Finding Balance: The Alkalizing Benefits of Greens
~ by Stacey Terry
Some people need to go to the danger of extremes in order to find the relief of balance for themselves. This is especially true of people and their bodies. Let’s be honest. Most of us are guilty of letting things slide.
- You feel tired when you wake up. You ignore it and drag yourself through the day until you can crash again.
- You start to gain weight. You scrunch your face in the mirror, suck in your belly, and endure the painful squeeze of your jeans.
- Your muscles and joints start to ache all the time. You use the discomfort as an excuse to skip the gym and flop on the couch and watch a movie instead.
- You catch colds more often. You start buying your tissue boxes in bulk at Costco.
Our bodies communicate with us all the time to tell us whether we’re in a state of balance or not, and if we don’t listen, the messages just keep getting louder until more serious conditions like obesity or disease ring the gong and wake us up!
Thankfully, we don’t have to wait for the dangers of deadly and extreme conditions to make changes. You can restore your health and achieve balance in your body once you understand how things work. A great place to start is by learning about your body’s internal pH balance.
We went to our friends at Balance-pH-Diet.com to learn a little more about achieving a healthy body.
Do you remember going to elementary school and being given litmus paper to test various liquids for their pH level and measuring if they were alkaline or acidic? The pH scale is a measure of a fluid’s acidity or alkalinity. The scale goes from 0 to 14 with 7 being neutral.
Keeping in mind that our human bodies are mostly fluid, in order to function at their best, our bodies need to always be in that neutral, balanced place. On the pH scale, we should be striving to maintain a pH balance of about 7.4.
There isn’t much wiggle room either way. If your pH balance drops below 6.8 or goes above 7.8 your “gong” would stop ringing altogether and you’d die. That’s a very narrow range to maintain.
So what determines how acidic or alkaline your body is?
There are a number of variables, but the big ones are food, water, and stress. Successful long-term change is best approached gradually, so let’s start with what you can do about your food.
All foods either contribute to your alkalinity or your acidity. The most alkalizing foods include choices like:
- leafy greens and veggies,
- grasses,
- and nuts or seeds.
The most acidifying foods include:
- animal products,
- processed foods,
- and refined sugars.
No surprise there really.
Unfortunately, because most people still follow the SAD (Standard American Diet), which is high in acidic foods, most people never know how energetic and vibrant their bodies are supposed to feel. In fact, most just put up with those symptoms of being tired, overweight, and prone to illness or worse. They “survive” as long as their pH doesn’t dip down too far and become too acidic, but they never thrive.
In order to move your body closer to its proper pH level, you need to work towards getting at least 80% of your calories from alkalizing foods like greens and vegetables. Drinking green smoothies is a great way to begin packing in a variety of leafy greens. And by following a program like the 21-Day Green Smoothie Detox, you can get the support you need to make these food changes a habit.
If you’d like to learn more about your body’s pH level and what you can do to find balance, please visit Balance-pH-Diet.com.
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