hackskii

Part 2 of 3

activity.
Your cells produce acid as they function. As long as cells are alive, they work and produce acid. As cells die off, other cells replace them. The new cells also produce acid. So, as long as you are alive, new cells are being produced, and cells are producing acid. In addition, when you exercise, cells produce more acid than when you're resting. Acid production is a standard procedure for your body.
That's strange! The body works best when it is slightly alkaline. Staying alkaline is so important that the body uses and loses vital minerals as it gets rid of acid. Yet the body produces acid.
That's right. Your body is alkaline by design and acid by function. That is a very important concept. Alkaline by design; acid by function: However, there's a big difference between the acid your cells produce and the acid that you get in high-protein acid ash producing foods. In the first place, the acid from cells - physiological acid, it's called - is a lot weaker than acid from high-protein acid ash foods. And in the second place, self-produced cellular acid doesn't need to be neutralized by vital minerals before it is sent out of the body. Self-produced cellular acid is easily eliminated through your lungs when you breathe and when you talk. Do you suppose there's a connection here with the saying "full of hot air"?

You also get acid from foods, such as oranges and lemons, that are acid in their own right. This acid is also different from the acid you get from acid ash-producing foods. And it is as easily eliminated as the acid cells produce. This concept gets a little tricky, so we'll clear it up a bit.

We have talked a lot about acid ash-producing foods that leave an acid residue after they get into the body. By now you know that acid ash foods are generally high-protein meats, poultry, fish. and grains. Now we're talking about acid foods that are acid when they go into the body. They are naturally acid. Lemons, oranges, and grapefruit are obviously acid. In fact, they are so acid that many people can't eat them without suffering discomfort. In general, fruits and vegetables are naturally acid foods.

In their natural state, acid foods - fruits and vegetables - have more built-in acid than do high-protein acid ash-producing foods - meat, poultry, fish, and grains. Fruit acid especially may be fairly strong going into your body. However, your body can get rid of fruit and vegetable acid very easily. The tag-along acid from fruits and vegetables is eliminated the same way as the acid generated by your cells. You just blow it off.

The acid from acid ash-producing foods is different. This is the kind of acid that needs to be neutralized before it is eliminated from your body. You can't just blow it off. It must be weakened and escorted by neutralizing minerals out of the body through kidneys or bowel.
The acid of fruits and vegetables is no problem. The acid from ash of meats, poultry, fish, and grains can be a problem.

Just as high-protein foods leave a residual ash, fruits and vegetables also leave an ash residue. However, despite the naturally acid nature of fruits or vegetables, generally, the ash they leave is not acid. There's a big difference between the ash left by fruits and vegetables and the ash left by high-protein acid ash-producing foods. The ash left by most fruits and vegetables is alkaline. It contains minerals that help alkalize your body.

Fruits are pretty neat additions to your body. They're not big stress producers. They are easily digested. The acid that comes in them is easily eliminated through the lungs. And the ash they leave contributes needed minerals for your body to use. Great system design! Fruits have no obvious character flaws. Instead of acid fruits being a problem for your body, they contribute much needed alkalizing minerals that help keep your internal pH under control. They help clean up the neighborhood.

Now let's get down to the nitty-gritty practical application.

We'll now list some specific foods that are acid ash-producers and some that are alkaline ash-producers. Then we'll explain how to test your urine to tell if you have been overloading your alkalizing life-support system with too much acid.

THE GOOD, THE NOT-SO-GOOD, AND THE NEUTRAL

We've talked about acid ash-producing foods and alkaline ash-producing foods. You now know that, in general, acid ash foods are high protein meat, poultry, fish, and grains. You can top off that acid menu with some nuts - chopped or whole. You also know that, in general, fruits and vegetables are alkaline ash-producing foods. But notice that both groups are generalizations. There are exceptions in both. In addition, there is a small group of neutral ash foods that have an acidifying effect on the body. (Is nothing clear-cut?) These neutral ash foods include refined sugar, corn syrup, corn oil, and olive oil.

The following lists of the alkaline ash-producing foods and acid ash-producing foods are in alphabetical order. They aren't in "strength" order. Some foods are more acidifying or alkalizing than others. But these lists will give you the information you'll need when you prepare to check your urine pH. You may be surprised at how many acid ash foods you eat every day. You will also find these lists as tear-outs in the appendix section.


SOME COMMON ALKALINE ASH FOODS
(Help to control acid in your internal environment)
Almonds Dates, dried Parsnips
Apples Figs, dried Peaches
Apricots Grapefruit Pears
Avocados Grapes Pineapple
Bananas Green beans Potatoes, sweet
Beans, dried Green peas Potatoes, white
Beet greens Lemons Radishes
Beets Lettuce Raisins
Blackberries Lima beans, dried Raspberries
Broccoli Lima beans, green Rhubarb**
Brussels sprouts Limes Rutabagas
Cabbage Milk, goat* Sauerkraut
Carrots Millet Soy beans, green
Cauliflower Molasses Spinach, raw
Celery Mushrooms Strawberries
Chard leaves Muskmelons Tangerines
Cherries, sour Onions Tomatoes
Cucumbers Oranges Watercress
Watermelon

* Recommended for infants only when mother's milk is not available
** Not recommended: has properties detrimental to the body







SOME COMMON ACID ASH FOODS

(Leave strong acid in your internal environment)
Bacon Eggs Pork
Barley grain Flour, white Prunes *
Beef Flour, whole wheat Rice, brown
Blueberries Haddock Rice, white
Bran, wheat Honey Salmon
Bran, oat Lamb Sardines
Bread, white Lentils, dried Sausage
Bread, whole wheat Lobster Scallops
Butter Milk, cow's* Shrimp
Carob Macaroni Spaghetti
Cheese Oatmeal Squash, winter
Chicken Oysters Sunflower seeds
Cod Peanut butter Turkey
Corn Peanuts Veal
Corned beef Peas, dried Walnuts
Crackers, soda Pike Wheat germ
Cranberries Plums * Yogurt
Currants
* These foods leave an alkaline ash but have an acidifying effect on the body.

NEUTRAL ASH FOODS THAT HAVE AN
ACIDIFYING EFFECT
Corn oil Corn syrup Olive oil Refined sugar





THE URINE pH CHALLENGE

The purpose of checking the pH of your urine is to evaluate how your alkaline reserve is holding up and if your ammonia backup system must take the role of key acid neutralizer.

The first step of the pH challenge is to eat only acid ash-producing foods for two days. That means lots of meat, eggs, pasta, rice, chicken, bread, peanut butter, and anything else listed on the Acid Ash Foods list. But no fruit, no fruit juice, no salad, no potato chips, no banana splits, no strawberry jam - nothing listed on the Alkaline Ash Foods list.

There's no need to check your urine pH until after you have been on a strictly acid ash diet for two days. Knowing the pH of your urine doesn't tell you how your body handles excess acid if you don't know what foods your body has been processing. The "pH challenge" taken after eating a controlled diet is different from conventional pH urine tests that focus on gathering other information.
Recall that your alkaline reserve is made up of neutralizing minerals that keep strong acid left by high-protein foods from sizzling your innards. After the acid has been neutralized, it and the minerals leave your body in your urine. Your urine holds clues to whether or not, or how seriously, your supply of alkalizing minerals has been drained. If your alkaline reserve is in good shape, even though you have eaten great quantities of high-protein foods, your urine should show evidence that alkaline minerals have been the principle acid neutralizer. The condition of your alkaline reserve depends on how much high-protein food your body has had to contend with over time.
Keep in mind that we all need protein in our diets. Protein is a building block of cells, body, and health. We need protein. We don't need too much protein. That's what we're talking about here - too much protein!

Your pH challenge checks your alkaline reserve's ability to handle strong acid from a lot of protein. So, to make sure it's a valid test, you need a lot of protein in your body before you check your urine. That's the challenge - to see if your alkaline reserve can still handle great quantities of acid from great quantities of acid ash foods. Your alkaline reserve is being pitted against a concentrated dose of dietary acid. No point in trying to see how well dietary acid is being neutralized if you haven't eaten much high-protein food recently. This is why it's important that you eat only foods from the Acid Ash list for two days before you check your urine pH. You are going to flood your body with excess acid ash-producing protein. You might say the pH challenge is the acid test.

BUT WAIT!!!

If you are seriously ill with a life-threatening disease - or any major illness - do not go on a diet of high-protein foods. Once more, just to make sure you get that. IF YOU ARE SERIOUSLY ILL, DO NOT EAT A LOT OF HIGH-PROTEIN FOODS!!!!

Remember that the purpose of monitoring pH is to evaluate an individual's health. The health of the really sick has already been evaluated - it's not good. Those who are seriously ill already have too much acid in their systems - their bodies are quite toxic. Putting more acid ash-producing foods in a body that's already toxic from too much acid could have disastrous results. DON'T DO IT!! If you are in the seriously ill category, don't worry about your pH at this point. Just eat brown rice and as many servings of cooked vegetables as your body can tolerate.

Back to the procedure for those who are not seriously ill.

After your two full days of gluttonous gorging on steak, hamburgers, pasta, bread, rolls, eggs, cheese, sausage, biscuits, oatmeal, chicken, seafood, and any other high-protein foods you can fit in, you are ready to check your urine pH. This is done on the morning of the third day at the first voiding, preferably after you have slept for at least five hours. However, if you get up several times during the night, you may not rack up five non-stop hours of sleep time. Do your pH challenge when you get up to start the day. The reason you use the first voiding of the morning is that during the night your body has been doing basic "housecleaning." First thing in the morning you get rid of most of the remnants of the previous day's food and physiological activity.

The actual procedure is simple. Reading these directions takes longer than the pH test itself.
On the morning after your two-day protein binge, as soon as you get up and go to the bathroom, tear a two- to three-inch strip of pH test paper from the roll. You will see that there is a color chart on the pH paper dispenser. This is the chart you'll use to get your urine pH number. Now, using your two- to three-inch strip of pH paper, direct one end of the paper into the urine stream very briefly - for about a second. All you need to do is get the paper wet. The paper will respond. Then match the color of the wet pH paper with a color on the dispenser chart. Note the number designated above the matching color. Dispose of the used pH paper, and write down the pH number and the current date. Take my word for it: if you don't write down your pH score, you'll forget the number before your next urine pH check, and you want to compare the two. One of the purposes of all of this is to evaluate the progress of your health - health is a process, not a one-time thing.

That's all there is to the actual pH testing. Now comes the important part. Interpreting the results. The interpretations that follow are based on clinical results gathered over thirty years of clinical practice with thousands of patients. These interpretations may not agree with your medical doctor's interpretation and understanding of urine pH. Medical urinalysis may be directed toward different evaluations. The urine pH numbers you are interpreting are intended to help you monitor your health, not to tell you how sick you are or what disease you have.





WHAT THE NUMBERS MEAN

Your urine pH numbers are alkaline reserve indicators. The "Urine pH Results" chart in the appendix gives a synopsis of the meaning of the numbers. But a little more explanation might be helpful.

Urine pH 5.5 - 5.8

If your urine scored pH 5.5 or pH 5.8, your alkaline reserve is adequate. It's holding its own. You have enough alkalizing minerals in your body to handle a concentrated load of dietary acid. That's good. It shows that you have enough alkaline minerals to protect your kidneys from being fried by strong acid from excess protein.

You can rejoice. But don't get smug or complacent. Maybe you did well because you're still young enough that you haven't had enough meals to make major inroads into your alkaline reserve. Maybe you aren't a big meat-eater. Maybe you just like vegetables and fruit. Whatever the reason you fared so well, you need to make sure that you continue to re-equip your alkaline supply for the future.
Although your urine pH indicates that your body can handle great gobs of protein, you don't need to press the point. If you make a habit of overloading with high-protein foods, your supply of neutralizing minerals will dwindle slowly. Your alkaline reserve is adequate - now. Keep it that way. Make sure you eat enough alkaline ash foods to keep it well stocked.

Now that you know your body can handle excess dietary protein, go back to your regular diet. After a couple of days, check your first voiding urine pH again. If it registers pH 6.2 or below, you are eating too much acid ash food. You need to reduce the amount of meat, poultry, fish, cheese, and grains and increase the amount of alkaline ash vegetables and fruits. No big deal, just an adjustment in quantities. You don't need to stop eating meat or other acid producers completely. Your body can handle moderate amounts of dietary acid as long as you bolster your alkaline reserve with generous amounts of replacement minerals from vegetables and fruit.

If your regular diet follow-up pH test checks in at above pH 6.2, keep doing what you're doing. You are on the right road. You probably already eat generous amounts of vegetables, fruit, and grains, and minimal amounts of meat. If you reduce the amount of grains in your diet, your pH numbers will rise even higher. That's even better.

Keep in mind that these follow-up, regular diet urine pH numbers apply only if you scored pH 5.5 or 5.8 on the acid challenge test.

Urine pH 6.0 - 6.6

Urine pH challenge test results of 6.0 to 6.6 tell a different story. It's not "good," but it's not "horrible." This is the "warning" stage. Although it would appear that your neutralizing reserves are better equipped at pH six-something rather than pH five-something, actually, the reverse is true. Your alkaline reserve is running low. However, you still have some alkalizing minerals available.

Very briefly, it works like this: The workhorse mineral of the alkaline reserve - sodium - can weaken strong acid enough to protect your delicate internal tissue. Your alkaline reserve can neutralize moderate amounts of acid from protein. It can't handle tremendous amounts of acid from protein. But for two days, you filled your digestive system with excess protein. There was a lot of rather strong acid to neutralize - around pH 4.5. Consequently, if your urine pH is 6.0 or above after eating a lot of high-protein, something besides alkalizing minerals is working on the acid to bring the numbers up that high. Your alkaline reserve supply either isn't adequate to do the job by itself, or it's just overwhelmed by the volume of acid that needs to be neutralized. So backup systems begin to contribute to the neutralizing (buffering) to get the job done.

If you are in pH 6.0 - 6.6 category, in the past few months, you may have noticed more "signs of aging." You may be stiff in the morning but loosen up as the day goes on. You may tire easily or be short tempered. Your joints and muscles may be painful, and you may be more "sickly" than you once were. These annoying symptoms are easily passed off as signs that you're getting older. In reality, you are not only getting older; you are speeding the aging process by eating too much protein. Your alkaline reserves are so low that your body has called on backup systems to help neutralize too much strong dietary acid. It's beginning to get tired no matter how old you are.
However, your health outlook can be improved rather easily. Reduce the amount of high-protein acid producing foods and increase the amount of cooked vegetables in your daily diet. Since you probably don't regularly o.d. on vegetables and fruit, you should reintroduce them to your body gradually. With a morning urine in the pH 6.0 - 6.6 range, cooked vegetables do better than raw vegetables and raw fruit. That won't always be the case. As your body becomes accustomed to handling more plant food, you'll be able to eat raw vegetables and raw fruits without suffering "dietary distress" - that's the politically correct term for "belly ache."

Urine pH 6.8 - 8.0

A high urine pH seems to indicate a vast store of alkalizing minerals at work. However, that's not the case when you've challenged your body with two days of protein overload. A urine pH score of 6.8 to 8.0 when the body is saturated with dietary acid is very significant. It indicates that your supply of available alkaline reserve is virtually zilch - gone, depleted, kaput. You may be sick frequently or chronically ill. You may be tired most of the time, have stiff joints, sore muscles, and burning on urination. This is the natural progression after the pH 6.0 - 6.6 stage if your regular diet consists mostly of acid ash foods.

A high urine pH following the acid challenge test of acid ash foods indicates that the important emergency neutralizing backup system of ammonia is the principle neutralizer. Instead of minerals neutralizing the acid from dietary protein, ammonia is doing the job.

Ammonia is produced naturally in the body through an assortment of chemical activities in almost all cells. Ammonia is also produced in the kidneys. Ammonia is a strong alkali that can give the urine a pH as high as 8.0 or more. A strong alkali (high pH numbers) can weaken a very strong acid (low pH numbers) such as sulfuric acid. And a strong alkali such as ammonia can overwhelm the kind of acid in your body that comes from acid ash (protein) foods.

The ammonia in your body is physiological ammonia. Physiological ammonia is made in your body and useful to your body. You don't put ammonia - especially household ammonia - into your body to neutralize acid. Commercially produced household ammonia - the kind you keep under lock and key so little children can't get to it and poison themselves - is strong, dangerous stuff. Your body produces physiological ammonia in specific quantities for specific uses.

Physiological ammonia produced by the kidneys helps neutralize excess acid. When the fluid in the kidneys contains too much protein due to long-term over-consumption of high protein foods, ammonia is produced as a by-product in eliminating the excess protein. The more protein in the kidney fluid, the more ammonia is produced and the higher the pH goes. When the body is overwhelmed with acid and protein, the kidneys have a lot of acid to handle. They must generate greater quantities of ammonia to handle the greater quantities of acid and protein.

But the kidneys are nearly the end point of your digestion-elimination process. By the time fluids get in the kidneys, they should have already been neutralized by your handy-dandy alkaline reserve.
Aha! You've found the key to unlock the mysteries of (1) why you can have an alkaline urine from a body that's been saturated with acid ash food, and (2) why urine smells like ammonia. And the two go together.

Your urine pH can range from quite acid (pH 4.5) to slightly alkaline (pH 8.0+) immediately following the acid challenge. Low urine pH indicates some alkaline reserve minerals are still available. High urine pH is a warning that:

1. your alkaline reserve is shot and can't neutralize the flood of acid sufficiently before it gets in the kidneys, or
2. your body is overwhelmed with large quantities of protein by-products, so ammonia is produced on the spot for last chance neutralization.

Ammonia goes out with your urine and therefore your urine pH numbers are high. And that's why if you have an alkaline urine after eating a lot of high protein foods, you have burning on urination and/or your urine smells of ammonia. It is ammonia. And ammonia is your body's last ditch effort to keep your innards from being stewed by excess dietary protein. Drinking cranberry juice will relieve the burning of urination. Cranberries are acid ash foods. In juice form, the acid of cranberries travels quickly through the digestive tract and "neutralizes" the strong alkali of ammonia. Most people think the odor of ammonia is "normal" for urine. Not so. Even in children, ammonia in the urine is crisis intervention. If your urine has an ammonia odor, you know your body is fighting excess protein. And it doesn't even need to be animal protein -just too much protein.

The urine pH of strict vegetarians can be an ammonia 8.0 just as can the urine of avid meat-eaters. Many vegetarians are heavy into grains. Their diets revolve around grains. Grains in all forms and most grains are acid ash-producers. Most nuts are also acid ash producing. Nuts are also big favorites of most vegetarians. Your body doesn't care whether it's fighting too much dietary acid from meat or from grains and nuts. It still goes through the same survival tactics.

__________________
"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away." - George Carlin


Scott


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