You might have noticed that eating too many sweets or drinking too much coffee can leave you feeling tired, fat and sick. Although sugar and caffeine do play a role in this condition, it may not be for the same reasons you’ve heard. In fact, these foods are highly acidic and inflammatory, meaning that they can impact your body’s natural acid-base balance. This is why you need alkaline.
What Is The Acid-Alkaline Balance ?
Acid and alkaline are two ends of the pH scale: o is the most acidic, 7 is neutral and 14 is the most alkaline. While different systems in your body thrive at different points on this scale, it’s believed that having slightly alkaline blood promotes a healthier environment for life-sustaining bacteria and enzymes.
Your acid-base balance is important for every process in your body to function properly. This balance is maintained mainly by your kidneys and lungs.
Respiratory acidosis occurs when your blood is over-saturated with carbon dioxide because of poor lung function while metabolic acidosis occurs when your kidneys fail to excrete enough uric acid to maintain balance. Eating acidic foods can impair these natural processes.
Acidosis can contribute towards health problems like multiple sclerosis, cholesterol, arrhythmia, immunodeficiency disorders, joint pain, lethargy, chronic illness, heart disease, diabetes and much more (1).
Over-acidity can also increase your risk for osteoporosis, cancer, liver problems, heart disease and ketoacidosis.
How Your Body Fights Acidosis
When your body is too acidic and you’re not eating well, it will leach minerals like calcium, sodium, potassium and magnesium from your bones to neutralize the acidity in your blood. This can lead to serious medical problems like osteoporosis (2).
When there’s not enough alkalizing minerals in the body, acidic toxins get stored in your fat cells (3). Both of these methods harm your long term health, so it’s important to make the right lifestyle changes to avoid acidosis.