One of the most important benefits of a raw food eating plan is its ability to adjust your acid/alkaline balance. You may have heard of this concept before and it is now becoming a major talking point in healing chronic inflammatory diseases of all kinds, especially diabetes. When I first advise people to go on a raw food diet, they are more than a little resistant. But after the first couple of days they often come to see me with their skin glowing, their energy levels surging and their minds and bodies feeling clearer and lighter. This is due in large part to the fact that they have managed to rebalance their pH away from acidity and in favor of alkalinity.
fresh vegetable
So just what is pH? If everything you know about pH is a vaguely remembered school science lesson, it’s the perfect time to reintroduce yourself to the topic. That’s because your body’s pH balance is one of the most decisive factors in whether or not you will suffer from chronic diseases and whether or not permanent healing can take place in your body.
At all times, your body strives to maintain a carefully regulated acid-alkaline balance. The pH scale is a way to measure the results of this balance and whether a substance is alkaline or acidic. The numbers on the pH scale range from o to 14. On this scale, the number 7 is neutral, while any number below 7 increases in acidity and anything above 7 increases in alkalinity.
When it comes to pH, a natural balance is ideal. However, there is “no one size fits all” approach for pH levels within your body. That’s because various areas of your body have, and actually do best when they maintain, varying degrees of pH.
For example, the best possible pH levels for the skin and the bowels tend towards the acidic, in order to ward off any unhealthy bacteria overgrowth. On the other hand the saliva should tend towards alkalinity and the urine should maintain a more acidic level, particularly first thing in the morning. At the same time, your body is also frequently forced to manage acids that are the natural result of functions such as metabolism, breathing, exercise and the normal breaking down of cells. This is why it’s not really helpful to create a stark division and think of acid as wholly negative and alkaline as wholly positive. The one place where alkalinity is a definite positive and a MUST for good health is in your blood. Your blood should have a pH level that is more alkaline, with the best level somewhere between 7.365 and 7.45 on the pH scale.
No matter what the circumstances, your body knows this is the level that supports health and life and will try not to veer far from it. However, our modem lifestyles don’t make it easy to maintain a proper pH level. The way we eat now can have serious effects on pH levels. In fact, the standard American diet is anything but good news for your body’s pH levels. This way of eating is chock full of highly caustic, acid-forming ingredients such as p food s processed with chemical additives, heavy metals, refined sugars, HFCS, pasteurized dairy and an overabundance of overcooked, nutritionally dead meat. Add this harsh diet to a highly polluted environment loaded with toxins we breathe in, drink in, and live around and you’ve got a recipe for pH disaster.
Now, there’s a great deal of mythology surrounding the body’s ability to resist over-acidification, even when faced with an onslaught of hyper-acidic foods, drinks, materials and pollutants., but this is mostly wishful thinking. Your body is very strong and can do a lot to protect you from the effects of a poor way of eating and living but after a certain point, enough is enough. The body then struggles to rebalance itself and all of this constant energy ends up draining it and leading to what we now call chronic disease. Having an acidic pH in your blood literally starves your blood of oxygen and according to top scientists in the field, when your blood is gasping for adequate oxygen, it sets the perfect stage for the development of deadly illnesses.
And which chronic disease is the most impacted by this life and death stmggle? Yes, you guessed it-diabetes!
How to Find Out If Your Body is Suffering From an Over-Acidic pH Level
So how can you tell if your blood pH level is too acidic? Well the symptoms of acidity are quite clear and include a general lack of wellness, a constant and unexplained sense of fatigue and exhaustion, a propensity to gain weight despite not overeating, a tendency towards poor digestion and all over achiness, muscle and bone soreness and tenderness. If you present with these symptoms it’s probably a good idea to go ahead and start alkalinizing your diet, your life and your body with the steps in this book.
However, if you need a definite diagnosis or just want to know exactly how acidic you’ve become, it’s fortunately very easy to obtain this information for yourself. Simply head to your local pharmacy or health food store where you’ll find easy to use pH test strips. When you are fist starting out on this 30 day eating plan, I recommend that you test your pH levels a couple of times a day randomly throughout the month, to see how the diet is affecting you. However, for the clearest reading, it is best to test your pH in the morning because this is when your true highest acidity number will show up. The first urine of the morning may be affected by what you ate last night so aim to test the second urine of the morning-before you eat or drink anything. Ideally, your urine’s pH should be testing within the 6.5 to 7.5 range. When it comes to saliva, make sure that you wait at least 2-3 hours after eating or drinking anything before testing. To test, allow your mouth to fill up with saliva and the swallow the saliva.
Do this a couple of times to make sure that you’re testing pure saliva and not the pH of leftover food particles. After you’ve repeated this step, place a little clean saliva on the pH testing strip. As an indication of good health, your saliva pH levels should also fall between 6.5 and 7.5.
Let’s Take a Look at How Your Lifestyle May Be Fueling Acid-Led Disease in Your Body:
Nations where the diet is considered “underdeveloped” or even “primitive” are where you will see the least acidity and a correspondingly low rate of chronic disease. In the US Europe and Australia however, acidity levels are much higher and so are rates of chronic killer diseases like diabetes, cancers and heart disease.
Why is this the case? Well, these so-called “primitive diets” are usually loaded with fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs, nuts and seeds and are closer to the original diet consumed by our ancestors. Our bodies recognize this as the right and whole, healing way of eating and they respond positively to it.
On the other hand, the usual commercially processed, highly chemical, super-sugary Western diets of modern days is a complete mystery and a burden to our bodies As humans, we simply were never meant to eat things that have been zapped to death, over cooked, loaded with strange compounds and additives and completely free of nutrients. Thin about the way we look at health: If we want vitamin C, we don’t go for a whole, fresh orange. No, we head instead for a packaged bottle of “orange “juice that is actually just bottled sugar water. If we want to eat more greens, we’ll only do so if they’ve been smothered in oils and trans fats, baked for hours or even fried. When we eat salads for our health, we make sure that every leaf is swimming in a sugary chemical-laced salad dressing that makes what was once an alkaline meal into an acidic death trap. It seems we have become completely divorced and disconnected from eating foods in their natural, unchanged and most healing state and we don’t feel comfortable eating them until we’ve ruined them beyond recognition.
So what’s the result? Our livers, kidneys, brains, bowels, skin, muscles, bones and our entire immune systems are in an ongoing and deadly inflammatory state. We definitely know that inflammation leads to disease but did you now that acidity and an off-kilter pH are often the causes of inflammation? When your body has an acidic pH, there is an overgrowth of bad bacteria and an explosion of systemic Candida. Your irritated immune system then switches on at the wrong times and even begins to blindly attack your own healthy tissue, causing disease, damage and ultimately death.
Studies Show That Diabetes is Caused and Worsened By Increased pH Acidity:
Researchers who analyzed over 65,000 diabetes-free participants in a study found that over 14 years, the participants who ate the most acidic diets and ended up with the most acidic pH levels also were more than 56% more likely to end up developing diabetes! These and other similar studies show that when you eat a diet loaded with acid-forming foods, you upset your body’s natural pH balance and this then can directly lead you to developing type 2 diabetes. Due to the way that acidity impacts inflammation, it is also believed that eating a high acid diet can also aggravate and exacerbate the condition of those with type 1 diabetes.
So what can you do to prevent and reverse the effects of a highly acidic standard American or western Diet on your diabetes?
Think living. These two words sum up the entire raw foods philosophy. If a food has life in it, is replete with all of its natural enzymes and can offer you most of its nutrients and fiber intact, this is the food you should be eating. If a food is “dead”, in that, it has been stripped of its enzymes, nutrients, natural flavors and fiber, this is a non-living food and it will not help your body to live and thrive either. The best way to rebalance your pH level towards a life-encouraging, diabetes-fighting alkalinity is to eat a diet rich in highly alkalinizing mineral-loaded plant food sources. That’s what the 3 day raw food eating plan is all about: Rebalancing your PH and your overall physical and mental health with dark, leafy greens, fresh vegetables, sprouts and seeds as well as quenching acid-reducing green smoothies. This kind of diet will give your body an amazing opportunity to de-stress from many years of chemical and trans fat-packed, sugary, high acid, cooked foods. Think of this 30 day program as an Alkaline IV drip for your body and brain. We’ll be flushing out all of the toxic buildup that has been making your insulin resistance, inflammation, weight and fatigue worse and instead, treat all of these problems with the alkaline goodness of a whole, natural and raw diet. If you follow the principles of eating live foods throughout these 30 days, your cells will be singing with good health.
When You Start Eating an Alkaline Raw Food
Diet, You’re Setting Your Body Up to Receive the Following Benefits:
Easier and Faster Weight Loss
Better Bone and Tooth Health
Prevention of Cardiovascular Diseases
Prevention and Treatment of Diabetes and Its Complications
Reduction in Muscle Wasting
Every time you’ve eaten fast food or chugged down a can of soda, you’ve basically been drenching yourself in acidity. With this plan, we are doing the exact opposite, bathing your body in a stream of soothing and repairing alkalinity. Now please be aware that I don’t mean that your diet should be entirely and strictly made up of only alkaline foods. This is actually not possible and even if it were, it is not desirable. That’s because many very important healing foods such as certain nuts are actually slightly acidic in nature and must still be included into your diet for proper healing. The main point is to eat a primarily, not exclusively, alkaline diet and supplement the balance with natural, slightly acidic foods, NOT the highly acid-forming and destructive junk foods that eat away at your health and send your body into a diseased tailspin.
So what should you be eating for alkalinity? This list of the best alkaline raw foods will help you to restore your pH balance in no time and in doing so, will send your diabetes on the run. Enjoy them generously throughout the 30 days and beyond:
Young woman holding a shopping bag full of vegetables
Alkaline Foods
Alkaline foods increase your bloods oxygen supply. These include:
Raw, Fresh, Dark Leafy Greens
Brightly Colored Vegetables
Low Glycemic, Less Sweet Fruits Including: Cucumber, Tender Young Coconuts, Watermelon, Avocado
Sprouts Such as: Mung Bean Sprouts, Broccoli Sprouts, Alfalfa Sprouts
Fresh Herbs Including: Basil, Cilantro, Parsley, Ginger, Cayenne
All Important Note On Wild Foraged Plants:
Wild foraged plants are some of the most alkaline substances on Earth. However, unknown wild plants can kill!
Please make sure that you only pick wild plants with an experienced forager and that you only eat plants that you are sure are not poisonous. If you have any doubts at all, seek the help of an expert!
The Best Alkaline Beverages Include:
Pure Unsweetened Lemon Water First Thing In The morning
Alkaline Water
Pure Green Vegetable Juices and Smoothies
Young Coconut Water
The Best & Cheapest Alkaline Foods
Strictly Avoid the Following Acid-Forming Foods During these 30 Days:
All Processed Foods
All Sugar
All High Fructose Corn Syrup
All Artificial Sweetening Agents
All Grains
All Cooked Animal Products
All Pasteurized, Cooked Dairy
All Trans Fats
Peanuts
Other Wavs to Reduce Acidity:
Detoxify Your Body and Home: This diet will detoxify your body and mind but it is important that you do not make the healing process slower by exposing yourself to chemicals and other toxins at home. Steer clear of heavy metals, smog, black mold and chemicals in your environment.
Get Rid of Parasites and Opportunistic Infections: Parasites can contribute to deadly acidity in your body and lead to chronic diseases. Get a checkup to find out if you have any parasitic infections and fight back by getting rid of sugar and gluten (parasites love these 2 substances!) Add cleansing, anti-infection foods like garlic and powerful herbs like oregano to your diet, to clean out your body and prevent inflammation.
Reduce Stress: Stress is a killer in many ways. That’s why high stress levels have been linked to the development and worsening of diabetes. It is vital that you decrease your stress levels to heal your acidity and your diabetes.