The diet of our ancestors is completely different from what we are so accustomed to these days. With the advancement of technology, the types of foods we consume are dragged along. A trip to the grocery store will shock you with the abundance of animal products and processed food items. Finding fast food is easy since you can find it at practically every corner.
Even fad diets are partly to blame, for introducing a whole new eating habit, such as high-protein diets. Recently, consumption of refined food and animal products have increased, as many more people leave out the daily supply of fruits and vegetables in their diet.
It comes as no surprise why, these days, many are suffering heart problems, bone diseases, and from different types of allergies. Some health experts link these diseases to the type of foods we eat. There are certain types of food that disrupts a certain balance in our body that, during such instance, health problems arise. If only we could modify our eating habits, it’s not unlikely that prevention of diseases and restoration of health is achieved.
The Alkaline Diet Benefits
Our bodies need to maintain a healthy and steady alkaline to acid ratio, which is signified by the pH level of our body. The pH scale ranges from 0 to 14, acidic is anything lower than 7. Processed food items, sweets, meat products, and some beverages generally produce excessive amounts of acidity in the body.
Acidosis, abnormally high acidity level in the blood and other tissues of the body, is the one thing that several different diseases have one thing in common. And many health experts believe that acidosis is responsible for a lot of fatal diseases that many people are afflicted with these days.
Alkaline main role in the body is to neutralize excess acidity in the body. However, alkaline also becomes depleted – especially when it overloaded with acid that it needs to get rid of, and we do not eat foods that replenish our body’s alkalinity.
Maintaining a Healthy pH Level
As mentioned earlier, acidosis do lead to many health related problems. Dangerous levels of acid get to circulate in our body and break into organs and tissues when not properly neutralized. To prevent this, one must see to it that a healthy pH balance in the body is maintained. And to counteract the excessive amounts of acid is to increase your body’s alkalinity.
Determining whether or not your pH levels are prevalently alkaline may be done with easy-to-use pH level strips which you can purchase in medical supplies or some drug stores. There are pH level strips meant for testing using your urine , and there are those for using your saliva.
Basically, a saliva pH level strip will determine how much acid your body is producing; normally it’s between 6.5 and 7.5 throughout the day. While a urine pH level strip shows how well you excrete excess amounts of acid; you should get between 6.0 and 6.5 in the morning and between 6.5 and 7.0 at night.
The Dangers of Excessive Acid
If you have high acid levels in your body, you may experience exhaustion, headaches and having frequent colds and flu. But the ill effects of acidosis in the body don’t stop there; you might be surprised at the wide-ranging types of diseases you could get with dangerous levels of acid in your body.
Depression, hyperacidity, ulcer, skin dryness, acne and obesity are some of those linked to excessive acid levels in the body. Then there are those that are more serious such as joint diseases, osteoporosis, bronchitis, frequent infections and heart diseases.
Even if you begin to take medications for these illnesses, the symptoms may be masked, but they will still continue to affect your health since you are not addressing the root cause of the problem. Your body will only become more acidic no matter what medications you take because of these any medications or pills.
Alkaline Diet Approach
To get to the roots of these health problems, the body’s pH level must be brought back to normal. There are alkaline foods that can help replenish the depleted alkaline levels in the body while neutralizing excess amounts of acid. Through an alkaline diet sufficient amounts of alkaline are re introduced into the body, thus bringing back the pH level to mostly alkaline.
So how do you get an alkaline diet into your regular eating habits? First, you can start by reducing your intake of processed foods. These type of foods contain chemicals that only increase the acidity of your body ones they’re digested. Second, steer clear meat, dairy and alcohol products. Third, load up on fresh fruits and vegetables, as they naturally are high in alkalinity.
Even acidic fruits like oranges and lemons become alkaline after they have been digested and absorbed by the body. As a general rule, 75% of your daily food consumption should consist of alkalizing foods. The more alkaline foods we provide our bodies with, the more efficient the neutralization of excess acids will be.
Learn how you can get started with an Alkaline Diet
Diet will push through if discipline will take part of it. Often losing weight is easy because they take slimming pills for fast result but it can cause harmful effects in the body. Using proper diet is effective in many ways because your body can react and adjust on how you control your food intake.
Pauline, you are absolutely right. It’s all about learning a new way of eating. Crash diets are never the answer.
Sandy
Remember to count all of your calories to see weight loss success. Many people remember to count their meals, but forget to count the calories of snacks and nibbles throughout the day. Doing so will help you not to consume more calories than you are allowed and achieve your weight loss goals.
I am not a fan of counting calories although it can be a great eye opener when you take into account the snacks and nibbles as you say. The best weight loss comes from eating according to your metabolic type.
Sandy
Although you may feel very uncomfortable about taking a picture in your underwear at your current level of obesity, you will want to do this. This is because looking at before and after pictures is incredibly satisfying and it will help you to avoid any relapses in moments of weakness in the future.