Acidity And Alkalinity In The Body
There has been a lot in the media lately about alkalinity and acidity in the body, but finding solid, straightforward information isn�t always easy. In short, acidity can cause a number of health issues. There are many benefits of bringing your body into balance.
What Is High Acidity?
The term acidity describes a condition where the body is affected by the excess production of gastric acids. Under normal conditions, hydrochloric acid is secreted by the stomach, aiding in the digestion and breakdown of food.
However, when this normal process is triggered in such a way that it causes overproduction of the acid, it can result in health problems. Acidity can be caused by irregular eating patterns, fad diets, alcohol consumption, stress, smoking, an unhealthy diet, and a sedentary lifestyle. Symptoms can include:
- Indigestion
- Burning in the stomach
- Belching
- Sour taste
- Burning in the throat
- Constipation
- Nausea
- Restlessness
What Are The Dangers Of High Acidity In The Body?
When the body is acidic, it can affect everything from immunity to neurological function to bone health. The Japanese have linked acidity to degenerative diseases like arthritis, cancer, and osteoporosis.
An acidic body is also a very hospitable environment for bacteria and viruses to thrive meaning the person will often get sick more often. When the body is out of balance it becomes susceptible to conditions as simple as dandruff and as complex as diabetes. Interestingly, many people have reversed or gone into remission by simply bringing their body into balance.
What Is Alkalinity?
In order to understand alkalinity, you need to understand pH levels. This is the measure used to determine how alkaline or acid something is. A pH of 0 is at the acidic end of the scale and means the thing being measured is completely acidic. At the other end of the scale, a pH of 14 is totally alkaline. The neutral point is a pH of 7.
Different parts of the body have different pH levels, meaning that some parts are more acidic while others are more alkaline. For instance, blood typically has a pH that is between 7.35 and 7.45, making it slightly alkaline. The stomach, on the other hand, is highly acidic, registering a pH of 3.5 or lower. Making the body more alkaline is not about making it completely alkaline � you need some acidity, it is necessary for digestion and other processes � it is more about bringing the body into balance.
What Are The Benefits Of Alkalinity?
When the body has increased alkalinity, bringing it into better pH balance, it is healthier and has a decreased risk of chronic illness. There is also less likelihood of illness. When the body is in a better pH balance it can result in many benefits including:
- More energy
- Improved cognitive function
- Slowed aging process
- Weight loss
- Lower cancer risk
- Decreased risk of chronic illness
- Increased immunity
How Can You Bring Your Body Into Balance?
The best way to bring your body into better pH balance is by modifying your diet. As a rule of thumb, animal based foods like meat, eggs, and dairy tend to be more acidic. A vegetarian diet rich in plant-based foods like vegetables and fruits tend to be more alkaline. While the body does need a diet that includes both acidic and alkaline foods, a diet of processed foods and foods high in fat and sugar can cause too much acidity. By adjusting the diet, eliminating processed foods, and maintaining a healthier, more vegetarian based diet, you can bring your body into balance and enjoy better health as a result.
5. Makes You Smarter
Rhetoric from the United States government since the early 1990s proclaims that GM foods are no different from their natural counterparts that have existed for centuries. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has labeled them �Generally Recognized as Safe,� or GRAS. This status allows a product to be commercialized without any additional testing. According to US law, to be considered GRAS the substance must be the subject of a substantial amount of peer-reviewed published studies (or equivalent) and there must be overwhelming consensus among the scientific community that the product is safe. GM foods had neither. Nonetheless, in a precedent-setting move in 1992 that some experts contend was illegal, the FDA declared that GM crops are GRAS as long as their producers say they are. Thus, the FDA does not require any safety evaluations or labeling of GMOs. A company can even introduce a GM food to the market without telling the agency.
Taylor�s GMO policy needed to create the impression that unintended effects from GM crops were not an issue. Otherwise their GRAS status would be undermined and they would need the extensive testing and labels that are normally required for food additives. But internal memos made public from a lawsuit showed that the overwhelming consensus among the agency scientists was that GM crops can have unpredictable, hard-to-detect side effects. Various departments and experts spelled these out in detail, listing allergies, toxins, nutritional effects, and new diseases as potential dangers. They urged superiors to require long-term safety studies.5 In spite of the warnings, according to public interest attorney Steven Druker who studied the FDA�s internal files, �References to the unintended negative effects of bioengineering were progressively deleted from drafts of the policy statement (over the protests of agency scientists).�6
There are several reasons why GM plants present unique dangers. The first is that the process of genetic engineering itself creates unpredicted alterations, irrespective of which gene is transferred. The gene insertion process, for example, is accomplished by either shooting genes from a �gene gun� into a plate of cells, or using bacteria to infect the cell with foreign DNA. Both create mutations in and around the insertion site and elsewhere.13 The �transformed� cell is then cloned into a plant through a process called tissue culture, which results in additional hundreds or thousands of mutations throughout the plants� genome. In the end, the GM plant�s DNA can be a staggering 2-4% different from its natural parent.14 Native genes can be mutated, deleted, or permanently turned on or off. In addition, the insertion process causes holistic and not-well-understood changes among large numbers of native genes. One study revealed that up to 5% of the natural genes altered their levels of protein expression as a result of a single insertion.
The very first crop submitted to the FDA�s voluntary consultation process, the FlavrSavr tomato, showed evidence of toxins. Out of 20 female rats fed the GM tomato, 7 developed stomach lesions.21 The director of FDA�s Office of Special Research Skills wrote that the tomatoes did not demonstrate a �reasonable certainty of no harm,�22 which is their normal standard of safety. The Additives Evaluation Branch agreed that �unresolved questions still remain.�23 The political appointees, however, did not require that the tomato be withdrawn.1
GM Diets Cause Liver Damage
GM Fed Animals Had Higher Death Rates & Organ Damage
About two dozen farmers reported that their pigs had reproductive problems when fed certain varieties of Bt corn. Pigs were sterile, had false pregnancies, or gave birth to bags of water. Cows and bulls also became sterile. Bt corn was also implicated by farmers in the deaths of cows, horses, water buffaloes, and chickens.55
Allergic reactions occur when the immune system interprets something as foreign, different, and offensive, and reacts accordingly. All GM foods, by definition, have something foreign and different. And several studies show that they provoke reactions. Rats fed Monsanto�s GM corn, for example, had a significant increase in blood cells related to the immune system.58 GM potatoes caused the immune system of rats to respond more slowly.59 And GM peas provoked an inflammatory response in mice, suggesting that it might cause deadly allergic reactions in people.60
For years, organic farmers and others have sprayed crops with solutions containing natural Bt bacteria as a method of insect control. The toxin creates holes in their stomach and kills them. Genetic engineers take the gene that produces the toxin in bacteria and insert it into the DNA of crops so that the plant does the work, not the farmer. The fact that we consume that toxic pesticide in every bite of Bt corn is hardly appetizing.
Although the number of safety studies on GM foods is quite small, it has validated the concerns expressed by FDA scientists and others. Unfortunately, government safety assessments worldwide are not competent to even identify most of the potential health problems described above, let alone protect its citizens from the effects.88
Submissions to the US Food and Drug Administraion (FDA) may be worse than in other countries, since the agency doesn�t actually require any data. Their policy says that biotech companies can determine if their own foods are safe. Anything submitted is voluntary and, according to former Environmental Protection Agency scientist Doug Gurian-Sherman, PhD, �often lack[s] sufficient detail, such as necessary statistical analyses needed for an adequate safety evaluation.� Using Freedom of Information Requests, Dr. Gurian-Sherman analyzed more than a fourth of the data summaries (14 of 53) of GM crops reviewed by the FDA. He says, �The FDA consultation process does not allow the agency to require submission of data, misses obvious errors in company- submitted data summaries, provides insufficient testing guidance, and does not require sufficiently detailed data to enable the FDA to assure that GE crops are safe to eat.�94 Similarly, a Friends of the Earth review of company and FDA documents concluded:
The unpublished industry studies submitted to regulators are typically kept secret based on the claim that it is �confidential business information.� The Royal Society of Canada is one of many organizations that condemn this practice. They wrote:
In addition, to relying on untested assumptions, industry-funded research is often designed specifically to force a conclusion of safety. In the high lysine corn described above, for example, the levels of certain nutritional components (i.e. protein content, total dietary fiber, acid detergent fiber, and neutral detergent fiber) were far outside the normal range for corn. Instead of comparing their corn to normal controls, which would reveal this disparity, Monsanto compared it to obscure corn varieties that were also substantially outside the normal range on precisely these values. Thus, their study found no statistical differences by design.
Monsanto�s 1996 Journal of Nutrition studies on Roundup Ready soybeans107,108 provide plenty of examples of scientific transgressions. Although the study has been used often by the industry as validation for safety claims, experts working in the field were not impressed. For example, Dr. Arpad Pusztai was commissioned at the time by the UK government to lead a 20 member consortium in three institutions to develop rigorous testing protocols on GM foods�protocols that were never implemented. Dr. Pusztai, who had published several studies in that same nutrition journal, said the Monsanto paper was not �up to the normal journal standards.� He said, �It was obvious that the study had been designed to avoid finding any problems. Everybody in our consortium knew this.� Some of the flaws include:
When governments fail in their duty to keep corporations in check, the �protector� role should shift to the media, which acts as a watchdog to expose public dangers and governmental shortcomings. But mainstream media around the world has largely overlooked the serious problems associated with GM crops and their regulation. The reason for this oversight is varied and includes contributions from an aggressive public relations and disinformation campaign by the biotech industry, legal threats by biotech companies, and in some cases, the fear of losing advertising accounts. This last reason is particularly prevalent among the farm press, which receives much of its income from the biotech industry.
One of the most troubling aspects of the biotech debate is the attack strategy used on GMO critics and independent scientists. Not only are adverse findings by independent scientists often suppressed, ignored, or denied, researchers that discover problems from GM foods have been fired, stripped of responsibilities, deprived of tenure, and even threatened. Consider Dr. Pusztai, the world�s leading scientist in his field, who inadvertently discovered in 1998 that unpredictable changes in GM crops caused massive damage in rats. He went public with his concerns, was a hero at his prestigious institute for two days, and then, after the director received two phone calls allegedly from the UK Prime Minister�s office, was fired after 35 years and silenced with threats of a lawsuit. False statements were circulated to trash his reputation, which are recited by GMO advocates today.
Since GM foods are not properly tested before they enter the market, consumers are the guinea pigs. But this doesn�t even qualify as an experiment. There are no controls and no monitoring. Given the mounting of evidence of harm, it is likely that GM foods are contributing to the deterioration of health in the United States, Canada, and other countries where it is consumed. But without post- marketing surveillance, the chances of tracing health problems to GM food are low. The incidence of a disease would have to increase dramatically before it was noticed, meaning that millions may have to get sick before a change is investigated. Tracking the impact of GM foods is even more difficult in North America, where the foods are not labeled.
There are 3 known types of negative reactions to wheat proteins, collectively known as wheat protein reactivity: wheat allergy (WA), gluten sensitivity (GS),�and celiac disease (CD). Of the 3, only CD is known to involve autoimmune reactivity, generation of antibodies, and intestinal mucosal damage. Wheat allergy involves the release of histamine by way of immunoglobulin (Ig) E cross-linking with gluten peptides and presents within hours after ingestion of wheat proteins. Gluten sensitivity is considered to be a diagnosis of exclusion; sufferers improve symptomatically with a gluten-free diet (GFD) but do not express antibodies or IgE reactivity.1
A 28-year-old man presented to a chiropractic teaching clinic with complaints of constant muscle fasciculations of 2 years� duration. The muscle fasciculations originally started in the left eye and remained there for about 6 months. The patient then noticed that the fasciculations began to move to other areas of his body. They first moved into the right eye, followed by the lips,�and then to the calves, quadriceps, and gluteus muscles. The twitching would sometimes occur in a single muscle or may involve all of the above muscles simultaneously. Along with the twitches, he reports a constant �buzzing� or �crawling� feeling in his legs. There was no point during the day or night when the twitches ceased.
Discussion
The authors could not find any published case studies related to a presentation such as the one�described here. We believe this is a unique presentation of wheat protein reactivity and thereby represents a contribution to the body of knowledge in this field.
This report describes improvement in chronic, widespread muscle fasciculations and various other systemic symptoms with dietary change. There is strong suspicion that this case represents one of
