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OK, back from work, and here is my last word on this topic (Hah. Famous last words, more like), which is vaguely rotting this thread.
Ideal pH of Body Fluids:
Saliva - 6.4 - 6.8
Gastric - 0.4 - 0.8
Brunners Glands - 8.9 - 9.1
Bile - 8.3 - 8.6
Pancreatic - 8.0 - 8.3
Small Intestine - 7.5 - 8.0
Large Intestine - 6.0 - 7.0
Blood - 7.35 - 7.45
When we eat, we chew food and pass it to the stomach. Here it is saturated in HCl, which activates pepsinogen enzymes. This results in creation of a proteolytic enzyme known as active pepsin. This enzyme helps digest protein. All foods, except oils contain protein. When the stomach has finished the job, it releases the food through the pyloric valve, and the chyme, now very acidic indeed, enters the duodenum. Here, it is saturatd by very alkaline fluids secreted by the Brunners glands, bile and pancreatic juices. This is essential, becasue pancreatic enzymes canonly function optimally in a pH environment above pH 7. Not only that, before the body can absorb useful nutrients into the bloodstream and use them, the pH of the food must be 7.4.
It is essential for the body to maintain a good pH balance. If the balance is lost, the conditions in which dis-ease and ill health take root are given prevalence. I would estimate that 90% + of the populations of the Western world have lost this critical balance.
Fortunately for them, the body is miraculous. It has the benefit of millions of years of evolution behind it, it can withstand sixty odd years of being left in the charge of a total imbecile. It thus has many coping mechanisms for maintaining a correct pH balance.
One of these systems is called the buffer system, or regulation of acid base balance. Without getting overly technical, we can say that one step is for the body to buffer the acids by absorbing the acid with sodium bicarbonate. Each time an acid is buffered i this way, the pH rises. The body brings the acids to a level they can be safely removed out of the body through the kidneys, and increases the pH of the food so that it can be assimilated. Hence the need to restrict acid forming foods in the diet and up the intake of alkaline forming foods...to prevent the body depleting its own reserves of alkaline to buffer the acids which have tipped the system (the reserves are needed for, among other things, exercise, fighting illness and stress and so on).
Table aalt, sodium chloride, is rampant in the Western diet, yet sodium deficiency is the number one mineral deficiency.
Can the naysayers riddle me that, please?
Table salt has been demonstrated, time and again, to raise blood pressure...this is fairly compelling evidence, for me, of its toxicity. It cannot be used in the buffer system.
Salt which has passed from soils through the plant kingdom has been covalently bonded, not ionically. The sodium is chelated to a protein. Thus the bonds are easily broken down and the compound utilized (M.T Morter, Jr. B.S, M.A, DPh.C - "Correlative Urinalysis - The Body Knows Best" (Rogers, AR: B.E.S.T. Research Inc, 1987)pg 43-44).
The conventional medical profession does not acknowledge this, but it is perfectly obvious to many doctors and has been proven by clinical trials. Even if ionically bonded sodium chloride can be, just about, broken down by the digestive system, the body rushes so quickly to remove it from the system, it has no time in which to be of much use at all compared to its organic mineral relation.
One study has shown that when spdium chloride was given to research subjects, blood pressure rose, and the administering of organic sodium returned blood pressure to normal. It was also found that sodium chloride induced the body to lose calcium , whereas organic sodium decreased calcium loss. The reason for thsi is that when organic sodium is unavailable to be used to buffer acids, calcium may be used in its place. The reason table salt induces thebody to lose calcium is because the sodium chloride cannot be used as a buffer, because it is not in the organic (chelated to a plant protein) form that the body requires. In fact, sodium chloride causes an increase in acidity, which further depletes calcium. Organic sodium, conversely, can be used as a buffer, and will decrease calcium loss. Another interesting result emerged from this study, which baffled researchers - when sodium chloride was administered, the body did all it could to rid itself of it. But when organic sodium was given, the body retained it. It would not release it. It naturally expelled a toxin, and naturally retained a useful organic mineral. (Theodore W. Kurtz, M.D, A. Hamoudi, M.D, R. Curtis Morris Jr., M.D "Salt-Sensitive Hypertension in Men", New England Journal of Medicine, 1987; Vol.317(17), pg. 1043-1048)
I love my body. It is much cleverer than me.
Organic sodium is used formany things in the body, such as keeping calcium from hardening, conducting electrical currents, and it is one of the main electrolytes used in the buffer system. The sodium buffer can be bring acid fluids up to pH 6.1. Then other buffers bring the balance up to the essential 7.4. The body, miracle that it is, knows exactly what to do.
However, if the berk in charge keeps eating acid-forming foods (like NaCl - table salt, processed food, meat, bread, cereals, chocolate, fags, booze, dairy, lentils, pasta, soy, white sugar, wheat and so on), he or she can very easily use up the stores of sodium and other electrolytes and deplete the body of the precious minerals used in the buffer system. When the body becomes low in its supply of an electrolyte such as sodium it will go to a reserve somewhere in the body and extract it from whence it can to maintain the critical pH balance.
When, due to a deficiency, organic sodium may be removed from the stomach, HCl production will be reduced or stopped entirely. For sodium is needed in the stomach to serve as a buffer against the acids it creates through the parietal cells. The stomach cells are not acid. Even when the stomach lumen has a pH as low as 2.0, the epithelium cells maintain a healthy 7.0, or thereabouts. If this were not so, ulcers would develop. Yep, its organinc sodium that prevents ulcers. So, a lack of sodium usually means a shut down of acid production, so then pepsinogen is not activated. Effective digestion is seriously impaired, and, even worse, without the normal acids in the stomach, potentially pathogenic bacteria , parasites and yeast are able to enter the gastrointestinal tract.
The entire body then becomes exposed to these microorganisms. When hydrochloric acid is unavailable, we become much more vulnerable to dis-ease, digestion becomes inefficient, and even good food can then be highly toxic.
I'd say this is a major problem affecting a large proprtion of the Western world.
But then I probably lack the critical scepticism of the majority. I'm basically a sucker.
When organic sodium is removed from joints, which is common, then arthritis, osteoporosis and other bone problems may occur. When removed from muscles, they become weak and flabby; from the liver, it becomes weak and inefficient, and then you're up shit creek. A lack of sodium automatically depletes potassium. Potassium is abundant in fruit and veg. It's practically impossible to be deficient in it unless 1) You are fasting 2) You cannot digest food properly 3)You are deficient in sodium.
Potassium deficiency isl inked to heart dis-ease, muscle pain, depression, mood swings, sagging organs and edema, among others.
Evidence also suggests that a deficiency in these two organic minerals will lead to calcium and magnesium deficiencies.
The easiest place for the body to extract sodium from is the bile. When sodium is removed from the gall juices (bile) a chain reaction occurs which will effect the entire body. As sodium is removed from bile, its pH is lowered. In a healthy person, bile pH should be as high as 8.6. In an unhealthy person, on a typical Western diet, it can be as low as 4.5, but normally somewhere between 4.5-8.0.
The more acid it becomes, the higher the lieklihood of gallstones forming. The highest rates of gallstones occur in countries with high animal protein diets, the lowest in countries where vegetarianism is prevalent.
Medical science is very aware that gallstones are related to acid conditions, but does not accept that our bodies cannot use inorganic minerals. Thus it is unlikely to accept that high protein diets and stress (very acid forming) cause the foundation of gallstones and acid bile.
Believe what you will.
If a person has acid bile and consumes table salt, their bile pH will drop further. If that same person consumes large amounts of organic sodium (in fruits and vegetables) the bile pH will move towards normal. The same shifts are reflected in urine and saliva pH tests. You can do these yourself if want proof. I can;t be arsed to tell you how, though, since this already represents some considerable rotting of a thread about water.
If you like, start a new one about salt. Very interesting subject. |
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