Balancing Your pH Levels7
with NutriBullet RD
The body has a “happy place,” a place where the pH level helps healthy cells thrive and where enemies (bad bacteria, cancer cells, viruses) don’t have a chance to survive. The foods you consume and the nutrients you absorb heavily influence your body’s acid/alkaline balance, or that pH level. Enjoying an alkalizing NutriBlast is a delicious way to optimize your internal environment!
The body’s natural pH is 7.365, slightly on the alkaline side. This is the healthy balance we should strive to keep. Unfortunately, the Standard American Diet (SAD) of processed, refined sugars and starches, caffeine, fried foods and meat-heavy dishes are highly acid-forming. When thinking about your next meal or your overall diet, shoot for 60-80% alkalizing foods and 20-40% acid forming foods. It is wise not to shun some acid-forming foods since several of them offer various health benefits; so including them in your diet is advisable and encouraged. However, the key is to create meals with an overall alkalizing effect on the body, while maintaining foods that provide powerful nutrients!
Now, a food’s level of acidity prior to consumption (think lemons and limes) doesn’t indicate its final state inside the body. Chemical processes transform these citrus fruits into wonderful alkaline stars. The end result of the breakdown of both fruits and vegetables is dependent on the presence of potassium, calcium and magnesium within these foods and the alkaline effect of these minerals.
So how can you tell when you may be off balance? Signs your body may be too acidic include increased respiratory rate, body odor, fatigue, inflammation, and infection. Chronic acidity can also lead to osteoporosis and muscle-wasting.
Acidity is increased by refined and processed foods (including pasta, white breads, cookies, pastries, pretzels, crackers, and sugary cereals), meat, dairy, eggs, most grains (quinoa and buckwheat are less acid forming), alcohol, artificially sweetened soda, as well as regular soda, fried foods, stress, pollution and environmental toxins, pharmaceutical drugs such as antibiotics, and negative emotions. On the other hand, an alkalizing diet emphasizes fruits, vegetables (especially green leafy veggies), nuts, seeds, and legumes. In addition to these superfoods, some NutriBoosts to help achieve your ideal pH balance are goji berries, bee pollen, raw cacao, marine phytoplankton, chlorella, and raw organic apple cider vinegar (other vinegars are acid forming).
You may have seen several lists with varying acid/alkaline levels for specific foods depending on which measurement technique was used, but they all tend to gravitate toward the same message: choose more plant-based foods and less processed/refined grains! Here is a quick overview of the breakdown based on the estimated renal acid load of particular food groups.
Estimated potential renal acid load (PRAL) of food groups
Positive numbers above zero indicate foods that acidify our bodies and place a greater load on our kidneys. The negative numbers make our system more alkaline and decrease the amount of acid our kidneys need to excrete.
|Food group (per 100g)||PRAL|
|Milk and dairy products||1.0 to 23.6*|
|Grains and grain products||3.5 to 7.0|
|Nuts and seeds||5.0 to 20.0|
|Oil (olive, sunflower)||0|
|Fruits and fresh pressed juices||-3.1|
*the PRAL is particularly high for processed, high protein, and low-fat cheeses
AlkalineMint (Blast your pH back in balance)
Small bunch of parsley
½ lemon (peeled)
2 large chunks pineapple
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp raw cacao powder
3-5 fresh mint leaves
Blast for 45 seconds into alkaline health!
Becoming Raw by Brenda David, RD and Vesanto Melina, MS, RD
Dr. Tom M. Wnorowski re: alkaline water
NutriBullet Nutrition Advisor