From: Patty <faussettdp@m...>
Date: Mon Oct 23, 2000 12:50pm
Subject: Re: Acidity vs. alkalinity
> Some things I have read will say Vitamin C is on the acidic side and
> others alkaline such as when you eat a fruit. Could you explain this a
little
> more please? Also, I think that was good advice that you have given to the
> lady who is pregnat.
I know this acid/alkaline thing can be confusing. It just doesn't seem
logical that what we know to be acidic in nature (such as oranges, lemons
and grapefruits) are actually alkaline producing in the body. But there is
an explanation for that! I'll do my best to make it understandable:
First, some basics:
All foods that we eat are made up of proteins, carbohydrates, or fats. When
these are metabolized, they will produce organic or inorganic acids.
Protein, for instance, (such as is found in meats, nuts and legumes)
produces sulfuric acid and phosphoric acid. Carbohydrates and fats produce
acetic acid and lactic acid. These acids are all poisonous, and have to be
eliminated from the body as quickly as possible. However, to do that safely,
our smartly designed bodies know that they have to neutralize these acids
first. That is accomplished with mineral compounds.
The mineral compounds which neutralize acids are called carbonic salts,
which contain one of these four elements: Sodium, Calcium, Potassium or
Magnesium.
When carbonic salts meet up with any of the strong acids mentioned above
(sulfuric acid, phophoric acid, lactic acid, acetic acid), the alkaline
minerals in the carbonic salt leave the salt and combine with the acids to
make neutral salts.
The end result of this change from acid to neutral salt is to REDUCE the
concentration of alkaline elements in the blood and also in the
extracellular fluid. It is this lowered concentration of alkaline elements
which is referred to as the acidic condition of the body. Think of these
alkaline minerals in your body as your deposits in a bank account. When you
eat highly acid producing foods (such as meats, fish, sugar and all
processed and fatty foods), you are making huge withdrawals. You will need
to make more deposits. But if you don't make any withdrawals at all (by not
eating those acid forming foods), you will be wealthy (healthy!) indeed!
To maintain our alkaline levels and thus, our healthy state, we must
resupply the lost alkaline elements through the food we eat. Those
necessary organic minerals (sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium) are
found abundantly in fruits and vegetables. Fruits and veggies are our best
friends.
The determination of whether a food is acid forming or alkaline forming IN
THE BODY is a function of the proportion of acid and alkaline forming
elements it contains. This is determined by a process called titration.
Basically, the food to be measured is burned to ashes. This step takes the
place of digestion in the laboratory.
Next, a solution of the ashes is made with a standard amount of pure water.
This solution is tested to see whether it is acid or alkaline, and then
measurements are obtained to determine the strength of the acidity or
alkalinity. Because an acid solution will neutralize an alkaline solution
and vice versa, we can use a solution of known strength to the unknown
solution until the two cancel each other out. By keeping track of the
amount of alkaline or acid solution necessary to reach neutral, we can
determine the strength of the acidity or alkalinity of any substance.
So we can determine with confidence what foods are alkaline producing, and
which ones are acid producing IN THE BODY, after digestion. Fruits and
vegetables, while they may be "acidic" on the outside of the body, actually
make very little withdrawals of the alkalizing minerals once inside the
body, leaving our bank account intact. That is because they already contain
a good supply of the alkalizing minerals themselves.
I hope that was easy enough to understand! If anyone else wants to give it
a go, please do!
Patty
From the newsgroup http://www.egroups.com/message/bowelcleanse/4430
Excerpt from the book
"The Secret of Shambhala"
by James Redfield
He paused for a moment. "Do you understand? The rest of your life
must support your higher energy. You must be congruent." He glanced at me
mischievously. "You must live wisely. Let's eat."
He disappeared into the kitchen, and returned with a platter of
vegetables, accompanied by a sauce of some kind. He ushered both Yin and me over to a
table and served the vegetables in three small bowls. It soon became clear that the food
was all part of the information Hanh was imparting.
As we ate, he continued. "Maintaining higher energy within oneself
is impossible if one consumes dead matter as food."
I looked away, turning off. If this was going to be a lecture on diet,
I would just as soon skip it.
My attitude seemed to infuriate Hanh.
"Are you crazy?" he almost shouted. "Your very survival
may depend on this information and you won't put yourself out a little bit to leam this.
What do you think? That you can live any way you want and still do important things?"
He became quiet and glanced sideways at me. I realized that the anger
was genuine but was also part of his act. I got the impression that he was giving
information to me on more than one level. As I looked back at him, I couldn't help
smiling. Hanh was eminently likable.
He patted my shoulder and smiled back at me.
"Most people," he continued, "are full of energy and
enthusiasm in their youth, but then during middle age they lapse into a slow, downhill
slide that they pretend not to notice. After all, their friends are slowing down and their
kids are active, so they spend more and more time sitting around and eating the foods that
taste good.
"Before long, they begin to have nagging complaints and chronic
problems such as digestive difficulties or skin irritations that they write off as just
age, and then one day they get a serious illness that won't go away. Usually they go to a
doctor who does not stress prevention and they begin to take drugs, and some-
times the problem is helped and sometimes it isn't. And then, as the years fly by, they
get some disease that progressively gets worse, and they realize they are dying. Their
only solace is that they think what is happening occurs to everyone—that it is
inevitable.
"The terrible thing is that this collapse of energy happens to
some extent even to people who otherwise intend to be spiritual."
He leaned over toward me and feigned looking around the room to see if someone was
listening. "This includes some of our most respected lamas."
I wanted to laugh but I dared not.
"If we seek higher energy and at the same time consume foods that
rob us of this energy," Hanh continued, "we get nowhere. We must assess all the
energies we routinely allow into our own energy fields, especially foods, and avoid all
but the best if our fields are to stay strong."
He leaned closer to me again. "This is very difficult for most
people because we are all addicted to the foods we currently eat, and most are horribly
poisonous."
I looked away.
"I know there is much conflicting information out there about
food," he went on. "But the truth is out there too. Each of us must do the
research, make ourselves see the larger picture. We are spiritual beings who come into
this world to raise our energy. Yet much of what we find here is designed purely for
sensual pleasure and distraction, and much of it saps our energy and pulls us toward
physical disintegration. If we really believe we
are energetic beings, we must follow a narrow path through these temptations.
"If you look all the way back at evolution, you see that from the
beginning we had to experiment with food purely by trial and error, just to figure out
which foods were good for us and which would kill us. Eat this plant, survive; eat that
one over there, die. At this point in history we've figured out what kills us, but we're
only now realizing which foods add to our ultimate longevity and keep our energy high, and
which ones ultimately wear us down."
He paused for a moment as if determining whether I was understanding.
"In Shambhala they see this larger picture," he continued.
"They know who we are as human beings. We look like we are material stuff, flesh and
blood, but we are atoms! Pure energy!
Your science has proved this fact. When we look deeper into atoms, we
first see particles, and then, at deeper levels, the particles themselves disappear into
patterns of pure energy, vibrating at a certain level. And if we look at the way we eat
from this perspective, we see that what we put in our bodies as food affects
our vibrational state. Certain foods increase our energy and vibration and others diminish
it. The truth is as simple as that.
"All disease is the result of a drop in vibrational energy, and
when our energy drops to a certain point, there are natural forces in the world that are
designed to disincorporate our bodies."
He looked at me as though he had said something very profound.
"Do you mean physically disincorporate?" I asked.
"Yes. Look again at the larger picture. When anything dies —
a dog hit by a car, or a person after a long illness — the cells of the body
immediately lose their vibration and become very acid in chemistry. That acid state is the
signal to the microbes of the world, the viruses, bacteria, and fungi, that it is time to
decompose this dead tissue. This is their job in the physical universe. To return a body
back to the earth.
"I said earlier," he went on, "that when our bodies drop
in energy because of the kinds of foods we are eating, it makes us susceptible to disease.
Here's how that works. When we eat foods, they are metabolized and leave a waste or ash in
our bodies. This ash is either acidic in nature or alkaline, depending on the food. If it
is alkaline, then it can be quickly extracted from our bodies with little energy. However,
if these waste products
are acid, they are very hard for the blood and lymph system to eliminate and they are
stored in our organs and tissues as solids — low vibrational crystalline forms that
create blocks or disruptions in the vibratory levels of our cells. The more such acid
by-products are stored, the more generally acid these tissues become, and guess
what?"
He looked at me dramatically again. "A microbe of one type or
another appears and senses all this acid and says, 'Oh, this body is ready to be
decomposed.'
"Do you get that? When any organism dies, its body quickly changes
to a highly acid environment and is consumed by microbes very quickly. If we begin to
resemble this very acid, or death state, then we begin to come under attack from microbes.
All human diseases are the result of such an attack."
What Hanh was saying made perfect sense. A long time ago, I had run
across some information about body pH on the Internet. Moreover, I seemed to know it
intuitively.
"You're telling me that what we eat directly sets us up for
disease?" I asked.
"Yes, the wrong foods can lower our vibrational level to the point
that the forces of nature begin to return our bodies to the earth."
"What about diseases that aren't caused by microbes?"
"All disease comes about through microbial action. Your own
research in the West is showing that. Various microbes have been found to be associated
with the arterial lesions of heart disease, as well as the production of tumors in cancer.
But remember, the microbes are just doing what they do. Diets that create the acidic
environment are the true cause."
He paused and then said, "Grasp this fully. We humans are either
in an alkaline, high energy state or we are in an acid state, which signals the microbes
living within us, or that come by, that we are ready to decompose. Disease is literally a
rotting of some part of our bodies because the microbes around us have been given the
signal that we are already dead."
He looked at me mischievously again.
"Sorry to be so blunt," he said. "But we don't have much
time. The food we eat determines almost entirely which of these two conditions we are in.
Generally, foods that leave acid wastes in our body are heavy, overcooked, overprocessed,
and sweet, such as meats, flours, pastries, alcohol, coffee, and the sweeter fruits.
Alkaline foods are greener, fresher, and more alive, such as fresh vegetables and their
juices, leafy greens, sprouts, and fruits like
avocado, tomato, grapefruit, and lemons. It could not be more simple. We are spiritual
beings in an energetic, spiritual world. Those of you in the West might have grown up
thinking that cooked meat and processed foods are good for us. But we know now that they
create an environment of slow disincorporation that takes its toll on us over time.
"All the debilitating illnesses that plague mankind —
arteriosclerosis, stroke, arthritis, AIDS, and especially cancers — exist because we
pollute our bodies, which signals the microbes inside that we are ready to break down,
deenergize, die. We always wondered why some people exposed to the same microbes don't get
a particular disease. The difference is the inner-body environment. The good news is that
even if we have too much acidity in
our bodies and begin to decompose, the situation can be reversed if we improve our
nutrition and move to an alkaline, higher energy state."
He was now waving both arms, his eyes wide, still twinkling.
"We are living in the dark ages when it comes to the principles of
a vibrant, high-energy body. Human beings are supposed to live more than a hundred and
fifty years. But we eat in a way that immediately begins to destroy us. Everywhere, we see
people who are disincorporating before our eyes. But it doesn't have to be that way."
He paused and took a breath. "It's not that way in
Shambhala."
After another moment Hanh began to walk around, looking me over one
more time.
"So, there you have it," he concluded. "The legends say
that humans will first learn the true nature of foods and what kinds to consume. Then, the
legends say, we can fully open up to the inner sources of energy that increase our
vibration even more."
He slid his chair back from the table and looked at me. "You are
handling the altitude very well here in Tibet, but I would like for you to rest."
"That would be nice," I said. "I'm bushed."
"Yes," Yin agreed, "we have had a long day."
"Make sure you expect a dream," Hanh added, leading me toward
a bedroom.
"Expect a dream?"
Hanh turned. "Yes, you are more powerful than you think."
If you like this excerpt from  The Secret of Shambhala I would recommend you reading the first part
of the trilogy: "The Celestine Prophecy"
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