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When our body is more acidic than it should be, we can have skin issues, aches and pains, junk food cravings and inflammation. In this environment, sickness and disease can thrive. So how do you bring your body back into its natural alkaline corridor? In this episode, Jen reveals the factors that can make our body more acidic and what you can do to bring your body back into balance.

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SHOWNOTES

Are you acidic, or are you alkaline? Where is your body at, and is it working for you or against you? With everyone talking about acidic versus alkaline, I thought I would share the basics with you today.

So, imagine our bodies have an imaginary alkaline corridor. Life and daily stressors take us out of this corridor all of the time, but what I care about as a naturopath is how quickly your body bounces back in.

How do you know whether you are acidic or alkaline?

When you’re more acidic, you tend to have cravings for crappy acidic food, and when you’re in the alkaline corridor, you feel great. Your energy is up, your mind is sharp, and you want good foods. So that’s an easy way to quickly and generally measure where you’re at.

Factors that take you out of the alkaline corridor

Our body is meant to be more to the alkaline scale and our gut is meant to be acidic. But several factors can throw us off balance. Food is a big one. When it comes to food, the closer to nature something is, meaning the less human intervention it’s had, the more alkaline it is.

But food isn’t the only factor. Stress, worry, overwork, negative thinking, guilt-tripping ourselves and just doing life can all kick us out of the corridor faster than crappy food can. In my practice, I’ve met fruitarians (yes, they only have fruit), vegetarians, vegans and even breatharians (who just live just on air). Still, they are so stressed about being healthy that they end up being more acidic and off-track with their health than if they had a diet that would be easier to stick to.

There isn’t a perfect model. But if you stick as close to nature as you can 90% of the time, your body will work for you. Though for this to happen, stress, worry, and overwork need to be managed because just eating clean is not going to do it.

Acidic versus alkaline foods

Acidic foods include tea, coffee, alcohol and soft drinks, and all of the refined and sugary foods.

Alkaline foods include fresh, crunchy, close to nature foods, like dark green vegetables, cauliflower, broccoli, raw nuts and seeds and root vegetables. But you need to be careful in the cooking process to keep them close to nature.

Another big one is citrus fruits, particularly lemon. Many people are really surprised by this because lemon is acidic, but when it enters the body, it is alkaline forming in our gut, and that’s what matters. Same with tomatoes, they too are acidic outside your body but are alkaline forming.

What are the impacts?

When your body is more acidic, you end up with inflammation, lifestyle ailments and crappy skin. When your body is alkaline, you get that healthy glow about you, aches and pains are diminished, blood sugar is more balanced, and our heart and body systems have more chance of achieving good health. In addition, when your body is alkaline, you have less chance of your body growing nasty cancers and other diseases.

But again, stress, worry, overwork and negative emotions will make your body more acidic than crap food – so it’s not just about eating healthy it’s about managing stress as well. An interesting fact is that when we’re outside of the alkaline corridor, our tastebuds change. They change to the point that we crave the crappy foods, and then we stress out because we’re not feeding our body the fuel it needs, and we spiral down and down.

As a result, it can feel so hard to come back to that alkaline centre sometimes. Now, you know damn well that a healthy salad is going to be far better for you than a can of V and a packet of chips.

The reality is that you’ve got to flip your taste buds back and that generally takes about 4-10 days for most people. Of course, for this to happen, you need to have a true alkaline diet and manage your stress so that it’s not kicking you out of the corridor. The cool thing is that once your taste buds change back, you’ll start craving the good food.

You may have even heard people say that they lost the taste for alcohol, coffee and other foods – it’s because they’ve changed their taste buds.

So, what is the solution?

Eat as close as possible to nature
Get off the bum glue, those refined and processed grains like the white bread, pasta and rice (go back to Episode 14 for more on this)
Manage your sugars and skip the crap sugars. We need good sugars in our diet to take the amino acids up to our brain and feed the happy hormones, but the crappy sugars aren’t good (go back to Episode 32 for more on this)
Reduce or eliminate caffeine
Manage your stress
Increase your water intake to a minimum of 30mls per kilo per day
Adaptogen herbs are also great for supporting your body with managing stress (see Episode 7 for more on this, and I’ll include a link below to the one I like to take)

I work with people of all ages and health states. Know that it’s never too late to come back on track. Will you be uncomfortable for 2-3 days if you’ve been eating really shitty caffeine and processed foods? Yes, you probably will. Is it worth it to your health? Absolutely!

Helpful Links

The Adrenal Tonic Jen takes Ionix® Supreme.

Healthy Life Hacks

So, the healthy life hacks I want to leave you with today are:

Reduce or eliminate the acidic foods.
Eat close to nature the majority of the time.
Manage your stress! Just eating a raw, vegan, organic, paleo, keto, whole foods, bloody whoopty doopty diet does shit if you’re going to stress out.

Are you looking for more great resources? Get a free copy of my Feed Your Body ebook here and be sure to explore my blog while you are there.

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