Categories: pH Balance

Test Your Body’s pH Levels

Determine Your Acidity… And Your State of Health

Note:
Treating pH imbalances is a bit complex. Take a look at our Advanced Metabolic Typing Test to find your specific Metabolic Type, to determine what foods contribute to your health. And which foods take away your well being. Learn how to construct meals to build health instead of disease. When your body gets its required nutrients, it can clean, repair and maintain itself. Metabolic Typing is THE tool you need for optimal health. Feeding your unique body type is the single most important principle that affects your maximum performance in all aspects of life.

This blog was written without the full understanding of the implication of metabolic typing, and was written from the perspective of a Sympathetic dominant, Group 1 vegetarian, carbo dominant eater. Before you try to implement this in your life, please consider taking the Advanced Metabolic Typing Test to make sure this information fits your type.

The Definition of “pH”

The term pH stands for “Potential Hydrogen”: the amount of available hydrogen ions in a particular solution, expressing the balance between hydrogen H+ ions and hydroxyl OH- ions. pH is measured on a scale of 0 to 14, with 7 being neutral. Lower numbers indicate acidity, and higher numbers show more alkalinity. Human blood pH is ideally 7.35 and below or above this range is linked to discomforts and disease. If blood pH moves to below 6.9 or above 7.8, cells stop functioning and the body dies.

Because the pH number is an exponent of 10, a small difference in pH translates to a big difference in the amount of acidity and oxygen. A difference of 1 means 10 times the difference in the number of hydrogen ions and oxygen content. And a difference of 2 means 100 times the difference in the number of hydrogen ions and oxygen content. In other words, blood with a pH value of 7.45 contains 64.9% more oxygen than blood with a pH value of 7.30.

Normal pH of all human tissues and fluids is slightly alkaline (except the stomach). The most critical pH is in the blood. All other organs and fluids will fluctuate in their range in order to keep the blood at a strict pH between 7.35 and 7.45 (slightly alkaline). This process is called homeostasis. The body makes constant adjustments in tissue and fluid pH to maintain this very narrow pH range in the blood.

How to Test Your Body’s pH Levels

We recommend this testing to determine if your body’s pH needs attention. With pH paper, you can quickly and easily determine your pH factor, in the privacy of your own home.

pH Paper Roll

A great way to record your pH values is on paper with 5 columns titled “Time”, “Consumption”, “Saliva pH”, “Urine pH” and “Feel”. Test and record your pH about one hour before a meal and two hours after a meal. Do this daily, for a couple weeks. This will determine how your pH swings daily, with different circumstances and foods.

Please remember that this simplified test does not replace a more in-depth analysis, that may be required to deal with a serious health challenge. Tracking what you eat, how it affects your pH, and how you feel, is a valuable tool to make connections to how different foods affect your health. You will notice patterns that are beneficial or not. Keep recording this information for a long enough period to see the causes and effects.

You are on the road to taking real charge of your health.

Saliva pH Testing

Upon arising (before putting anything in your mouth), and 2 hours after eating, clear your mouth by swallowing. Wet a piece of pH Paper under your tongue. Record the time, your saliva pH, what you ate, and how you feel. Do this daily, over several weeks.

Optimal pH for saliva is 6.8 (generally more acidic than blood). A reading lower than 6.4 is indicative of insufficient alkaline reserves. Your body is functioning within a healthy range if your saliva stays between 6.5 and 7.5 all day. If your body can’t maintain it within this narrow range, disease inevitably sets in.

After eating, your saliva pH should rise to 7.8 or higher, because there is an abundance of alkaline-rich minerals in saliva. If not, your body is deficient in alkaline mineral reserves (mainly calcium & magnesium) and will not assimilate food very well. To deviate from ideal salivary pH for an extended time invites illness. When you sit down to eat, the aroma of your food makes you salivate. This begins enzyme secretion for digestion. If your alkaline reserves are adequate, your saliva pH will be around 7.2.

If your pH is not getting up to at least 7.0, you can assume there is stress in your alkaline reserves. The further below 7 it goes, the more depleted your reserves are. You can suspect that your overall digestion is not doing well, indicating a longer term problem. More serious effort needs to be applied to help restore overall health.

The main component of saliva is lymphatic fluid. If calcium and other minerals are being properly absorbed and utilized, the lymphatic fluid will be alkaline. Therefore, the pH of your saliva is an excellent indicator of the overall pH balance in your body. As your lymph pH goes up, you know that the minerals are being absorbed and utilized. Saliva test results indicate the activity of digestive enzymes in your body (especially in your liver and stomach) and their effect on all body systems. It also is an good health indicator of your extracellular fluids and their alkaline mineral reserves.

Urine pH Testing

Wet a piece of pH Paper in the stream of your urine (or dip into a cup of your urine) every time you go to the bathroom. Record the time, your saliva pH, what you ate, and how you feel, every time you go to the bathroom. Do this daily, over many days or weeks. Urine pH can vary from 4.5 to 9.0 for its extremes, but the ideal range is 5.8 to 7.2 (more acidic than saliva). Your body is functioning within a healthy range if your urinary pH fluctuates between 6.0 to 6.5 in the morning, and between 6.5 and 7.0 in the evening.

In the morning (and during cleansing or fasts) urine may be more acidic, progressing to be more alkaline as the day progresses. Urine pH indicates how your body is working to maintain proper pH of your blood. This reveals the alkaline building (anabolic) and acid tearing down (catabolic) cycles.

Urine pH also indicates the efforts of your body via the kidneys, adrenals, lungs and gonads to regulate pH through the buffer salts and hormones. Urine can provide a fairly accurate picture of body chemistry, because the kidneys filter out the buffer salts of pH regulation and provide values based on what the body is eliminating.

The results of urine testing indicate how well your body is assimilating minerals, especially calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium. These are called the “acid buffers” because they are used to control acidity. If acid levels are too high, the body will not be able to excrete acid. It must either be stored in body tissues (autotoxication) or buffer it… that is, borrow minerals from bones or organs, to neutralize acidity.

Buffering Systems

In the human body a pH balancing act is continuously going on to maintain homeostasis. When defining measurement values of certain pH levels of human fluids, there are no absolutes that can be written in stone because the value that “should be here” has to be balanced against other values “that should be there”. In essence, in the human body things never happen in a vacuum and you need to be ever mindful of these things as you make your measurements.

There are three primary pH buffering systems of the body but for now we simply want to say a few words about the word “buffer”. What exactly does that mean? A buffer keeps something where it should be. It buffers adverse swings. It shields, cushions and protects. If you have ever seen a pH test strip for a swimming pool, you will note a section of the strip that states “pH” which will give a direct pH reading, and a section of the strip that states “total alkalinity”. Now you might have a swimming pool reading of 7.2 pH, but if “total alkalinity” is low, the pH of 7.2 can be easily moved too acid or too alkaline. It can be pushed around because the total concentration of (-) ions (the “total alkalinity”) is low. Hence, pH can get pushed around and will not stay put.

This same thing happens with humans. pH values can get pushed around fairly easily if total alkalinity is low. The key is to balance pH and increase total alkalinity levels. Now just so you don’t go overboard with the thought that all must be alkaline to the extreme, note that everything has balance and a perfect range. There are compartments in the body that you could say need “total acidity” in order to function. So for our purposes, we will say that the key is “total buffering” which is a good ionic concentration to maintain a solid pH that stays within an ideal range for the thing being measured.

In general we can raise the body’s buffer capacity through consumption of mineral rich food, however, this is not always easy to do with our current agricultural situation of chemical farming on depleted soils. So in a clinical environment, we can assist pH balance in the body by using supplemental minerals. We pay attention to the anionic/cationic ratios, and while minerals like sodium, potassium and magnesium are important, we use various forms of calcium to push pH in specific directions (up, down or neutral) depending on the calcium type and this increases “total buffering” activity to maintain a solid pH that stays within optimum range and does not move easily. Now with that said, it is easy to use the wrong calcium in the wrong pH range and screw things up.

More About Urine and Saliva pH

In a perfect world, the pH of both urine and saliva will be right around 6.4, at just about any time of day. Understand that pH can move all over the place. This is because most people’s “total alkalinity” is not very strong. For instance, two hours after a meal, urine goes acid, as a reflection of the meals acid components pushing the pH. But as a person’s “total alkalinity” increases, this swaying urine pH will stay at 6.4, but this takes time to accomplish.

The question may arise as to why urine and saliva should stay in the 6.4 area, and the answer lies with the work of many researchers, such as Dr. Carey Reams, Vincent, Rivici and others. We strongly concur with the 6.4 level for urine and saliva. The reason 6.4 seems to be ideal is for specific ionization principles to be carried out in the body. Anytime we talk about the human body and biological terrain, we can relate it to stories of farming and soil terrain for there is common ground in both areas.

When a plant grows, it draws up from the earth and reaches towards the sky. As one force of the plant spirals up, another energetic force spirals down. The plant takes water & minerals from the soil and incorporates those substances into the plant. In order for the plant to reach its optimum, most healthy state, the soil must be within an ideal range of parameters.

When we eat the plant, the process is reversed and the plant is broken down through digestion. The soil of the liver transforms, stores and dispenses components of the plant, which are further acted on by your cells and glands. It is the circle of life: highly charged, electric, and magnetic.

The food you consume stores the energy of the sun. The more perfect your body’s biological terrain, the more capacity you will have to extract every bit of that energy, for vibrant health and dynamic energy. The food you consume is met with resistance of digestion, causing friction and a release of energy in the form of amino acids and mineral ions, colloids, heat and electricity.

When You Eat an Acid Forming Evening Meal

When you eat an acid forming evening meal, the next morning your first urine pH should reflect this with a low, acidic pH of 4.5 to 5.8 or so. This shows that your body has enough alkaline reserves to buffer the acid, and your adrenals and kidneys have appropriate energy to get rid of it. It is a healthy response.

If your morning urine is between 5.8 and 6.8, after an acidic evening meal, your body is barely compensating. This is not good: a possibly depleted alkaline reserves, exhausted adrenal glands and digestive problems. If an alkaline morning urine is accompanied by an acid saliva (less then 5.8), the situation is getting worse. The further apart the numbers, the worse it is. Definite remedial action for alkaline reserve build up is critical.

As a point of reference, have you ever been to a nursing home and smelled an ammonia odor? Did you think it was because the nursing home was doing a good job of house cleaning? Well that is not the case. You’re smelling the urine of very sick people in their last days. Their bodies are giving up, likely dumping any alkaline buffers they have, in last ditch mode trying to maintain sufficient blood pH for life to hang on, by converting the acid in their systems to ammonia.

The two most important things those individuals need are Energized Water and Alkalizing Minerals. If this were to occur in nursing homes around the country, a lot of patients would be getting better and going home.

When You Eat an Alkaline Evening Meal

Next let’s look at your pH response to eating an alkalizing evening meal, basically all vegetables. Green leafy veggies, broccoli, lima beans, carrots, etc.

The next morning, if your first urine pH is 4.5 to 5.5, it is too acidic, meaning that your body has a lot of stored excess acidity. You need to keep eating those alkaline evening meals, until the numbers come up.

If your first urine pH the next morning is 5.5 to 6.8, you have a better level of alkaline reserves. But the key to that assumption is how you feel. If you feel healthy, this range is OK. If you have symptoms of problems, you may need to dig more into the situation.

And if your first urine pH the next morning is 6.8 to 8.5, all could be very well, if you are perfectly healthy. However, if you are experiencing serious symptoms of ill health, this alkaline response could be an indication that your cells are too toxic to use the alkaline reserves, and instead are being dumped.

It should be mentioned here that there can be times when someone consumes many vegetables and alkaline minerals and their pH readings average far above 6.4. They believe this to be healthy but it actually is reflecting an underlying imbalance. Instead of using minerals, they are being dumped.

Further testing will many times show an anabolic/catabolic imbalance – some clinicians also refer to this as an anaerobic/dysaerobic imbalance. This is related to the mix of fatty acids and sterols on cell membrane walls. If these fatty acids and sterols go askew it will affect cell membrane permeability so what goes in does not necessarily get assimilated the way it should.

Average pH Values

To get a quick average pH, you can test yourself 2 hours after breakfast and 2 hours after lunch. Do this over a period of days to get your average numbers. Then use this formula:

(average urine pH ____ + average saliva pH X 2 ___ ) / divided by 3 = ___

Average pH Between 6 and 7
Use the calcium from Corazyme, to build up your total alkalinity along, with other minerals & trace elements.

Average pH Above 7
Add calcium from Corazyme and vitamin C (ascorbic acid). Clinicians have found about 1000mg twice a day of C is good, and the higher above pH 7 you go, the more vitamin C you can take. Stop the calcium when you come into range between 6 and 7 and pull back on the vitamin C. Do not take vitamin D.

Average pH Below 6
If your pH is below 6, add calcium from Corazyme With pH 5.6 to 6 clinicians have found that adding 1000 IU of vitamin D once or twice a day is beneficial and pH from 5.2 to 5.6 up to 5000 IU of vitamin D is good, while pH below 5.0 up to 50000 IU of vitamin D once or twice a day would be OK as little vitamin D is being absorbed in the acid terrain. You can use the vitamin D to help push the pH up. Stop the calcium when you come into pH range 6 to 7. Pull back on vitamin D and go to cod liver oil for vitamin D requirements. Do not take vitamin C.

Author: Life Enthusiast Staff