How to test and help an acidic body

Remember that acidosis is only a good marker to determine if your health conditions result from metabolic stress. Simply becoming alkaline will NOT resolve all issues. It’s all about balancing all factors that affect your health.

A simple and inexpensive method to test your body’s capacity to neutralize acidic waste is to measure the potential of hydrogen in fluids using pH strips, available at local pharmacies or online stores. For better accuracy, the pH strips should measure a narrow spectrum, approximately between pH 4.5 – 9.0.

To test, dip a pH strip into a fluid for 2-4 seconds, then use a chemically neutral tissue paper (without added fragrances) to soak up excess fluid. Take readings 15-20 seconds after the pH strip contacts the fluid.

Note that these tests are useful for checking your overall body response before changing your diet and starting mineral supplementation. The body’s alkalizing response improves very slowly—typically over 6-24 months—and only if you maintain dietary and lifestyle changes. While daily pH readings may improve immediately after consuming alkalizing foods and supplements, these readings reflect temporary supportive actions rather than improved overall alkalizing capacity.

You’ll know your efforts have succeeded when, after discontinuing supplements and eating balanced meals for a week, your urine pH remains around 7.0 or higher.

TESTING

Urine pH testing (primary method) measures the total acidic load of the excreted extracellular fluids and an indicator of your acidic intoxication. If the body is not capable of neutralizing the acidity of the body fluids on extracellular level, the urine will become acidic and the pH will be lower than 6.8.

To measure your urine pH you will need to make three measurements daily for A few days to find an average reading.

  1. Ignore the first urination in the morning
  2. Measure your urine pH 3 times a day. 30-60 minutes after breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Your post meal urine pH should be between 6.8 and 7.5. If your average reading is below 6.5, your body is incapable of neutralizing the acidic waste.

Oral pH testing measures the capacity of the phosphate buffering system within intracellular fluids.

To measure your saliva pH you will need to make 2 tests in the morning and repeat them for a few days to find an average reading.

  1. Fasting saliva pH. As you wake up and before brushing your teeth or ingesting any food, measure your saliva’s pH. It should be in the range between 6.3 and 7.0
  2. Post meal saliva pH. Do not brush your teeth and eat a small breakfast. Wait 15 minutes and measure your saliva pH. The pH should go up at least 0.5 from your first reading.

If your post meal saliva reading is the same or lower than your fasting saliva pH, you are deficient in buffering agents

Blood plasma pH testing is optional. In latent acidosis, the plasma pH is generally stable unless there is an implication of systemic acidosis, in which case it is an emergency accompanied by life threatening symptoms.

TREATMENT

If your average pH tests indicate insufficiency of acid neutralizing capacity, addressing the issue of latent acidosis should be considered.

While an increased body acidity may not be the cause of absolutely all of your ailments, helping the body to neutralize toxic acids build up will significantly help to jump start the body functions necessary to improve your health.

There are four steps you will need to consider to recover from metabolic toxicity

  1. Modify lifestyle to avoid those factors that create more metabolic stress and increase metabolic waste
  2. Modify diet to increase intake of plant based foods that are rich in minerals and metabolically alkalizing.
  3. Remineralize body with additional supplements to rebuild the acid neutralizing buffering capacity.
  4. Restore digestion to restore proper assimilation of ingested nutrients and improve the immune system function