The Imbalance Of The Blood

Just as our body temperature must be maintained at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, our blood is ideally maintained at 7.365 pH - very mildly basic. You can also measure the pH of the urine and saliva, but the blood is the most important and needs to stay within the tightest range. Different areas of the body have different pH requirements anyway. For example, the blood and tissues should be slightly basic, but the lower bowel should be slightly acidic, and the urine should be slightly acidic or neutral. Saliva tends to be erratic. The pH of urine can provide the best estimate of what's happening in the body's tissues but it is not always accurate. Blood pH is more reliable, and thus a better indicator of internal conditions.

Physiological disease is almost always the result of too much acid stressing the body's pH balance, to the point where it provokes the body into producing symptoms of disease. (Disease can also be simply the toxic effects of an external source, but that is much more rare.) Symptoms can be the expression of that stress, but they can also be a sign of the body's effort to balance it. Depending on the level and extent of the stress, symptoms may or may not be obviously noticeable. The kicker is that excess acid is something we do to ourselves, thanks to the choices we make. The good news, then, is that once we recognize that fact, we can make different choices.

All the body's regulatory mechanisms (including breathing, circulation, digestion, and hormone production) work to balance the delicate internal acid/base balance. Our bodies cannot tolerate extended acid imbalances. In the early stages of the imbalance, the symptoms may not be very intense and include such things as skin eruptions, headaches, allergies, colds and flu, and sinus problems. As things get further out of whack, more serious situations arise. Weakened organs and systems start to give way, resulting in dysfunctional thyroid glands, adrenals, liver, and so on. If tissue pH deviates too far to the acid side, oxygen levels decrease and cellular metabolism will stop. In other words, cells die. You die.

So, a declining pH just can't be allowed. To prevent it, when faced with a lot of incoming acid, the blood begins to pull alkaline minerals out of our tissues to compensate. There is a family of minerals particularly suited to neutralizing, or detoxifying, strong acids, including sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium. When these minerals react with acids, they create much less detrimental substances, which are then eliminated by the body.

Now, a healthy body maintains a reserve supply of these alkaline minerals to meet emergency demands. But if there are insufficient amounts in the diet or in the reserves, they are recruited elsewhere, and may be leached from the bone (as with calcium) or muscle (magnesium) - where they are, of course, needed. This can easily lead to deficiencies - and the many and varied symptoms that come with them.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. If the acid overload gets too great for the blood to balance, excess acid is dumped into the tissues for storage. Then the lymphatic (immune) system must neutralize what it can - and try to get rid of everything else. Unfortunately, "getting rid of" acid from the tissues turns out to mean dumping it right back into the blood, creating a vicious cycle of drawing out still more basic minerals from their ordinary functions and stressing the liver and kidneys besides. Furthermore, if the lymphatic system is overloaded, or it's vessels not functioning properly (a condition often caused by lack of exercise), acid build up in the tissues.

This imbalance in the blood pH leads to irritation and inflammation and sets the stage for sickness. Acute or recurrent illnesses result from either the body trying to mobilize mineral reserves to prevent cellular breakdown or emergency attempts to detoxify the body. For example, the body may throw off acids through the skin, producing symptoms such as eczema, acne, boils, headaches, muscle cramps, soreness, swelling, irritation, inflammation, and general aches and pains. Chronic symptoms show up when all possibilities of neutralizing or eliminating acids have been exhausted.

When acid wastes build up in the body and enter the bloodstream, the circulatory system will try to get rid of them in liquid form, through the lungs and kidneys. If there is too much waste to handle, they are deposited in various organ systems, including the heart, pancreas, liver, and colon, or stored in fatty tissue, including the breasts, hips, thighs, belly - and brain. This process of acid waste breakdown and disposal could also be called "the aging process."

From this section called you know that the core concept most important to this program is the acid/base balance of your body, and particularly the blood. Now we'll get into one of the nastiest consequences of an overly acidic body: the beasties that thrive there - yeast (candida).