How We Become Acid
Clear and clean water is supposed to be neutral at a pH of 7.0. The pH of your blood has to remain in a very narrow range around 7.40, all the time... If the blood's pH rises or falls one tenth of a pH unit you are in intensive care in the hospital where the pH of your blood is monitored very carefully. If it moves two tenths either way it is lethal.
How your body always maintains a constant pH of your blood is a very complex matter. Everything in your body works to maintain it, as every metabolic process in your body depends on it. Healthy blood just transports things, in and out. Its composition must remain balanced.
As hospital medicine is concerned mainly with serious illnesses, the pH of your blood is taken very seriously. Arterial blood pH is measured frequently in intensive care because here the pH of the blood itself does change. Drop in your arterial blood's pH is considered real acidosis, not latent one, and it is considered a very serious condition.
Acid-alkaline balance of your blood is not treated by modern, allopathic doctors in their clinical setting. Because the process of becoming acid correlates directly with the onset of old age and the development of chronic degenerative disease, it becomes very important, in a way, to deal with it preventively, as an 'outpatient', rather than as a patient in the hospital.
Strong Acids, Weak Acids and Protein
The strong acids in our bodies are those that are formed by the degradation of protein. These are sulfuric acid, phosphoric acid and nitric acid. These are strong, like the battery acid in your car. Strong acids are strong compared to weak acids such as vinegar and citrus juices. Weak acids do not ionize (break apart completely) in solution whereas strong acids do. This is why vinegar does not burn holes in your clothes, or dissolve your bones; it does not break apart completely into an acid and a base part, it remains partly a salt. A salt is formed when an acid and a base combine and neutralize one another.
In fact, vinegar, although an acid when you ingest it, does not stay that way. Weak acids like the acetic acid in vinegar, and the acids in most fruits and especially lemons, contain lots of minerals which are basic, along with their weak acid part. The weak acid part combines with water and is converted into carbonic acid which then breaks apart into carbon dioxide and water. You breathe out the carbon dioxide and pass the water out through your kidneys. The minerals remain behind to replenish deficient minerals so in fact these weak acids in the end, alkalize your body by supplying more minerals to it.
A very different reaction takes place in the reaction with the strong acids as they react with or leach out minerals from your body.
This is where the acid-alkaline balance problem lies.
The main reason we become acid is from failed digestion of protein, due to bad food combining and subsequent toxicity
When protein breaks down in our bodies, it breaks down into the above mentioned strong acids. These three acids must be excreted by the kidneys because they contain sulfur, phosphorus or nitrogen that cannot break down into water and carbon dioxide to be eliminated as the weak acids would be. In their passage through the kidneys these strong acids must be neutralized by a basic mineral into a neutral salt so as not to burn your kidneys.
Sulfuric acid and other strong acids are excreted mainly as salts of sodium, potassium, magnesium or calcium as these are the main minerals used in your the body's metabolic reactions. The sulfur in sulfuric acid can and does combine with the calcium in your bones, and is excreted as the corresponding salt, calcium sulfate. This salt does not harm the kidneys on its way through them but it does rob your body of the needed calcium, its strongest alkalizing agent.
By leaching alkalizing minerals out of your body you make the body more acid. Latent "acidosis" develops then because your body becomes relatively alkali deficient. Becoming alkali deficient is the same as becoming acid. Latent "acidosis" is not the frank or real acidosis (so the quotes) of hospital medicine because the pH of the blood itself does not change.
We need protein, obviously, but we only need approximately 40 grams a day. An athlete in intense training may need 80 grams a day. The average American diet contains as much as 200 grams of protein per day: bacon and eggs for breakfast, chicken for lunch, steak for dinner, etc. We all know that the "richer" we became as a civilization and more "advanced", the more meat we eat. Plato knew this in ancient Greece and toward the end of that civilization I'm sure they had all the 'modern' degenerative diseases that plague us today and, "fast foods".
This is a reason postulated for the extinction of the Mayan Indians, their skeletons are demineralized, as if they too had been soaked in excess acid. Maybe toward the end they became so rich they ate Big-Mac Hamburgers too.
The Colloid Connective Tissue Organ Of Schade
As the blood can not change, it picks up the acids and transports them to the connective tissues of the body where they are stored. This is the largest organ of the body really. In Europe it is called the colloid connective tissue organ of SCHADE. The collagen fibers of the body are specific acid catchers. It is also called a pre-kidney as that is how it functions, storing acids prior to delivery to the kidneys for excretion. Also it is the organ that connects, holds everything in our bodies in place. It is composed of ligaments, tendons and the like obviously but as these break down into finer and finer fibers it becomes literally the scaffolding that holds every single cell in our body in place. If too many acids need storing in this organ, which includes your muscles, inflammation and pain develop. Fibromyalgia is associated with this acid overload.
The space enclosed by these very fine fibers, is called PISHINGER'S SPACE, after the German scientist that described it. Essentially, this is the extracellular space that contains the fluids that bathe and feed each and every cell. they also carry away the wastes from those same cells. There is no mention of this organ in American physiology text books, there is the extracellular space but no organ that stores acids like this, no pre-kidney.
Alkali Flood And Alkali Tide
There is also a daily rhythm to this acid-alkali ebb and flow called by Friedrich Sander the Base Flood and Base Tide. The stored acids are mobilized from the connective tissues and Pishinger's Space while we sleep. These acids reach their maximum (base tide) concentration in this fluid, and thereby the urine, at 2:00 AM, so the urine is the most acid at this time. The acid content of the urine directly reflects the acid content of the fluid in Pishinger's Space, the extracellular fluid compartment of the body.
By the time you get up though, in the morning, all the acids consumed and generated the day before should be gone, excreted while you slept, contained in your bladder and ready to be voided when you wake. This first urine should be acid when you get up in the morning. The urine whose pH you should check is the urine from the second time you empty your bladder in the morning. This reflects the pH of the body fluids at that time, in the morning, not the pH of the urine from the night before.
Your second voided urine specimen after you get up should be back to about neutral, close to pH 7.00 (pH 6.8 to be exact). Because most everyone is acid, this is seldom the case. More and more acids accumulate day after day and chronic, degenerative disease develops as the direct result of the pleomorphic changes that take place in the blood as discussed above. If we continue in our present course, we keep addiing to the acids not disposed of the day before.
The Pishinger's Space becomes most alkaline around 2:00 PM, the Base Flood, as then the most bicarbonate is being generated by the cover cells of the stomach (see below), after your lunch and breakfast have been metabolized. If your urine is not alkaline at 2:00 P.M. you are definitely in an acid condition.
BICARBONATE
In a healthy body, hydrochloric acid is produced by the cover cells of the stomach. Salt, sodium chloride, is split and later reconstituted into hydrochloric acid and sodium bicarbonate. The production of each molecule of hydrochloric acid is matched by the production of an equivalent molecule of sodium bicarbonate.
The acid goes into the stomach and and the sodium bicarbonate goes into the blood stream and circulates all around, first flushing out the excess acid in the tissues and especially, freeing the collagen fibers and the colloidal connective tissue organ from the adsorbed acids stored there. Any bicarb that is left over, is picked up by the alkaline glands, the liver, pancreas, etc.
Of course, this is why our bodies are most alkaline around 2:00 P.M. This is after our stomachs have pretty well digested breakfast and lunch. The stomach has made all the hydrochloric acid it needed for digestion, and also the equivalent amount of sodium bicarbonate that would be needed to neutralize the body and refill the alkaline glands of the body. After the breakfast and lunch are digested, liver and pancreas need to be filled up again. Where does their alkalinity come from? It comes from the blood and from the alkaline food we eat, mainly raw fruits and vegetables.
An imbalance develops if not enough alkaline food is eaten and the sodium bicarbonate generated by the stomach's cover cells does not reach the alkaline glands (pancreas, liver, salivary glands, and the alkaline glands in the duodenum). On the way to those glands, some of the alkaline minerals get used up in neutralization of acid residues from previous meals that are stored in the connective tissue organ.
If there is not enough base left over after your meal to neutralize and clear the acids stored in the connective tissues, a relative latent "acidosis" (or base deficiency) develops. Your liver and pancreas won't be able to produce adequate alkaline juices to ensure proper digestion.
Since digestion can't proceed without enough of these alkaline juices for the liver and pancreas, etc., the stomach has to produce more acid, in order to make enough base. In this way one can develop stomach ulcers. The ulcer is not the result of too much acid, on the contrary, it is the result of too little base!
The 'excess' acid is there as a necessary byproduct of the organs having to generate it so that more bicarb can be made available to satisfy the needs of the liver and pancreas.
Replacement of Minerals
We can limit the loss of base minerals, caused by the excess protein acids we consume, by either cutting down on protein consumption or by replacing the minerals.
These lost base minerals can be replaced by eating raw fruits and vegetables, or by right mineral supplementation.
We have to eat our fruits and vegetables! "An apple a day does keep the doctor away." This is so because the minerals from plants, organic minerals, are readily absorbed by our bodies. Organic minerals are much different then the minerals from rocks, inorganic minerals. Sodium from a plant for example, is much different from the sodium in refined salt. We could assume that they are not the same at all. You can eat all the refined table salt you want and your cells will still be sodium or base deficient. The sodium used for building cells has to be organic, from plants and it is the main base mineral we have because there is so much of it. Only natural crystal salt can be used to supplement sodium to the body.
In the same way, calcium from a plant is a lot different from say "Tums for the Tummy". Tums are calcium carbonate or limestone, a ground up rock.
We can't readily digest rocks, that's what plants do.
We simply don't eat enough fruits and vegetables to compensate for the minerals lost, because of our "rich", fast life diets. To compound the matter, produce grown in mineral depleted soils, pushed by fertilizers, arrives with a much lower mineral content than it used to a mere 150 years ago. We are BASE DEFICIENT, and our whole body is in a relatively acid condition most of the time.
LATENT "ACIDOSIS"
In the acid condition we described you are not "acidic", you are base deficient. This is why so many 80 or 90 year old people are shrunk up, little people. They have no mineral stores left. When all the minerals are gone, so are we, our battery runs down.
Your metabolic system can be compared to a battery. The cells of your body carry a charge that can be measured as the oxidation/reduction potential (ORP) of your blood. This energy potential decreases with aging, just as the minerals do. We become more oxidized (so the higher need for antioxidants). Your acidosis occurs because of hyper-proteinization, too much protein.
We aren't acidic, or as they say in a hospital, in a toxic shock, when things have gone so bad that the very pH of the blood itself begins to change, Code Blue. In the state of latent "acidosis" we are full of stored acid residues stored in the Pishinger space waiting for a ride out on base minerals that never arrive. This is the latent in latent "acidosis". Blood values have not started to change yet, so the acidosis is stored in the tissues. The tissues are acid, but technically this is not an acidosis yet, because the blood appears normal.
If things get worse, this latent "acidosis" can proceed into a compensated acidosis. This means the blood pH itself still hasn't started to change, but other values in the blood have had to change to keep the blood pH at the 7.40 that it is supposed to be. Decompensated acidosis is when the blood pH itself is affected.
Hospital Based Acid/Base Medicine
As the blood pH begins to shift, the compensated metabolic acidosis recognized by regular medicine is the next to develop. Your blood pH begins to be stressed. Compensated means the blood pH really doesn't change, yet. When it begins to change it is no longer compensated, it has become decompensated.
In a compensated acidosis the first event that starts the compensation process is that the breathing rate increases in order to blow off more carbonic acid. This helps keep the pH "normal", at 7.4. As your body can no longer keep up, the arterial blood gasses will show as a lower PCO2 concentration (the measure of how much carbon dioxide there is in your blood). Carbon dioxide, CO2, combines with water, H2O, to form carbonic acid, H2CO3. Blow off carbonic acid, which will lower the carbon dioxide content of the blood, and you will increase the pH of the blood. This increased breathing rate is characteristic for diabetic acidosis for the same reason.
Your plasma bicarbonate level [HCO3-] that is measured as part of the blood gasses, is decreased. Because of the relative base deficiency, the stomach can no longer produce the required amount of stomach acid so the corresponding bicarbonate that should come from the reverse synthesis of the hydrochloric acid, just isn't there.
Since sodium and other base minerals are depleted, bicarbonate is actually lost out the kidneys because there aren't enough bases like sodium to connect with the bicarbonate for the kidneys to reabsorb them.
This is the compensated metabolic acidosis of hospital medicine: low PCO2 concentration, decreased bicarbonate level [HCO3-] with little effect on blood pH yet.
In the type of latent "acidosis" we are talking about there are no changes in the blood gasses. The blood pH, PCO2, [HCO3-], are all normal. The latent "acidosis" we are talking about hasn't developed into the compensated metabolic acidosis described above.
When the breathing rate can no longer get any faster and when the kidneys can no longer increase their function to keep up with the acid load, the blood pH itself does start to change, it can fall from 7.4 down to 7.2. This is decompensated metabolic acidosis and it is a most serious condition. At blood pH of 6.95 your heart stops with coma and death soon to follow.
Acids That Come From Outside The Body
The Latent acidosis described above is arrived at through base under-nourishment, through not eating enough fruits and vegetables and consuming too much acid protein. This of course produces the relative base deficiency that we call "latent acidosis".
Acids That Come From Inside The Body
The other way this "latent acidosis" can develop or can be aggravated is through the pathological formation of acids in the organism. These are called endogenous acids (come from inside the body).
This can come as a consequence of intestinal fermentation, too many of the wrong kind of bacteria there (see below, Dysbiosis). This can also happen if there is a malfunctioning organ in the body, heart, liver, or other, a diseased or injured organ, either by accident or through genetics. Anything that doesn't work right, produces toxic, acid byproducts, oxidants.
These acid byproducts are the end result of base under-nourishment or malfunctioning organs with the symptoms described above or they can be the forerunners of or the cause of further degeneration of organs. When this comes, there is no more "latent", acidosis. It becomes a frank acidotic condition, compensated to decompensated acidosis, diabetic coma and the like.
With the above scenario come the diseases that call forth, through anomalies of their own metabolism, the more serious acid producing conditions such as diabetes, uremia or kidney failure, hepatic failure, heart failure and other such illnesses. In these conditions the acidosis is only latent in its beginning state.
As the illness progresses, the endogenous (from in the body) production of toxic, metabolic acids quickly becomes worse, attacking not only the alkali-reserve of the body, from the liver, pancreas, etc., but also the alkali-reserve of the blood itself.
Effects On Digestion
Acidification of the intestines
As we become base deficient, the digestion itself is affected. The bile from your gall bladder and the digestive juices from your pancreas all have to contain a lot of base minerals, mostly sodium bicarb, to be able to neutralize the stomach acid as it passes out of the stomach and into the intestine, and in order to activate the enzymes from the pancreas that require an alkaline medium in which to work. If the acid from the stomach isn't neutralized, colitis or inflammation of the intestine will likely follow.
As stated above, the main problem with decreased acid in the stomach is that as the cells in the stomach make acid, they also make the base, sodium bicarbonate. If these cells don't make enough acid they don't make enough base either.
The sodium bicarbonate (base) that is made as the stomach makes its hydrochloric acid is carried by the blood stream to the salivary glands, the gall bladder system, glands in the pylorus (the part of the intestine the stomach is connected to) and the pancreas. These are the alkaline glands of the body and essentially they neutralize the acid contents of the stomach. If there is not enough base to neutralize the acid from the stomach the intestines become acid too. Without enough of this sodium bicarbonate base for these organs, digestion cannot proceed properly and indigestion occurs.
Dysbiosis
When the pH of the intestines is not right, various bacteria and eventually yeast can grow there, resulting in dysbiosis (wrong growth). This causes its own set of problems.
If the environment of the intestines is not alkaline but acid, dysbiosis (wrong growth) occurs. The gut fills with and supports the growth of the wrong kind of bacteria, fungus, yeast, Candida sp., etc. These bacteria in turn generate their own acidic, toxic metabolic byproducts that further aggravate and promote the latent "acidic" condition.
This dys-biosis or wrong growth begins with fermentation, a process of eating, metabolizing and excreting by bacteria, resulting in alcohol productin. Fermentation like this can even cause cirrhosis of the liver in patients that have never drunk alcohol in their life.
As in making wine, this fermentation process can go 'bad' and begin to rot. Vinegar and other rotten things are produced. This vinegar acid and the other metabolites can cause "heart burn", along with bloating and gas that come with the fermentation process. This kind of heart burn is not from too much hydrochloric acid, it is from not enough. This kind of heart burn, that comes an hour or two after you eat, other acids form, acetic acid as in vinegar and other putrefactive acids. These acids cause your "heart" burn. The meal is not digesting well as it would have with a good amount of hydrochloric acid, it is fermenting instead.
These rotten things are reabsorbed back into the body and picked up by the blood in your intestine. These rotting things do not make you feel well. The constipation headaches, sleepless nights from food eaten too late to digest (nights where undigested food just ferments and rots all night, makes bad dreams). The skin also tries to expel such toxins, through pimples, rashes and other skin problems.
With this kind of "heart burn" one hurts after eating, soon after or an hour or two later, rather than before eating, as with an ulcer. This can burn with reflux up the esophagus, worse while lying down, or it can be just pressure over the whole abdomen from the gas. This gas can actually push the stomach through the diaphragm into the lung cavity, producing a hiatal hernia. Eating does not relieve this dysbiotic type of heart burn, as it would in the case of a peptic ulcer.
The Indican Urine Test
Indican is one of the rotten byproducts that is formed in the dysbiotic gut and it too is reabsorbed from the intestines, back into the blood stream to be finally excreted in the urine. The Indican Urine Test measures the amount of Indican in the urine. There should be none of course and this test can be used to me
