What is an alkaline diet?

You’ll almost certainly have heard of this latest healthy-eating trend, but what is an alkaline diet exactly? The alkaline diet is based around the pH scale, which was developed in 1909 by Danish chemist Soren Peder Lauritz Sorensen. The term pH stands for ‘potential of hydrogen’ because it measures the number of hydrogen ions in a standard volume of liquid. Therefore the acidity or alkalinity of a substance is determined by the concentration of hydrogen ions (positively charged hydrogen molecules). An acid is a substance that is saturated with hydrogen ions, while an alkali (or base) is a substance that is capable of absorbing many hydrogen ions.

An alkaline diet is a healthy-eating lifestyle based on eating foods that metabolise (burn) to leave an alkaline residue (ash) of minerals such as calcium, iron, zinc, magnesium and copper. Foods are therefore classified as alkaline, acidic or neutral according to the pH of the solution created with their ash in water. Acidity and alkalinity are measured using the pH scale, which spans from zero to 14 – zero being the most acidic, 14 the most alkaline and 7 neutral.

All about chemistry
Our body’s tissues each have an optimal pH range that they need to maintain for good functioning: muscle tissue needs a pH of 6.1, the liver 6.9, the stomach 1.2-3.0, urine 4.5-8.0, saliva 6.35-6.85, and blood 7.35-7.45. When we deviate from these optimal ranges, problems arise and the body takes emergency measures to restore it to the optimal set point (called homeostasis). Your body has a ‘buffer’ system that it uses to keep your blood within a tight range of this pH, a deviation from which can be fatal.

Blood is the largest tissue in the body and it is also the most important in sustaining life. It transports oxygen (via red blood corpuscles), nutrients and water to our cells. It also eliminates acidic waste that builds up during cellular processes. The blood is often called our ‘river of life’, and less important functions in the body will be compromised in order to restore correct blood pH. In chronic acidosis, alkaline minerals are drawn from the body to maintain life-sustaining blood pH.

The three predominant alkaline minerals are sodium, calcium and potassium, which are recycled by the kidneys back into the blood and lymph by binding them to carbon dioxide. For example, the body will borrow (leech) calcium and other alkaline minerals from our bones, muscles and vital organs to neutralise blood acidity. This literally saves our life in the short term, but at the expense of compromised bone health (leading possibly to osteoporosis) over the longer term.

How does an alkaline diet work?
The alkaline pH balance diet is concerned with working in harmony with your body’s requirements for healthy functioning – namely, keeping your blood pH at its optimal, slightly alkaline range of 7.35-7.45, without any stress on other functions and mineral reserves. This is achieved predominantly by eating foods that create an alkaline ash when metabolised by the body – fruit and vegetables – and limiting foods that create an acidic ash, such as animal products, dairy, refined oils and processed foods. The alkalinity of your body has nothing to do with your stomach acid or even the pH of foods in their physical form. For example, lemons are alkaline-forming but acidic in their physical form.

Find out your pH
You can determine you body’s pH by testing your saliva and urine pH using litmus paper or pH strips that can be bought online or from health food stores very inexpensively. Check your saliva and urine pH level first thing in the morning and just before going to sleep at night. Since we do not eat through the night, the morning saliva and urine pH indicate the acidity of the body. Evening saliva and urine pH show how our diet and lifestyle influences our metabolism and how well our buffer systems are tolerating the changing pH. The saliva and urine pH offer a window through which you can see the overall pH balance in your body.

This is useful because even if you usually feel fine, if your diet consists mostly of meat, packaged foods, caffeine, dairy, refined fats and sugars, or you are constantly under stress, do not exercise enough, smoke, or drink alcohol, your saliva and urine pH will probably register as low as 5.0-6.0 on the pH scale and this is an early warning indicator that you need to make some immediate changes to alkalise your body.

A silent killer
Over-acidity can go undetected for years, but causes severe damage and will eventually manifest into a significant health problem. Like acid eating into marble, acidosis erodes and eats into cell wall membranes of the heart, arteries and veins. Acidosis is the first step towards having a weakened immune function, premature ageing and chronic disease.

The easiest way to maintain correct blood pH is by following an alkaline diet15 and lifestyle that works in harmony with your body’s needs. Drinking water also helps to maintain alkalinity in the blood, lymph, intracellular and extracellular fluids, by diluting excess acidity.

So in essence, the simple and obvious reasoning behind the alkaline diet is one of being an ally, a friend and a champion to your body’s natural requirements and healthy state of being, so it can get on with carrying out its multitude of functions and processes, unobstructed and using the correct fuel.

Think of it like this – providing alkaline foods to your body is like fuelling your racing car with high-octane petrol (gas) and running it on a racetrack with no obstacles. You wouldn’t fuel your racing car with diesel and put breeze blocks on the road, so why on earth would you do this to your body?
This extract was taken from The Alkaline 5 Diet by Laura Wilson (£10.99, Hay House UK).