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Some foods make you acid. Some foods make you alkaline. But why should you care about alkaline versus acidic? Here’s what everyone should know about how to balance the body’s pH.
Back in high school chemistry, we learned about pH: A pH of 7.0 is neutral, acids have lower numbers, alkalines have higher numbers — and it all meant absolutely nothing in terms of day-to-day life.
It turns out, though, that we have a better shot at long-term health if our body’s pH is neutral or slightly alkaline. When we tilt toward greater acidity and throw off our acid-alkaline balance, we have a greater risk of developing osteoporosis, weak muscles, heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease and a host of other health problems.
An important key to maintaining a healthy acid- alkaline balance, according to doctors and nutritionists, is eating a diet with a relative balance of alkaline-forming and acid-forming foods. Unfortunately, the typical American diet — which is high in acid-producing foods like meat, dairy, sugar, and highly refined and processed foods, and low in alkaline-forming foods such as fresh vegetables — causes many Americans to suffer from “chronic low-grade metabolic acidosis,” a condition characterized by a subtle, yet definite, acid buildup within our system.
The solution, predictably, is eating an alkaline-forming diet — one that’s high in fruits and vegetables. The bonus, of course, is that this dietary recommendation not only helps balance pH, but also offers a host of other healthy benefits.
If the idea of balancing acid and alkaline foods seems a bit off the wall to you, you’re not alone. Most people, including physicians, aren’t yet familiar with the dangers of acidosis, except in the most extreme situations. We tend to confine our nutritional concerns to essential vitamins and minerals.
But the problem with acid-producing eating habits is very real, contends Loren Cordain, PhD, a professor and researcher in the department of health and exercise science at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. “After digestion, all foods report to the kidneys as being either acidic or alkaline,” he says. “The kidneys are responsible for fluid balance and maintaining a relatively neutral pH in the body.”
That’s where things get interesting. While the body can and does draw on its alkaline reserves in an effort to correct the incipient excess acidity in our bodily fluids and tissues, some experts argue that the arduous process of stabilizing our body chemistry depletes our bodies of important nutrients and undermines our cellular vitality, bone and organ health, and immunity in ways that can leave our bodies susceptible to a host of chronic diseases.
When acid-yielding foods lower the body’s pH, for example, the kidneys coordinate efforts to buffer that acidity. The kidneys signal the bones to release calcium and magnesium to reestablish alkalinity, and muscles are broken down to produce ammonia, which is strongly alkaline. The result? By the time the response is done, important bone minerals and broken-down muscle get excreted in urine.
This acidity-balancing response can lead to thinner bones and lower muscle mass, points out Anthony Sebastian, MD, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Long-term calcium and magnesium losses can also result in health problems — both minerals play essential roles in bone formation and normal heart rhythm, and low magnesium levels in particular can cause muscle cramps, arrhythmia and anxiety.
It’s possible that years of eating an acid-yielding diet could have other far-reaching ramifications. Some health experts, such as Christopher Vasey, ND, author of The Acid-Alkaline Diet for Optimum Health (Inner Traditions, 2003), assert that chronic acidosis can leave the body vulnerable to everything from chronic fatigue syndrome to eczema.
To date, few such problems have been formally studied in terms of how they relate to pH. Still, Sebastian acknowledges that we may have only scratched the surface when it comes to the health concerns related to mild lifelong acidosis. For example, it’s possible that low-grade acidosis increases insulin resistance (the hallmark of both prediabetes and full-blown type 2 diabetes), as well as the risk of kidney stones and kidney failure. A 2005 study published in the Journal of Cellular Biochemistry suggests that it might even alter gene activity and raise the risk of breast cancer. Sebastian admits that no one yet knows all the outcomes of a fundamental shift in the body’s acid-alkaline balance, but he suspects it’s broad. Like most nutritional problems, pH imbalances may take years to manifest symptoms that reach clinical significance and are thus unlikely to be the subject of large-scale, definitive clinical research anytime soon.
Some of the strongest evidence in support of maintaining an acid-alkaline balance relates to osteoporosis. “Consider that Americans consume more calcium-rich dairy foods than almost every other nation, and that we have one of the highest rates of osteoporosis,” says Cordain. “There’s a disconnect here. Dairy may be rich in calcium, but most dairy foods also produce an acid yield.”
Susan Brown, PhD ( www.susanbrownphd.com), director of the Osteoporosis Education Project in East Syracuse, N.Y., and coauthor of The Acid-Alkaline Food Guide: A Quick Reference to Foods & Their Effect on pH Levels (Square One Publishers, 2006), frames the acid-alkaline issue as one of mineral adequacy and depletion. “It’s a little like over-farming and depleting mineral levels in soil,” she says. “If we eat foods that create an acidic pH in the body, we will deplete our bones of minerals and our muscles of protein.”
Brown describes a client named Janet whose doctor diagnosed her at age 52 with osteopenia, a demineralizing of bone that often foreshadows osteoporosis. At 55, Janet began following Brown’s recommendations for eating more fruits and vegetables, using appropriate vitamin D supplementation, taking other bone-building nutrients, and increasing her exercise program. Three years later, Janet was clearly building bone mass in her spine and hip, even while going through menopause.
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