HOW ACIDIC ARE YOU?

AUGUST 04, 2009.

 

One often overlooked physiological component in the strive for better body. Whether it is for performance, looking good in a swimsuit, building muscle, better looking skin or just more energy, the balance between acid and alkaline in the blood is a factor that should not be overlooked….

 

 

What causes acidity?
The primary cause of “systemic metabolic acidity” in your body is from what you eat and drink. Specifically an imbalance between high-acid-producing foods and alkaline-based foods.

Most high-protein foods, along with cereal and wheat products, are high acid. Protein contains amino acids, amino acids contain sulphur. Sulphur encourages the production of acid.

The body neutralizes the excess acid with various buffers in muscle bicarbonate, phosphate and carnosine. The buffer system is aided by the intake of high alkaline foods such as fruit and vegetables rich in minerals, such as potassium, magnesium and calcium.

“Other things that cause acidity in the blood are; exercise (lactic acid), fat loss (fatty acids) & stress (cortisol)”.

 

 

What happens in an acidic body
In order to carry out all the many millions of complex functions that occur in your body throughout the day, your body has to be able to communicate with itself, all the way down to the cellular level. And it does this through pulses of electricity.

What creates this electrical power in your body is a fine balance in your bio chemistry. One of the most important is your blood stream. This is where ph comes into play.

Ph is a scale that measures how acidic or alkaline a substance is.

“The scale ranges from 1 to 14 with 1 being very acid 7 neutral and 14 very alkaline”.

The ideal ph level for your blood is 7.365, and your body goes to enormous lengths to maintain this level.

Red blood cells are how oxygen is transported to all the cells in your body.

As red blood cells move into the tiny capillaries, the space they have to move through gets pretty small. Actually, the diameter gets so small that they have to pass through one at a time.

Healthy red blood cells have a negative charge on the outside, and a positive charge on the inside. This causes them to stay apart from each other (repel), like when you try to push the negative ends of two magnets together.

Too much acid in the blood strips away at the negative charge of the cells, this results in them clumping together and not flowing as easily. This makes it much more difficult for them to get through those small capillaries and the rest of the bloodstream.

This means less oxygen gets to your cells. Acid also weakens the red blood cells and they begin to die, and they release into your system creating more acid.

 

 

What to do?
This is not to say we should not train, eat protein or loose fat. And it’s not too say that you should take all acid producing foods and activities out of our lives. “Except for stress we could all do with a little less of that”.

its more about obtaining balance in your life, and realizing if your drinking 10 cups of coffee, eating maccas, pasta, cakes, bread, drinking plenty of alcohol on the weekend, training like a demon during the week, and stressed that rent, power and phone is due on the same day? You’re going to be pretty acidic.

Fortunately, it is pretty easy to immediately change your body’s ph. one of the best ways is to drink "green drinks". You can make these by simply adding a powder that is made up of a whole host of high alkaline vegetables to a glass of water and drink.

By adding some “green drinks” throughout the day and post work out we can immediately start changing our body composition, improving energy, performance, recovery and skin for the better.

One of my favourite “green drinks” and one I consume every day is – primal greens by Poliquin.

All supplements can be purchased by contacting - warrior nutrition team, warriornutrition@gmail.com.

 

 

References
- Hughes-Dawson, b., et al. (2008). Alkaline diets favour lean tissue mass in older adults. am j clin nutr. 87:662-665.
- Murakami, k., et al. (2008). Association between dietary acid-base load and cardiometabolic risk factors in young Japanese women. brit j nutr. 18:1-10.