Basically Speaking

 A friend and I met for coffee (green tea, actually) the other day, and got into the whole healthy eating / lifestyle discussion.  Turns out, he's into it, too, and a different side than I'm familiar with, so we both traded crazy, obsessive approaches.

I've been looking into what he's following - an alkaline diet to raise the body's pH from where it typically is for most Americans (which is slightly acidic).  He's flooded me with links and articles, but one really stood out as giving a great overview of the issue.  While it's light on advice or practical tips to get more alkaline (or 'base' - hence the title of this post), it gives you the info you need to understand the issue and decide if you want to pursue it, so i wanted to share it with you all.

http://www.humuhbuddhistjournal.org/Editions/June08/restore-health-printable.htm

Some key take aways:

• pH is a scale from 0 to 14, where 7 is neutral, anything under 7 is acidic, and anything over 7 is basic or alkaline - the more extreme in either direction, the more acidic or basic the pH rating
• Lower blood pH (aka more acidic blood) has been found to be associated with less than ideal health (weak immune system, fatigue, etc)
• Getting to optimal blood pH can really improve your health and well being
• The body will try its best to self-regulate to achieve its optimal blood pH of 7.35-7.45
• It does this by using base in your diet to counter the acid in your diet
• If there's insufficient base in your diet to offset the acid, your pH will go lower (be more acidic)
• This means it's important to manage the balance of acid and base in your diet so you don't go out of balance and into a more acidic state
• Test your pH to know where you stand, and adjust your balance or supplementation regime (either with a supplement or with a whole food like organic lemons squeezed into water) to improve it
• You can test your saliva, but it is highly influenced by food or liquid residue in your mouth, so testing urine is a better idea - you're gunning for 7.2 urine pH
• Ew

So, other than the pee testing, this is very good and powerful info.  I'm trying to learn more myself to see what I can do to affect a more alkaline blood pH.  I tested my saliva yesterday, and was at 6.4.  I need to test my urine, but, um, well...yeah, so anyway, I need to do that sometime.  Either way, I'm clearly too acidic.  I'm excited to share the changes I expect from getting more alkaline.