pH as a Bodily Priority
P stands for POTENTIAL and that’s what it’s all about.
pH is a lot like air. You can’t see air, but you also can’t see carbon monoxide in the air and those are two very different things, as far as healthy factors.
The “p” stands for potential, so it stands for what isn’t there. What is there is hydrogen, which is what the H stands for. It works backwards though. The more hydrogen, the less potential for hydrogen. So: more hydrogen = more acidic, but what drives the measuring of it on a scale, is POTENTIAL.
If you purchased a box of store-bought cookies, you could read on the back what the ingredients are and how many grams of sugar the cookies contain. But you won’t find there what the pH of the cookies is, and why, I don’t know, because pH makes a difference to the body’s functions, including the ability to heal.
The other factor is that hydrogen can be a byproduct WITHIN the human body due to the digestion of anything. The pH of a pork chop might be one thing, but the pH changes, or the resulting increases in hydrogen produced inside the body from breaking down the meat, is a factor to appreciate.
Many people think of LEMONS as acidic (2 pH) because they measure below stomach acid (3) for pH. The weird thing about lemons is that they help to form a more alkaline pH within the human body. Raw honey and pasteurized (heated) honey may have a similar pH, but within the body, the RAW honey creates a more alkaline state, while the cooked honey increases hydrogen in the body due to that it breaks down differently.
This can appear to be super complicated and confusing for the average layperson. But it’s super not-complicated.
RAW plant foods, with very few exceptions, are alkaline-forming and COOKED foods are acid-forming. That’s about all the layperson needs to know.
Human blood is always 7.35 to 7.45.
Human tissues will absorb acids to help maintain that perfect blood pH range. Human cells release acids into a more alkaline solution, so if a person’s fluids become chronically acidic, acids and wastes held in the cells stagnate until a more alkaline solution can come to the rescue.
Foods in their raw, uncooked state do not create hydrogen waste in the body, while cooked foods do, so consuming more raw plants is one way to send alkalinity to rescue acidic tissues.
Hydrogen, we can think of as EXHAUST.
COOKED FOODS burn differently in the body because they produce exhaust, while raw foods produce little to no exhaust.
If you’ve already read the section on this website about HYDRATION, then this brings the subject of health back around to the idea that things are comprised of atoms and atoms comprise molecules. I illustrated that you can’t feed a tree by chopping a hole in the trunk and stuffing dirt in there. Nor can a person swallow a blueberry without chewing it and expect it to digest and be assimilated.
The human body does not produce the plant-digesting enzyme cellulase, so plants contain the enzyme cellulase within them, inside of their cells, and those cells are surrounded by a cell WALL comprised of cellulose. If by CHEWING the blueberry, the cell wall gets ruptured, then the cellulase enzyme within the cell can activate and assist in making that blueberry more bio-available to the human’s digestive system.
However, throughout the blueberry, including on its surface, are microorganisms such as bacteria and yeasts. If you did not eat the blueberry, but left it sitting out on the kitchen counter, then the yeasts will be slowly eating the blueberry while it sits, and so do molds, and that blueberry will start to rot and/or ferment. If you had a whole bowl of blueberries on your counter and the conditions were just right, you might ferment the pile and end up with alcohol forming around the blueberries. This is because alcohol is one of the WASTES which yeast gives off and humans can safely consume that.
Beer, wine, spirits, all came through the human cultivation of yeasts. Alcohol is constantly being created all over the planet naturally. Squirrels and birds can get a buzz from eating fermented berries in the wild and there’s YouTube videos capturing drunken squirrels.
What farmers do to help prevent molds from growing is to spray the blueberry with man-made chemicals to kill the microorganisms which would BREAK DOWN the blueberry on the kitchen counter. Plus, farmers will often use a chemical to GROW the blueberries, and to prevent it from sprouting/rotting after it is picked, because, after all, every blueberry was once a flower and each blueberry contains seeds.
All kinds of foods we eat are a kind of seed, such as carrots, garlic, and potatoes. Where did they originate? From the wild! These things were growing long before people planted seeds and they are designed to reproduce themselves. So today’s farmers will spray chemicals on them to stop that.
You aren’t going to buy a potato or a carrot at the store if it’s full of sprouts. Added chemicals can alter the molecules of the RAW produce similar to cooking it, so an organic carrot can be alkaline pH-forming in the body, while a conventionally sprayed carrot can form acids in the body by requiring the digestion of the man-made CHEMICALS that have become part of the carrot’s tissue. Plus, a sprayed carrot is changed inside of its cells and these may not digest as a proper food for humans at all. In other words, a sprayed carrot produces exhaust.
This concept is very simple too: organic raw-produce creates what is “alkaline forming” when eaten, while conventionally-farmed produce loses that natural power to NOT form acids in the human body, just like cooked honey forms acids in the body, while raw honey does not. This just brings us back to the original concept to grasp: cooked foods are acid-forming, while raw produce is alkaline forming. SPRAYED raw produce can be acid-forming, so categorize all of that into the COOKED pile.
Again, it’s simple.
There are only three main food pH distinctions for anybody to care about:
1) Any food which has been baked, fried, toasted, microwaved, boiled, or broiled forms acids in the human body. 2) Conventionally farmed (sprayed) raw produce will form acids in the body due to chemicals and cellular changes within the plant which creates “exhaust” when digested, or acidity, and 3) Organic produce as a rule of thumb is alkaline or alkaline-forming, which helps the body to maintain proper pH ZONES and to better release acid-wastes.
- Cooked: Acid-forming
- Sprayed: Acid-forming*
- Organic raw plant-foods: Alkaline-forming
* I realize that some nutritional experts would scoff at the idea that a sprayed carrot is acid-forming and technically, that may be correct. If you are one of those experts, grant me this: Have you studied what the chemical chlorpropham** does to plants deep within the tissues, which humans consume? And the number of our foods sprayed with it? If so, what do you think? If not, I rest my case. Chlorpropham on plants forms acids inside the human body when consumed.
** Google chlorpropham to learn what plant foods are treated with it because it is a looong list.
Back to my story.
What’s been going on in America is that humans have a base-line of pH zones within the human body and scientists know what these are and what they should be. Nowadays, when average people are measured for the pH of their bodily fluids, they are testing ten to 100 times more acidic than normal.
The main variable input is FOOD and DRINK. This means that Americans are consuming more acid-forming foods than what their ancestors ate. If there are epidemics of “lifestyle” illnesses amongst a population, such as cancer, diabetes, or autoimmune disorders, then pH would be a HUGE factor related to what’s been acid-forming becoming disease-forming.*
* You could wonder about ESKIMOS, who only ate meat, and how did they survive as far as pH? Or what about the ancient Chinese, who always cooked their food? Honestly, I don’t know! I could research it right now, but what matters is figuring things out for us, now, because the average American consumes roughly one pound of pesticides yearly and neither the Eskimos nor the ancient Chinese had to contend with that, so we can’t compare apples to oranges and I’d suggest not to worry about what the Eskimos did.
Back to our story: If most of the water inside of a person should be carried within the cells making up tissues and organs, then acids can build up within the CELLS. To remove acids, it will be done through a process called “osmosis,” which is fluids moving by a slow movement in and out of the individual cells.
The human body is similar to a continental basin with streams and gullies, so we could say that the Mississippi river is like the core blood and gut, and the rivers feeding into the Mississippi are like the lymphatic drainage, and the creeks feeding into those are like small blood capillaries running through tissue, and the tiniest puddles are like the cells comprising the tissue. A person can’t remove acids from their body by cleaning up the Mississippi river alone because the river is just draining all of what’s above and beyond it. So the clean-up of the human body begins with the upstream cells and they drain outwards “into the Mississippi” and this is called osmosis.
Wellness is a measure of FLOW.
That’s where we want to be headed to clean-up all of this: upstream. And then osmosis draws everything downstream.
Let’s take “a 25 year-old” for our example, one who is just about to drink their first green smoothie. But it is necessary to wonder: For the first five years of their life, what did they eat? Then, all through school, where did they eat lunch? At 16, they can drive, and now where are they eating? College, what’s happening there as far as food choices, or no college, what’s out there to eat for a busy teen?
Let’s say this is a girl and she developed pimples at age twelve and was on antibiotics for two straight years, thus poorly digesting her food the entire time, but children are resilient, so nobody noticed, except for a 6-month trial of Adderall and another 6-month trial of a mild antidepressant. At 17, she’s on birth control. At 18, she starts going with her friends to a yoga class at the Y. She has blossomed into a beautiful woman.
College or the workplace as a young adult can be quite stressful, so now she’s back on the low dose antidepressant through her entire sophomore year, and the pimples returned, so it’s back on the antibiotic. The next few years are a mixed bag of stress, and cookies, and late night pizza, plus she’s right on the edge of binge drinking, which began as peer pressure and her parents have no clue.
All good now at age 25 because she’s over all that. She’s starting on green smoothies and things are looking up. She saw turmeric at the grocery store because she’s learning about cooking at home, but still, a lot of her new diet starts out frozen or reheated in the microwave. Thus, the turmeric root sits on the counter because she has no clue how to eat it, but she does Google it and learns that it’s easier if she gets it in powdered form, so she buys that, but it gets shoved back behind other things on the shelf. Her parents ask her how she’s eating and she tells them: “Better than ever!”
The GREEN SMOOTHIE has descended upon her like the bubble of light, which is like Glinda the Good Witch. In your own imagination, shrink that bubble of light down so that it centers on our female example’s belly button. She swallows the ball-of-light smoothie. What’s it going to do?
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- It depends entirely what the smoothie is made from, but let’s say: a banana, a scoop of green powder which includes organic green plants, maybe algae’s, plus probiotics, half a cup of frozen mango, and some goat milk protein powder, plus a cup of coconut water.
- It WILL: A) hydrate, B) repopulate flora, C) facilitate liver cleansing, D) improve pH, and E) support her larger vision for being healthy now.
However, how many smoothies will she need to drink to induce permanent change and what else can she do to accelerate her improvement?
What happened to this 25 year old:
First, these are two photos of the skin of my niece’s friend who is in her twenties, but was suffering from such an extreme case of yeast overgrowth that a rash covered her entire body. I know it looks like sunburn, but it’s not. What I suggested was not medical advice, but educational.I informed her that probiotics can displace yeast in the body and that this would be extremely difficult to do without helping kill off the yeasts with foods such as garlic, coconut oil, and green plants rich in chlorophyll. Plus, she could investigate the benefits of a supplement with tea tree oil, caprylic acid, and grapefruit seed extract. Solaray makes a product with those together, plus more, called Yeast Cleanse. Lastly, as yeasts die, they pass down the digestive tract, so a colonic weekly or an enema daily would speed up her reduction in systemic toxicity. Flax oil would likewise speed healing throughout.
I did not give my niece’s ill friend another thought, until a couple of months later, my niece sent me these “before and after” pictures. Quite a fast turnaround for this woman after supporting a few key leverage points.
This is what you want to do.
As for the 25 year-old woman in our case model, she is likewise suffering from impairments to parts of her body, but beneath the threshold of her awareness. THAT’S when you want to address them, before they make themselves known and suddenly you are smacked down with a severe case of yeast overgrowth.
How MANY green smoothies will our female example need to drink before these unseen, unknown factors start to improve? I would estimate that she functions at 8/10 capacity for what her health potential is, and sliding into a 7. Her pH is probably one point too acidic or ten times less than optimal. One green smoothie would have a .01 impact on any of the PRIORITIES as identified here, but 30 green smoothies in one month could rapidly improve her pH measured from her spit or urine, while .01 for the green smoothie also reversing cellular oxidation, and improving cellular fluid-pH also by .01.
She has a long way to go, despite that she feels great.
Her colon, which is like the Mississippi river, would receive zero improvement from one month of green smoothies, except the steady lifelong decline of her colon’s health, would shift. IF our person gave herself an enema three times per week, now the broader river is moving and everything above unwinds that much faster.
How much faster? Well, anybody could reverse yeast overgrowth in one month doing that consistently and by that I mean, textbook yeasts in the body, not the “medical condition” of yeast overgrowth. If you suffer from the ill-condition of yeast overgrowth, see a professional health expert or M.D.
Back to our 25 year-old female: after just one month, things are looking up. But, just ONE fast food binge, a burger or a chicken fillet plus a soft drink plus fries, sets the whole thing back to ZERO. That’s what most people refuse to appreciate. The sterilizing agents in the fast food meat winds through the digestive tract, wiping out colonies of intestinal flora, thus triggering fungal overgrowth, again. Water will be sucked from other places in the body to process the garbage of this ONE MEAL and acids will form. One soft drink with a pH of 2.5 will require at least a gallon of purified water to balance it.
If our 25 year-old had a net gain after one month of green smoothies of .3, still, much of that improvement will be held because she has impacted UPSTREAM into her tissues, and “one fast food meal” wouldn’t totally reverse all of that. So she’s not at zero. Maybe she’s at .2 and now another month of green smoothies, and she’s improved .5. That would be HUGE.
- Month #1: +.3
- Fast food binge: -.1
- Month #2: +.3
- Net gain: +.5
If she also JUICED a lemon every morning and drank that in purified water, her .5 progress would be .8. If she read Jay Kordish’s book, The Juiceman’s Power of Juicing, and began experimenting with juicing additional fruits and vegetables such as organic cabbage, carrots, parsley, sweet potatoes, beets, ginger and TURMERIC root, she’s off the chain, because all that begins to reduce MUCUS in her gut, and mucus is evil! She can purchase a juicer at Target for about $50 and a good brand is Hamilton Beach.
Now her total progress could be 1.6. Plus, if we factor the decline in health she formerly was experiencing before she did all this, which was prevented, that’s +.2, so she’s up to an improvement of 1.8, which is nearly as fast as one can go!
If she added a teaspoon of diatomaceous earth (DE) to her smoothie, she is further impacting yeast growing in her gut, and pulling out heavy metals, and yes, killing larger parasites, WHICH she will begin to see in the toilet. (I liken it to trying to catch bees at a beehive with one of those little aquarium fish nets, but that’s about the speed to kill them anyway, because the DE kills them at the TOP of the digestive tract and because that area of the body digests things, she will be digesting her worms, which is GROSS, but better than leaving them in there alive.
Getting to the actual hive is another thing.)
But hey, she’s at 2.0 improvement in 60 days!
After one full year of green smoothies, the entire process accelerates, such that every “green smoothie” has a doubled value of .2 to her insides. Her pH will have been lowered to just about right. If she lives next to a bus station or an airport or high power lines at a grid station, divide her progress by 2.
There’s nothing actually behind these specific numbers of progression, but they should serve to illustrate that turning one’s wellness around is incremental and tiny. What we can do for ourselves while still seemingly well has exponential-potential benefits. And it requires TIME.
Now, how many green smoothies do I drink per month?
None.
But I consume THE EQUIVELENT of what’s in a green smoothie almost daily. I will eat about a quart of goat yogurt or kefir every week, sometimes made from raw milk. I juice greens and all that stuff in Jay Kordich’s book daily. I put DE into my juice. I eat raw miso paste off my finger whenever I see the tub and think: Oh! I ferment my own kimchee and mix it into the stuff I eat a lot like guacamole or plop it onto sardines with raw garlic on crackers. Nasty delicious! I also take a Yeast Cleanse capsule about once a week and consume flax, black seed, pumpkin seed, olive and coconut oils. I do this without thinking in the same way somebody puts salad dressing on a salad.
Let’s change this story. Let’s say our case model is a 35 year-old male. What’s wrong with him? To him, probably nothing. To him, he is just coming into his own, but check back with him at 45 and not so good. (The 35 year-old male for some reason shows less symptoms that the 35 year-old female and that’s probably because her internal parts are more delicate like a flower.)
What comes into play, however, are the thousand variables of life which make us all different. We can’t really come up with a standard 35 year-old dude because we don’t know where he’s been, what he’s up to and that’s all his own business. But by age 55, this same dude is limping. And, his pH is roughly 100X too acidic, and that’s going to take some EFFORT to turn back the clock, plus age 60 is fast approaching.
Here is the TRICK PART: It’s all the SAME. What the 25 year-old woman might consider doing to improve her health is identical to what the 35 year-old male must do.
Smack at the level of the body’s priorities.
The 60 year-old male, same strategy. It just takes LONGER to undo when you start at 60. Plus, you want to avoid SYMPTOMS of illness between now and then. Because once you get a symptom, that increases anxiety. Anxiety creates desperation. Desperation leads to more desperation. Now the situation is desperate and we become more vulnerable to going for the fast-fix.
Avoid that!
How do we do it? Fix pH now, dummy. Remember!
- Cooked food creates acids.
- Raw organic produce balance acids, cleans tissues, hydrates cells, feeds internal microflora, assists with waste removal, and tilts pH more alkaline.
- Sprayed conventional produce creates acids.
Keeping in mind, we’ve got to CLEAN UP what came before.
Green smoothies? Sure! Why not? But you can implement what’s in a green smoothie and eat those same ingredients in other ways or as a supplement. MISO paste raw and unheated: is amazing for health, but it’s not something one might add to a smoothie, although one could.
Juicing is said to be stupid by lots of health experts, but why do they get so ANGRY about it? Chill out, man! Who cares that much whether anybody juices or not?
Next: Getting yourself a $5 enema bag from Wal-Mart is priceless. Use it. I can time myself with a stopwatch doing the whole process in under 3 minutes. You don’t need soothing music and candles. Just stick the nozzle in, pull it back out, sit down on the pot, and done.
Could it be that simple??
Lastly, change it up. For the past seventeen years I’ve not consumed the SAME supplement product over and over except Udo’s Oil. Especially with probiotic brands, these colonize, so get lots of strains from lots of places. Saccharomyces boulardii is a non-colonizing probiotic and antibiotic resistant. That’s a good one to keep on hand and maybe pop one capsule per week. Culturing your own vegetables is amazing and you can buy other people’s cultures at Farmer’s Markets or now readily available at health food stores. But don’t just BUY cultures; find ways to be spooning them out frequently onto your other foods. I myself don’t like eating kimchee directly out of the jar because it’s cold and sour. I mix it into a salad or spoon it over hot food on my plate, even mashed potatoes, which, you know; cooked potatoes are acid-forming.
I’m sure there’s more to pH and I’m sure somebody has written a book about it and if they did it’s probably all goo goo and ga-ga. I’d suggest: grasp three things about it, then forget about it! It’s three things and then just one thing: eat more raw organic plants and get them into your system in whatever shape or form, but get them in, and you are good, or better, for the long haul that’s still ahead. Right?
One other thing. At the time of the birth of America and George Washington, the average revolutionary American consumed 15 pounds of sugar yearly. That seems like a lot of sugar, but today, sugar consumption is more like 150 pounds per person per year. That’s like eating one of those giant sacks of sugar sitting on the bottom shelf at the grocery store every month. It LURKS in the food we eat and to inhale that much sugar must be that most people are on a sugar-IV or something weird like that.
Sugar does come from plants, but it is SUPER ACIDIC by itself. If anybody can get down to 15 pounds of sugar consumption annually, that’s like being George Washington.
But, the final thing, when you notice OTHER PEOPLE inhaling sugary products around you, DON’T CARE. They don’t know! None of this is RELIGION. I’ll say it again: none of this is religion.
