to a much more bioavailable and absorbable form.
Last but not least, I can’t stress this enough, I am going to say it again, it’s THAT important!
Minimize acid by taking Alkamind Daily Greens each morning and Alkamind Daily Minerals 30 minutes before bed. Overnight, your kidneys will work to process out acid so the minerals will take some of the load off, and then start your day the alkaline way.
]]>Today, we’re going to head back to school for a science lesson that can lead to easier weight loss, more powerful detoxification, preventing cancer, and much more.
What are we going to study? Chlorophyll.
You might remember chlorophyll as a plant pigment that’s responsible for photosynthesis, when the plant absorbs light and turns it into energy.
Chlorophyll is also an incredibly important superfood for humans. Its many benefits include:
Chlorophyll, when consumed sufficiently, can actually bind itself to carcinogens including tobacco, UV light that can damage skin in excess, and food borne toxins, preventing them from being absorbed.
That makes it one of the most powerful antioxidants there is!
It can even reduce the risk for liver damage and liver cancer by increasing production of the enzymes that remove toxins from the body.
It has the same molecular structure as your blood, except the center atom is magnesium, whereas in blood it’s iron, so if you have anemia, you need to consume even more chlorophyll.
Because chlorophyll slows the reproduction of harmful bacteria, it makes wounds heal faster, prevents infections from spreading or becoming worse, and helps heal ulcers.
It speeds up the elimination process, preventing constipation and removing toxins from the body more quickly without allowing Leaky Gut Syndrome to take place. Its digestive effects are said to aid in chlorophyll’s role in weight loss as well.
It turns off pro-inflammatory chemicals in the body, allowing your body to heal from the devastating effects of chronic inflammation.
Studies have shown that chlorophyll aids your body’s hormones that signal you when you’re full. Compound that with sweeping clean the digestive tract more efficiently and there’s reason to believe that increasing chlorophyll, either by diet or supplement, aids weight loss efforts.
Research has linked chlorophyll to lowering the risk of skin cancer, preventing shingles, healing herpes outbreaks, and reducing sores on the skin.
So how do you get more chlorophyll?
As you can imagine, green vegetables are a top source of chlorophyll, but not the only source. Eat more of these chlorophyll-rich foods:
Raw is best.
Chlorophyll levels in food are greatly reduced when you cook them, so the more raw, green veggies you can consume, the better.
Add greens to your smoothies and fresh juices, or use them in salads and chilled soups to get more raw chlorophyll.
Supplement with Chlorophyll
It takes 60 servings of spinach today to equal the mineral content in 1 serving of spinach in 1948 because of soil depletion and pesticide use.
So even if you eat chlorophyll-rich foods, you aren’t going to get enough from your diet alone.
What is the best way for you to get your daily dose of chlorophyll? DRINK IT!
Alkamind Daily Greens delivers 5 servings of chlorophyll in just 1 scoop! It’s a mega-dose of the powerful greens your body wants. What is best about this superfood supplement is that its #1 ingredient is what I consider he Holy Grail of chlorophyll, what I call the most powerful food on the planet, Wheatgrass.
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There is overwhelming scientific evidence of the importance of eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables with lots of minerals and very little or no sugar.
Supplementing with alkaline minerals has been shown to positively affect our health as well:
If there is one thing I have learned from my Chiropractic Wellness Clinic in Manhattan – as well as living the alkaline lifestyle myself – it’s that eating alkaline gets to the TRUE CAUSE of what ails you.
The first thing you’ll notice when you start eating more alkaline is that you have boundless energy. Over time, your digestive problems will become a thing of the past, skin issues will clear up, headaches will cease, and muscles and joints will move freely without pain.
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