High pH for Vibrant LIFE!

As I always cut to the chase in my newsletters and articles, this report will follow suit! All food you eat will create either an alkaline or acidic ash when it is digested. An acid-yielding food will lower the body’s pH and an alkaline-yielding food will raise the pH. 

Loren Cordain Ph.D states "After digestion, all foods report to the kidneys as being either acidic or alkaline. The kidneys are responsible for fluid balance and maintaining a relatively neutral pH in the body." 

As acid-yielding foods lower the body's pH, the kidneys need to coordinate efforts to buffer that acidity. How do they do that? EASY! They rob the bones and muscles of needed minerals and nourishment! Not something you want the body to do. When you consume acid-yielding foods, bones release calcium and magnesium to reestablish alkalinity, and muscles are broken down to produce ammonia which is strongly alkaline. By the time all is said and done, the bone minerals that were removed from your bone and your pieces of broken down muscle are excreted in the urine. Yes, you just used precious needed bone minerals and muscle to digest that plate of pasta with rich Alfredo sauce. 

“Long term, excess acidity leads to thinner bones and lower muscle mass”, points out Anthony Sebastian, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco. By compromising the bone mass in an acidic body, along with the normal aging process which increases acidosis, and with muscle erosion (as I like to call it) you create a situation for health disaster. 

All minerals on earth come from the ground. Please bear with me as I make this very important statement once again, 

ALL MINERALS ON EARTH COME FROM THE GROUND!! 

You may consume them one of two ways. You may lick rocks or eat plants. Knowing food is the tastiest and BEST place to get minerals, food becomes a KEY player. When plants grow they absorb minerals from the earth (rock minerals), utilize them and convert them into minerals that are easily assimilated by the body. Plant minerals yield the correct size mineral to be utilized by each of your cells. Rock minerals do not. 

Your body’s pH is a sign of how your body is managing your mineral reserves. Minerals are ESSENTIAL NUTRIENTS for EVERY CELL IN THE HUMAN BODY. 

Knowing minerals come from the ground, it makes sense that foods that grow from the ground have an abundance of minerals. Look on any pH chart and the most alkalizing foods are those rich in color, and all are found in the fresh plant world. Eating these foods in a raw and living state has the consumer directly ingesting plant minerals that go to work fast in alkalizing the body. A perfect balance ratio of alkaline vs. acidic foods would be 80% alkalizing and 20% acidic. The measure of alkalinity is taken after the foods are digested, by measuring the ash. 

Sometimes you will find acidic foods don't always translate into acid-yielding foods. Citrus fruits and tomatoes are acidic outside the body, but they have a alkaline yield once their constituents get to the kidneys. Lemons are another surprise, as they are wonderful in alkalizing the body. Meat on the other hand is alkaline outside of the body, but creates an acidic environment when digested.

Now the biggie. “If you don’t consume dairy because it is so acidic to the body, where do you get your calcium?” Remember...all minerals come from where? You got it! The ground! Where did the cow get calcium? GRASS! 

INDISPUTABLE FACT: You do not need dairy to have strong bones and teeth. 

"Consider that Americans consume more calcium-rich dairy foods than almost every other nation, and 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." 

This is a hard thing for many to hear, believe, and swallow. I was raised in the dairy loving society of Wisconsin, and the Dairy Board was always present in my education. Milk mustaches were pasted in my schools, and every food pyramid had the stamp of approval by the Meat and Dairy Council. But facts remain facts: Eating dairy creates an acidic state in the body. 

Susan Brown, Ph.D., who heads the nonprofit Osteoporosis Education Project in East Syracuse, N.Y., believes the acid-alkaline issue is one of mineral adequacy and depletion. "It's a little like over-farming and depleting mineral levels in soil. If we eat foods that create an acidic pH in the body, we will deplete our bones of minerals and our muscles of protein.” Osteoporosis can, and will be reversed when the body is given the correct fuel. Bones need minerals, and you can feed minerals to them each bite you take. 

Both calcium and magnesium play essential roles in normal heart rhythm and bone formation. Muscle cramps, arrhythmias, and anxiety are often a signal of low magnesium levels. Think of a plant. All growing plants need essential elements. When the essential elements are not available in the soil, the plant sends its root out to find them. If elements are depleted from the soil, the plant displays characteristic deficiency symptoms. Human bodies do the same thing! If we do not have the essential elements we need, our body shows signs of deficiency. 

Sebastian, regarded as one of the world’s top researchers in the field of diet-related acidosis, points to four big issues that help us understand why our bodies become acidic, even if we are not eating all acidic foods. 

•First, fruits and vegetables are rich in potassium salts, a natural buffer. When you eat only a few of these foods, it deprives us of potassium, a mineral that protects against hypertension and stroke.

• Second, there is a decline in the consumption of naturally occurring bicarbonate in our diets. Instead, we add chloride in the form of sodium chloride, or table salt. Bicarbonate is alkaline, chloride is acidic. Chloride constricts blood vessels and narrow blood vessels reduce circulation.

Our body DEPENDS on healthy circulation. Poor circulation or vasoconstriction contributes to heart disease, stroke, dementia, and most every other degenerative disease.


•Third, eating large amounts of animal protein such as meat, fowl, and even seafood, releases sulfuric acid. Certain sulfur-containing amino acids metabolize contributing directly to acidity. This acidity can be offset with a greater consumption of fruits and vegetables which are rich in potassium bicarbonate.


• Fourth, many common grains, such as wheat, rye, and corn, are acid-yielding. It doesn’t matter if these grains are eaten as pasta, breads, crackers, tortillas or chips, they produce an acidic environment in the body. 

Diets rich in potassium found in fruits and vegetables prove time and time again, culture to culture, that consumers have slow bone loss. Owning a health food store has its amazing and sometimes frustrating moments. The largest frustration is when people want a “cure all” pill. Potassium supplements are always on the list. As a whole food coach, rather than direct people to a rock mineral supplement (which we don’t carry because we sell nothing synthetic or in rock form), we educate that eating a handful of raisins, a few dates, or a small banana provides more than 300 mg of USABLE potassium. Yum! Side effects? Energy! 

The amazing part of owning a health food store and a wellness center is this: TESTIMONIES! There are hundreds, if not thousands of local people who have changed their diet to a more alkalizing one and they feel great! Husbands, wives, and children all enjoying Green Protein Power drinks in the morning and bringing their daily intake of fresh living produce to at least 35%.

IT WORKS! The body rebuilds bones, organs and muscles from the nutrients you eat, every single minute you are alive. It is proven that a high pH in the body creates a dis-ease free environment. In our own family, sickness is not present as we maintain high pH levels. Scientifically, you can NOT get sick with a high pH! Cancer cannot be found in a high pH, arthritis does not form in a high pH, and Osteoporosis diminishes all together in a high pH body. pH is the ticket to health freedom! Get EXCITED! 

Before I finish, I want to do an experiment. You can do this, it is quite easy. Breathe in and hold your breath for 3 seconds. 

Congratulations! You just created 5 MILLION new cells! 300 Million Cells are created every single minute in your body. Just so you have an idea about cell size, ten thousand plant minerals fit into one red blood cell. So although you just created millions of new cells, you better get to work feeding them what it takes to survive! Every single cell is depending on you and your food choices. 

In closing I wish to make a few points. 

1) You are NOT a rock. We do not recommend taking rock minerals. Tested over and over, rock forms of calcium have an absorption rate of approximately 12%- 33%. The rest needs to be removed from the body – and most often cannot leaving a dangerous “calcium build up.” Most other rock forms of minerals have the same low absorbency and assimilation in the body. 

2) Minerals can be leached out from your food. When you boil food, it will leach minerals from the food into the water. When you are going to cook something, you want to lightly steam it in a pan without water for best mineral retention. 

3) pH measures like the Richter scale measures earthquakes. Someone with a pH of 6.0 is ten times more acidic than someone with a pH of 7.0. Someone with a pH of 5.0 is 100 times more acidic than someone with a pH of 7.0. The scale is on a slope with a CURVE! 

4) Acid can form three ways: First, you can eat too many acidic foods. Second, you can create acids by consuming toxins or living with stress. Third, your body may be mineral depleted, thus there are fewer minerals to call upon to balance the body. 

5) Alkalizing with FOOD. Alkalizing the body can be done many ways, but the only way recommended by the entire team and staff of Karen’s Energy is though pure water, herbs and food. Herbs are food, and FOOD will alkalize and rebuild, cleanse and maintain your optimal health! 

To your very BEST Health, Karen Urbanek 

Eat as Though Your Life Depended on it.....it DOES!