You may have heard from one of your nutrition savvy friends (or the guy at the gym guzzling down the wheatgrass juice) about how different foods can change your blood pH. It is true that just like with soil, water (or those chemicals that you used to tinker with in your high school chemistry class), that your blood and all foods that you consume have a pH rating. Foods can be either acidic or alkaline, and the pH of your blood can have a big impact on how your body functions. Are the acids and bases in your foods great enough to actually disturb your blood pH balance?
For a quick refresher about the pH scale from a chemistry standpoint, the scale goes from 0 to 14, with numbers lower than 7 and closer to 0 representing acidic compounds, and numbers higher than 7 and closer to 14 representing basic or alkaline compounds. Pure distilled water falls exactly in the middle with a neutral pH of 7. Your stomach acid, which contains quite a bit of hydrochloric acid, has an acidic pH of 1, while baking soda has an alkaline pH of 9. Your body likes to sit in the very minute range of 7.35 to 7.45. You can measure this range in a number of ways, including straight blood (using your saliva), or the most common method (measuring your urine), which should fall between 5.8 and 6.8 but can tell you the relative pH of your blood. Before you freak out and start thinking that your body is too fine-tuned, it is important to note that each whole number on the scale is ten times greater than the next closest number to 7 neutral. For example, a liquid with a pH of 6 is ten times more acidic than water, and a pH of 5 means that they are a hundred times greater than water. This will come into play and make more sense later.
Maintaining a healthy blood pH level is essential to many different functions in your body. Since you have so many protein-based enzymes, hormones and compounds in your body, all of which rely on a stable and balanced pH in order to maintain their shape, it is important to keep your blood pH in that sweet spot range. If your blood gets too acidic (the more common problem), your protein-based enzymes can start to denature (unravel) and lose their shape. This prevents them from functioning and can cause all sorts of unpleasant problems. Having too high a blood pH rating is called acidosis, and can lead to severe central nervous system depression, less efficient absorption of nutrients, decreased energy levels, reduced detoxification and immune system functioning (in the worst cases coma or even death). Having too much alkaline in a blood pH is called alkalosis, and can lead to nervous system hypersensitivity. This can result in spasms, convulsions, and even death in some cases. Obviously, maintaining blood pH balance is no joke.
Foods aren’t necessarily divided into acidic and alkaline based on their category or food group, although there are certain trends. Americans typically have a very acidic diet because they consume a lot of acidic foods.
Here are some examples of acidic and alkaline foods:
Acidic
• Meats – beef, pork chicken, fish
• Dairy – cheese, milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, ice cream
• Grains – wheat, rice, rye, spelt, flour
• Vegetables/legumes – potatoes, pinto beans, chocolate
• Fruits – berries, prunes, rhubarb, cherries
• Beverages – soda, beer, coffee, black tea
• Other – sugar, salt, processed chemicals
Alkaline
• Fruits – melons, grapes, papaya, apples, pears, lemons, raisins, mangoes, grapefruit, kiwifruit, figs, dates
• Vegetables – onions, asparagus, broccoli, beets, lettuce, celery, zucchini, sweet potato, spinach, green beans, parsley
• Grains – amaranth, millet, quinoa
• Beverages – herb teas, lemon water, green tea
• Other – cereal grasses, microalgae
I’m sure you can spot the trends that I mentioned, and it is probably apparent why Americans have such acidic diets. Our diets are packed with meats, dairy and carbohydrates. Then we wash it all down with soda, beer and coffee. These are all highly acidic foods, and it requires ample amounts of fruits and green vegetables to balance out the acidity.
To make matters worse, the metabolic wastes produced by normal cell functioning (carbon dioxide) and exercise (lactic acid) can also contribute to increasing blood pH. There is also the matter of free radicals (or free-floating ions in your blood), which also cause an increase in acidity. Now back to the original question – does our diet have a significant enough impact on blood pH to worry about what you are eating?
As with many other vital functions in your body, your body works extremely hard to maintain a proper blood pH. There are several mechanisms by which your body regulates blood pH, including the carbonic acid-bicarbonate, protein, and phosphate buffer systems, exhalation of carbon dioxide in your breath, and the elimination of excess hydrogen ions in your kidneys. These various systems are brutally effective at regulating your blood pH, and form a self-regulating defense system against big swings in blood pH that could cause havoc on your body. While the foods you eat can certainly cause some small changes in your blood pH (if you consume very large amounts), for the most part your natural defense mechanisms are more than sufficient to combat the acidity in your foods. They won’t cause a big enough difference to matter. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you should eat like crap all the time, and it never hurts to help your body fight problems. So here are some things that you can do to help win the battle for your blood pH…
Tips for Balancing Blood pH:
• Eat more fruits and green leafy vegetables, particularly if you eat a lot of meat, carbs and dairy.
• Green drinks containing cereal grasses (barley grass, wheat grass, etc) and microalgae (spirulina, chlorella, and wild blue-green algae) can help, but make sure there aren’t any added processed sugars and junk in the drink.
• Drink your green tea and lemon water instead of coffee and soda (which has a pH of 3 by the way – 10,000 times more acidic than water)!
• Drink plenty of water to help flush blood through your kidneys and help filter out ions and other bad stuff.
• Did I already say eat more fruits and vegetables?
Doing these things might not necessarily make a demonstrable difference, but this could be the reason why people who switch to vegetarianism or the Paleo Diet report more energy, less illness and better bodily functions. Some naturopaths and experts in the field of preventative medicine believe that blood pH could be the next wave of focus in the health industry, so this should be something to keep an eye on in the future.
Resources:
Bowden, Jonny, Ph.D, C.N.S, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth. Beverly, MA: Fairwinds Press, 2007
Bowden, Jonny, Ph.D, C.N.S, The Healthiest Meals on Earth. Beverly, MA: Fairwinds Press, 2008
Kim, Dr. Ben. "The Truth About Alkalizing Your Blood." Dr. Ben Kim .com - Experience Your Best Health. Web. 09 Dec. 2011. <http://drbenkim.com/ph-body-blood-foods-acid-alkaline.htm>.
Peter Bauman – Peter is a chef first and personal trainer second, with a background in the biological sciences and degree in psychology from UC Berkeley. He takes the tactics that work with elite athletes at California Strength—one of the leading athletic training facilities in the country—and helps to apply them to the lives of the Average Joe to get results.