Any person has heard at least once in their life the famous phrase: health is about balance! And it’s just so… balance between acidic foods and base or alkaline foods.
But let’s try to understand something more.
The famous Power of Hydrogen (PH) is a value that allows us to measure the degree of acidity or alkalinity of the human body: in general it should be between the 7,38 and the and 7,42. This is what we define as acid-base balance.
The PH measures the acidity or alkalinity of a food before swallowing, the PRAL (Potential Renal Acid Load) measures this ratio after a food is ingested.
Considering the foods most consumed, on average, the modern diet is highly acidifying, and the cause of many imbalances and potentially, diseases too.
We are speaking in fact of very popular foods such as:
- Cereals
- Their derivatives such as refined flours found in bread or pasta
- The sugars in all their forms, in particular refined sugars are present in countless industrial products (sodas, cookies, sauces, etc.)
- Soft drinks and tea and coffee are also very acidifying
- Milk and dairy
- Animal proteins such as meat and egg white
A body overloaded in acids it is in a state of acidosis. This acidosis can become chronic and long-term lead may to imbalances such as diabetes, osteoporosis, chronic fatigue, depression, to name but a few.
According to a publication in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1), the state of chronic acidosis decreases the basal metabolic rate by reducing the muscle mass of the body: basal metabolism is the minimum energy which the body needs while at rest, to maintain its vital functions.
Fruits and vegetables help us to re-establish the acid-base balance. They are highly alkalizing because they contain minerals such as calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium and sulphur as well as bicarbonates. It is advised to eat lots of fruits and vegetables as part of a balanced diet – vegetables more so than fruits, which contain high amounts of sugar.
The question is: How to eat large amounts of fruits and vegetables to benefit from important nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, enzymes, antioxidants?
By drinking the juices of fresh seasonal vegetables, the nutrients from different parts of the plant are condensed into one glass. These are assimilated quickly, reducing the digestion time that is needed for solid vegetables.
This doesn’t mean that you should replace the consumption of fruits and vegetables, but rather integrate it. It is important to eat these as well, because they contain other benefits such as the fibre.
Norman Walker was the first diffusing benefits of juices made using cold extraction, in particular thanks to his book ‘’Fresh vegetables and fruit juices’’: the basic conviction is that the fresh juices act as regenerators of the body, providing the cells with “living material” that regenerates and strengthens.
- Jain N, Minhajuddin AT, Neeland IJ, Elsayed EF, Vega GL, Hedayati SS. ‘Association of urinary sodium-to-potassium ration with obesity in a multiethnic cohort’. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2014 Feb 19.
Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3985224/
Mauro Maza
Naturopathic Practitioner at Naturopathe.lu
Source: Naturopathe.lu
