Can Your Body's pH Be Too Alkaline?

Thursday, April 24, 2008 by: Kal Sellers
Tags: pH level, health news, Natural News

(NewsTarget) This question has appeared from time to time and calls for a visit in the news of today: Can our body's pH be too alkaline? A friend of mine who helps run a very good health food store near me reported that she had been raw and had been alkaline for some time when a person approached her and warned her that "there were diseases that could come from being too alkaline too."

She experienced something I have taught a lot about, concerning how much our thinking affects our health. She immediately became acidic (without changing anything) and has stayed acidic since that time.

This calls for a questioning of the issue to see if we really should be cautioning anyone to not get too alkaline.

My first step in such searching is to ask myself the question: What does nature suggest? Clearly, we have the physiology and digestion of frugivores and, as such, should be enjoying a delightfully alkaline state in our blood most of the time.

The foods we would eat in a natural setting would leave us with an alkaline pH and in cultures where they do not know about checking and worrying about their pH, they tend to stay pretty alkaline if they are eating a natural diet and living a lifestyle close to nature.

This establishes that alkaline blood is the natural state, but still does not establish whether we can be too alkaline.

On a side note, I often wonder if perhaps we would all be better off if the whole pH discussion (and many others) had only taken place in a few alternative healing schools where they used it as a test to help them create health plans for their clients without telling them anything new to worry about or mess up.

Some people just mess up anything they have the chance to think about. Fixing this human failing requires learning that you can be wrong and still be loved; that you can take fine care of your experience of life; that you are lovable whether you get it right or not.

Unfortunately, the love of many has "waxed cold" to quote a very old scriptural prophecy about our time. The result has been that love is not felt or really given, in the sense of absolute love. We do not share and impress that love in kindness, self-restraint, discipline, effort and trust in each other in the life experience.

Well, let me get back to the point.

Theoretically, if one gets too alkaline, there will be as much malfunction as when someone gets too acidic. From a purely theoretical standpoint, one could stop metabolizing key nutrients if they are too alkaline. One could experience their blood not carrying oxygen if too alkaline. One certainly could fail to get hydrated or use water efficiently if too alkaline. These are theoretical possibilities, however, not empirical realities.

There are four key reasons for this:

1. Stress is the middle name of just about everyone in modern society. Stress always results in immediate pH lowering to a more acidic state.

2. Sickness results in immune response which results in a state similar to stress, where the blood gets thinner and more active and more acidic.

3. Modern diet and the toxic world around us tends to create clutter in the blood and diminish the blood's ability to carry nutrients. This inefficient state of the blood will inevitably result in the body becoming more acidic to try to speed the nutrient flow to vital organs.

4. All known diseases today exist only when there is a pH that is slightly lower (more acidic) than ideal. This means that no known disease occurs that is experienced while being too alkaline.

There are two more things that should be noticed about this before going on:

First, if someone wanted to sabotage the health of the world it would be a crafty trick to put things into the environment that would cause rapid shift to the too alkaline state. We are not well prepared to handle this. Of course, as soon as people became afraid of dying from it, our blood would shift right back to acid and we would be healed!

Second, the reality of being too alkaline (pH too high) exists as the product of, not the cause of, a disease. Certain malfunctions in the body buffering systems (designed to keep the pH stable and healthy) can result in a too alkaline state. Such a state would not be the cause, however, but the outcome.

The conclusion, then, is that there are no diseases, under normal conditions, that are the product of one's pH being too high. Having said that, there are a few principles to discuss in connection with this that will help us care for our health more wisely.

Principle 1: Sudden alkaline shock

Sudden alkaline shock is what some professionals create when treating cancer. The healer might put the person on a program that includes several very important things, but one of those is sudden alkaline shock where the alkalizing foods and herbs and habits result in such a dramatic shift upward in pH that the body goes too alkaline and often starts to oscillate.

By oscillate, I mean that the body becomes extremely alkaline and then overcompensates back to acidic and then, because of the alkaline program, it goes to extreme alkaline again. This is vital to get the body's immune system to clear out all cancer (well, also what we think can cure cancer almost immediately). The immune system functions higher when the body is slightly acidic and the extreme alkaline moments actually reduce the size and virulence of the cancer. Many healers seem to use this system very effectively for treating cancer.

This can be induced unwisely on certain health programs and accidentally in certain situations.

For example, I took a small group on a healing and meditation retreat into the high mountains of Wyoming. We camped at 10 or 11 thousand feet and made day hikes up as high as 12 thousand 3 hundred feet.

While there, we drank only spring water coming from a glacier right above the lake we camped near.

In addition to this, we took along a totally raw selection of fruit (limes) and some totally raw energy bars that were highly alkalizing and healing; you can find the recipes on (www.KalsSchool.com) on the downloads page -- available to registered users.

Being an herbalist, I also planned for us to eat lots of the wild greens along the way.

While this sounds like a pretty good program, it actually had one serious drawback -- the fact that we would all get stuck in extreme alkaline shock. Because of the spring water, which was, itself, extraordinarily alkaline, we got stuck in alkaline and could not get back to acidic. Further, alkaline water does not hydrate well and we had gone to a much higher altitude where we needed more hydration help, not less.

The consequence was weakness and extreme dehydration. We had not thought to bring along a watermelon or distilled water or some vinegar even, to make for a slightly acidic hydration source. We just cavalierly kept drinking from the spring and doing half a dozen other things to make ourselves alkaline.

This was unwise and made it hard to make the trek down the mountain! When we got home we ate large amounts of watermelon and were hydrated in just a few hours.

Sometimes, acidity is quite necessary for survival and over alkalinity can be a hazard. Even in serious illness, it is important for the body to be able to regain a slightly acidic state in order for the immune system to function well.

This is the natural way of things. Most of the time the body stays alkaline, but it is easy to switch back to acidic because there are no unnatural or extreme alkaline agents in the body. The body will switch to acidic to clean up, to kill invaders, to rapidly hydrate, to kill cancer, to heal rapidly, to deal with threats and so forth.

So, we stay alkaline to keep disease away, but when disease strikes or finds its way in, we want the body to be able to switch back and forth freely.

This leads to the conclusion that we should watch out for alkalizing substances and programs that are so extreme as to attempt to manipulate the body in an almost drug-like way to be extremely alkaline.

Some programs I have heard about are like this and, if used at all, should be kept to a short time frame, such as two weeks. These are programs where no acidic foods are taken, where water is alkalized before drinking it, where supplements that are alkaline mineral based are used, where extremely alkalizing fruits or supplements are taken every day, etc.

Rather a person should adhere to the basic alkaline rules that are taught at KalsSchool.com, which are that we keep our body clean, eat only what nature provides and work on improving the way we think and what we believe about life and ourselves in life. We also drink distilled water, which is slightly acidic and, as such, is very usable as water to flush the system and to hydrate as much as water can hydrate. Most importantly, water is used to flush the system.

Alkaline water does not do this well at all.

Principle 2: Stress and cleansing

Stress and cleansing always result in an acidic state... perhaps I should rephrase that -- stress and cleansing always involve an acidic state. This is because the body does everything faster and with more aggression when it is acidic and is calmer and quieter when it is alkaline.

The person who wants to stay, overall, more alkaline should be aware that cleansing should be done intensively and then followed by a healthy, natural diet and meditation, healthy thinking and believing and loving life, feeling that it is okay to be loved and wrong at the same time and feeling that he/she can handle life for him/her.

Additionally, when one eats under stress, the food becomes a poison. The person will generally digest the food to be acidic (if she/he digests it at all) and then the person will find that his/her body will oscillate asynchronously -- meaning at the wrong times and out of balance with nature and harmony and personal peace and health.

Finally, when one is under a lot of stress and the stress management is not working (I think this happens to all of us some times) one should not drink lots of pure distilled water by itself. Distilled water works so well for flushing the system that a problem arises when stress is high. Normally, the body protects its vital nutrients from water and keeps them protected while allowing wastes and deposits to be flushed away. Under extreme stress, the body kicks out vital nutrients and loses control over them.

Thus when stress is high, we make herbal teas or drink water with lots of lemon in it or sea salt stirred into it or some such thing that will make it less aggressive to vital nutrients, without interfering with its ability to flush out wastes.

Principle 3: Seek wise solutions

i. Avoid unnatural means of alkalization, such as chemicals and alkaline water. If there is some need to use such things, keep it to two weeks and no more. If you already have an alkaline water system, add lemon to it before drinking it. This will help. I would also alternate by drinking distilled water periodically to keep my body well flushed.

ii. Keep your water acidic by drinking distilled water or by adding lemon or vinegar or by making an herbal tea that is not too alkalizing.

iii. Use sodium sources for natural pH mitigation. This includes celery and carrot juice, sea salt, celery seed, seaweeds and so forth. This manages pH without creating alkaline shock.

iv. Exercise helps to keep a natural smooth oscillation wave going that helps the body go through healthy cycles of alkaline and acid states. Of course, exercise uses up the nutrients you are eating to build new you, so any exercise program should include plenty of really healthy, natural, live food.

v. Emphasize digestion always. Whether stressed or not, digestion is the thing that is most supportive or destructive, depending on whether it is working or not. Eat raw fruit 20 minutes before each meal, take ¼ teaspoon of cayenne pepper in a little water 15 minutes before each meal, chew your food lots and enjoy it fully. Seek peace with everyone and everything and yourself in your heart before you take a bite and stay that way or stop eating until you regain it.

vi. Keep your body nourished and clean with live foods and at least seasonal cleansing. Eat a wide spectrum of healthy food and eat with the seasons as much as possible.

vii. Understand that the advantage to using whole, live herbs, instead of isolated supplements for your alkalizing and cleaning is that they will generally allow the natural oscillation to continue to take place.

Until next time, Kal Sellers, MH

About the author

Kal Sellers, MH currently operates KalsSchool.com and teaches a 2-year curriculum for Natural Medicine, via live teleclasses.
Kal is a Master Herbalist and holds several other certificates and licenses for hands-on healing modalities. He maintains a current practice in the Atlanta area.
Kal and Traci have six children, the last four of which were delivered at home. They live now in Powder Springs, GA where they teach live classes on food and medicine. Kal is also a full time Chiropractic student.