Most fruit, including citrus fruits, and most vegetables, leave alkaline leftovers – minerals that can assist in handling dietary acid. Foods that leave alkaline ash are called “alkaline ash-producing” foods. Remember, it’s the leftovers we’re talking about. The foods themselves aren’t necessarily alkaline. You might think that lemons or grapefruit would be strong acid producers. Even though lemons and grapefruit are very acid in their natural state, they leave an alkaline ash, not acid ash. It’s meats, grains, and most nuts that leave acid ash. We call these “acid ash-producing” foods. The ash of acid ash-producing foods contains relatively strong acid, especially for inside your body.

Your body was designed to handle little skirmishes with an occasional invasion of acid ash-producing foods. The acid can be eliminated. But first, it must be neutralized – toned down, buffered, made weaker.

No problem. You come equipped with neutralizing minerals that take care of the situation nicely. These minerals are part of your alkaline reserve. And as long as you don’t abuse your neutralizing system, your internal environment chugs along rather smoothly. That’s the way you were designed.

The crunch comes if you abuse the system. Every time you eat foods that leave acid ash that must be neutralized, you lose precious minerals. That’s no big deal for a six-year-old who still has a generous neutralizing mineral supply. But, eat mostly acid ash-producing foods at meals and snacks, day-after-day, month-after-month, and eventually, the built-in supply of neutralizing minerals will fall to crisis level. Even our hypothetical six-year-old can be headed toward an internal emergency in a few years. But, who would relate a serious illness in an eleven or twelve-year-old with all of those hot dogs and soft drinks he had lived on since his first tooth appeared?

Since your body was designed to survive, it handles the emergency by finding other neutralizing minerals from around the body to do the job. However, backup systems are short-term, handle-the-crisis systems. They’re not meant to handle day-to-day operations. Backup systems are temporary help only. Because, despite our wealth of internal backup systems, most of us go through our days with much more acid in our bodies than is good for us. Too much acid means excess acidity means acidosis. Our bodies can become toxic – they are being “poisoned” by too much acid.

You can get an idea of where you stand on the acidosis scale by doing a pH challenge outlined in Dr. Morter’s pH Your Potential for Health booklet. Then, you can make the gradual change in food and lifestyle choices, which will begin to help you re-build your alkaline reserve.

Order a pH Testing Program by clicking here.