PH Balance and your Alkaline Flush

What is PH balance and why should we care? I want to preface this post with the fact that I am not a doctor, nor am I a nutritionist or naturopath or anything with a fancy title. Just a writer over here mucking my way though midlife. However, those of you who know me may also know that I love Kimberly Snyder, author of THE BEAUTY DETOX SOLUTION and other diet/nutrition books. One of Kimberly's main talking points is PH balance in the body and aging. She says that the more acid our PH is, the quicker we are prone to aging.

It's a little too much to go into within the scope of today's short (hopefully) post. But essentially PH (the concentration of hydrogen ions in any given solution) where we're concerned is the balance between alkalinity and acidity in the body. The scale ranges from totally acidic at 0.0 to totally alkaline at 14.0 making 7.0 neutral. All foods leave either an alkaline or acidic residue in the bloodstream. What's important for our health, according to Kimberly, is the way foods break down in our body and the residue that they leave behind. Different areas of the body require a varying degree of PH, for example our tissues should be slightly alkaline, while the colon needs to be slightly acidic. Overall though, the net average would optimally be slightly alkaline.

So why the heck am I bringing this up on day 4 of my Always Hungry Solution? Because while this eating plan is not carb free, it does have less carbs and somewhat higher protein than what most of us may be used to. Again, why should we care? Are you at all familiar with the Atkins diet? The Paleo diet? Many people have heard of these and swear by them. They are high in proteins and healthy fats, similar to Dr. Dave's plan (that's Dr. David Ludwig, author of the ALWAYS HUNGRY SOLUTION for those of you just getting caught up) but the above mentioned don't really want you to eat grains, legumes or starches. Ever. Have people felt good on these plans? Yes. Have they had success and lost weight? Absolutely? So what's the problem? I'm not saying there is a problem at all. For men. But for women there actually is. Almost every single study on the overall effects on health for these plans was done on men. But ladies and gentlemen I have an announcement to make, the chemical make-up of men's and women's bodies are very different. 

I recently had the great pleasure of listening to Dr. Anna Cabeca, who spoke online as part of THE TRUTH ABOUT FAT LOSS SUMMIT.  For more info on her check out her BLOG.

Dr. Cabeca's main topic of discussion was the Keto-Alkaline solution and why Paleo is not great for women. In a nutshell, when women take on a Paleo type diet we don't react to it the same way men do. Have you ever tried to lose weight at the same time as your husband? He drops 30 pounds in the time it takes you to lose ten? Or maybe your guy can eat what he wants and never gain weight while we women can never seem to do that? It's because we were built for creating life, our bodies naturally want to store fat. The aim of the Paleo type diet is to get your body into a ketogenic state. What's that? I'm so glad you asked. 

Ketosis is the state at which the body has an extremely high fat-burning rate. And we all want to be fat burners right? If you go back to my first POST about Dr. Dave's program, you'll see I have written under my BIG WHY that one of the reasons I'm doing this is to become a fat burner, so what gives? Ketosis is what we want no? Well yes and no. For women, natural fat storers, when our body gets into ketosis and stays there for too long guess what happens? We go into an acid state and things get toxic. We get inflammation and our body begins to hold onto its fat stores, exactly the thing we were trying to get rid of in the first place. See I had a point. The point is that for women, carbs are not the enemy that we've been lead to believe. I think this is part of the reason why Dr. Dave allows for things like beans and lentils in Phase 1 of the program and that he only keeps us here for two weeks.

But additionally there was another take away from Dr. Anna Cabeca's talk that folded in brilliantly with the things that Kimberly Snyder talks about and that was Cabeca's Alkaline flush. This is a quick drink you can have once or twice a week to just keep that PH in check while still allowing your body to burn the fat. It sounds disgusting and I was not going to share it until I'd actually tried it myself, and truly it's not that bad.

Dr. ANNA CABECA'S Alkaline Flush recipe:
6oz water
1 tsp Brigg's Apple cider vinegar
1 tsp Lemon juice
1/4 tsp baking soda

Blend and chug!
It's a little bit fizzy and quite honestly it had a perfumey quality.

If that's too gross for you, why not incorporate a GLOWING GREEN SMOOTHIE into your weekly routine.

On a final note and I promise this is it, Dr. C. recommends something similar to our lovely Dr. Junger, creator of CLEAN, and that is what she calls intermittent fasting. Essentially, Dr. Junger says we should allow for at least 12 hours between our evening meal and our breakfast the next day for optimal digestion. Dr. C goes a little further saying that at least once a week as women, we should have a bone broth (for vegetarians it would be a veggie broth, and if I'm throwing in my two cents which clearly I am, just have a bowl of your favorite soup and forget the broth) and give yourself 15 hours between that and breakfast the next day. No big deal. Eat your soup at 7pm and hold off on breakfast until 10am. It will not only improve digestion, but it will give your body an opportunity to get to work healing and repairing what might have been neglected while most of your energy was being otherwise directed toward digestion. 

Okay beautiful readers, have a fantastic day and I'll see you soon.
xo
Shan