Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
—ALDOUS HUXLEY
When it comes to all the extra weight we are carrying around, we have to understand the cause before we can comprehend the cure. Any program that addresses only the obvious symptom of the problem (excess pounds) will never truly solve the problem. It’s like pulling a weed without getting the root. To this point, the cause of obesity has been misunderstood anyway. We’ve been pulling up roots like crazy, but none of them connected to the actual weeds we’re trying to rid the garden of! Subsequently, not only do we still have weeds, but also the flowers and plants are suffering.
Weighing too much is not about fat. We’ve been focused on low-fat everything for a couple of decades now, and look where that has gotten us. Nor is it about calories, carbs, or cholesterol. Collectively, we’ve tried all that, too, and still we, as a nation, are fatter than we’ve ever been.
That will never change until we grasp what’s really at the heart of the matter: acid. The body retains fat as a protection against the overproduction of acids produced by the typical American diet. Some of these acids are eliminated through the bowels, urinary tract, and skin, but whatever is left must be buffered, or neutralized. Excess acid in the body starts to break down cells in your tissues and organs—pretty much the same way acidic steak sauces tenderize meat. Cell breakdown sends the body into self-preservation mode; it uses dietary and body fat in a desperate attempt to protect itself, no matter what the costs. Fat can bind up acids and sometimes escort them out of the body. But fat is used primarily as a way to store those acids. Ask any plastic surgeon: The fat they liposuction out of their patients is brown and black because of all the acids it contains. (One of our associates, who is a plastic surgeon, put this to the test by sending samples of liposuctioned fat in for analysis; the lab reports concluded it was indeed full of acid.) In the short term, this is good news: Your body is protecting itself from immediate damage by those acids. The bad news: Over the long term, those fat/acid deposits create a whole bunch of health problems.
The over-acidification of the body sets in motion a destructive cycle of imbalance, overweight, and disease. It’s the symptoms we’re all looking at, but a cause we are only beginning to understand. Too much acid in the body robs the blood of oxygen, and without oxygen, the metabolism slows. Food digests more slowly, inducing weight gain and sluggishness, and, worse still, causing the food to ferment (rot!). Fermentation creates yeast, fungus, and mold throughout the body. These are all living organisms, so they need to “eat,” and when they overgrow in an acidic body they feed on your nutrients, reducing the chemical and mechanical absorption of everything you eat by as much as 50 percent. Because they eat, they also produce waste products, and these wastes, called exotoxins and mycotoxins, can be very damaging to your cells. (Our earlier book, The pH Miracle, goes into detail about these organisms, along with bacteria, and how they run amok in acidic bodies—and the damage they do.) Without enough nutrients, your body cannot build tissue or produce alkaline buffers, hormones, or hundreds of other chemical components necessary for cell energy and organ activity. In this situation, rather than providing energy, our food remains stagnant in the body and leads to further acidification—a vicious cycle. And the result is unwanted weight gain as well as fatigue and illness.
The bottom line: You are not overweight, you are overacidic. Your fat is actually saving your life. Without that fat protecting the cells, tissues, and organs of your body from acids, you would be dead. (Similarly, the cholesterol that’s long been associated with overweight is also bringing you a benefit: The plaque buildup protects your arteries from acids that could otherwise eat holes right through them.) You should be grateful for your fat! That doesn’t mean, however, that you have to want all that fat hanging around. As long as you don’t understand why it is piling up, you can’t take action to reverse it, and you will actually need that fat. With the information here, you’ll be able to free yourself from needing that fat. Once you’ve read through this book, you’ll know how to keep acids out of your body in the first place. Then your body can—and will—let go of the excess fat. Simple as that. If your food and drink are alkaline (meaning, in basic chemistry, the opposite of acid), all that acid-binding fat will just melt right off. There will be no need for the body to hold on to it anymore.
UP YOUR pH
Acidity and alkalinity are measured using the pH scale, as you probably learned back in high school science. Technically, pH is the negative log of the hydrogen ion concentration. In practice, this is a 14-point scale, running from most acidic (0) to most basic (14), with neutral being 7. The farther below 7 you go, the more acidic something is, and the higher above 7, the more alkaline, or basic. pH is a relative, rather than an absolute, measurement; it tells you how acidic or alkaline something is in comparison to something else.
Reaching (and staying at) your ideal body weight is simply a matter of maintaining your body’s natural, healthy alkalinity. Anyone who has been living on the typical American diet is most likely going to be too low in pH (too acidic), with a pH level below 7. To achieve healthy and permanent weight loss, my only advice would be to “up your pH!” We’ll get to the specifics of how to do that—through the right diet, exercise, water, and supplements—in later chapters. Generally speaking, acids and bases (alkaline substances) are opposites and can neutralize each other. But to do so, they have to come together in certain proportions. In the blood it takes about twenty (or more!) times as much base to neutralize any given amount of acid. This means that you need to take in lots more alkaline food than you do acidic food. It also means it is a lot easier to maintain pH balance once you achieve it than it is to get there from an overly acidic state in the first place.
In the same way body temperature is meant to be maintained at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, your body is programmed to maintain a pH balance within very narrow parameters. Different areas of the body can have different pH requirements, including some that need to be somewhat acidic, as you can see in the following chart. The best way to determine whether your overall body is in pH balance is by measuring the blood circulating throughout the entire system. Mainstream medicine accepts 7.3 to 7.45 as normal blood pH, with normal meaning the usual numbers found in patients. In that case, normal has nothing to do with healthy. By that standard, the normal American is overweight or obese! My research on pH in healthy bodies at healthy weights reveals the desired range to be 7.350 to 7.380—and that ideally it should hit right at 7.365 (slightly alkaline). I consider the medical normal to be the range required for survival, whereas ideal represents good health (including healthy weight). Just as with temperature, your pH can vary slightly without causing much concern, but a range too far away from ideal can result in serious consequences.
pH Values for Body Tissue and Fluids
| Tissue or Fluid |
Standard Normal |
pH Miracle Normal (Ideal) |
| Pancreatic secretions |
8.0-8.3 |
8.2-8.4 (8.3) |
| Small intestine |
7.5-8.0 |
7.8-9.5 (8.2) |
| Bile |
7.8-8.2 |
7.8-8.2 (8.2) |
| Extracellular fluid |
7.35-7.45 |
7.35-7.38 (7.365) |
| Intracellular fluid |
4.5-7.4 |
7.2-7.45 (7.365) |
| Venous blood |
7.3-7.35 |
7.35-7.4 (7.365) |
| Capillary blood |
7.35-7.45 |
7.35-7.45 (7.365) |
| Arterial blood |
7.34-7.45 |
7.35-7.45 (7.365) |
| Saliva |
6.0-7.0 |
6.8-7.2 (7.2) |
| Urine |
4.5-8.0 |
6.8-7.2 (7.2) |
| Large intestine/colon |
5.5-7.0 |
6.0-7.2 (6.5-7.2) |
| Stomach |
1.0-3.5 |
3.5-9.5 (5.0-9.5) |
| Vagina |
3.8-4.5 |
4.0-4.4 (4.2) |
Set aside the exact numbers for a moment: Scientists agree that if the body falls out of its delicate pH balance, then vital organs can be damaged and life itself threatened. Therefore, your body will go to great lengths to stay in pH balance—building cholesterol plaques, storing fat, and leaching calcium out of the bones or magnesium out of the heart or muscles to act as buffers—all in an attempt to protect itself from acid damage. None of that is good for your heart, bones, muscles, blood vessels—or waistline!—and puts you on the road to heart attack or stroke, to name just two lurking threats. Bottom line: Balance your pH level by reducing your acidity and you will drop those excess pounds and be on your way to health.
(For a free copy of Dr. Young’s article “Acidosis,” go to www.pHMiracleLiving.com/bookbonus.)
THE POSITIVE NEGATIVE
The term pH derives from German, with p standing for “potenz”—power—and H being the symbol for hydrogen. Technically speaking, what pH measures is actually the concentration or activity of hydrogen ions in any given solution.
Before we go any further, be forewarned that many of you are about to have bad flashbacks of high school chemistry class. But stick with me for just another minute or two, and I’ll make this as simple as I can. Although this program is easy enough to follow even without a more detailed explanation and understanding of pH levels, this background information will make you look at what you eat and drink in a whole new way, a crucial first step on your journey to permanent weight loss. Ready now? Here we go.
An atom is made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons have a positive charge, electrons have a negative charge, and neutrons have no charge. Atoms always have an equal number of electrons and protons, and the charges cancel out each other. If an atom picks up or loses an electron, it becomes negatively or positively charged, respectively, and becomes known as an ion.
pH measures, in effect, protons and electrons, or positive and negative charges. Below a pH of 7, substances are saturated with protons—hydrogen ions—and are acidic. Above 7, substances are saturated with electrons: alkaline. The more protons, the more acidic. An increase in hydrogen ions (protons) means a drop in pH, and a decrease in hydrogen ions means a rise in pH. Put the other way around, all acids are positively charged, and bases (alkaline things) are negatively charged. Bases can neutralize acids because they have space to accept protons, which their electrons then cancel out.
I’ll tell you right now that you are going to have to make a mental note of the fact that what we’re after is a negatively charged—alkaline—body. Don’t let the usual usage of the words confuse you: When it comes to acid and alkaline, negative is a positive. Alkaline food and drinks, which are negatively charged, bring their life energy into your body.
You need both positive and negative in your body—just like an alkaline battery has a positive and a negative end. To have power and energy, your body—like the battery—needs to have more electrons than protons. When you take in alkaline—electron-rich—food and drinks, you are in effect recharging your own battery. When you find that negatively charged balance, the body will have no need to desperately soak up and store protons (acids) with fat, and you’ll stay at a healthy weight—besides being healthy in general and, quite literally, full of energy.
ARE YOU ACIDIC?
You cannot avoid acid production in your body altogether. Acids are formed during the digestion process (though to a lesser degree on an alkaline diet), respiration, normal metabolism, and cellular breakdown. Before you even account for what happens while you breathe, digestion and metabolism add enough acid to your body to significantly affect its pH, potentially decreasing it by as much as 2 points. That means that unless we help our bodies cope productively with these acid by-products, and/or if we overwhelm the body’s ability to do so by piling on acidic food, drink, and behavior, we are destined to remain fat (and sick) (and tired).
Most Americans are caught in the grip of a cycle of imbalance. We eat acidic (proton saturated) foods. We live with negative emotions that, as you’ll see in chapter 7, also work against maintaining an alkaline body. Our bodies grow more and more acidic, which causes our healthy cells to change into bacteria, yeast, and molds (as explained fully in The pH Miracle). This not only deprives us of healthy cells, but also exposes us to the toxic acidic waste products of these organisms. The body protects itself against the acids as best it can by binding them up with fat and storing them away. We pile on the extra pounds, feel the aches and pains inevitably associated with acidity, and become vulnerable to sickness and fatigue. Feeling sluggish, we don’t exercise. Or we exercise, with the best of intentions, but inadvertently do so in ways that end up making us even more acidic. All this increases our desire for ever more artificial stimulation, whether it be coffee, medications, alcohol, or sugar, making us more and more acidic. The cycle keeps right on going, picking up momentum with every turn around the track.
Any of that sound familiar? I’m not describing anything unusual; it’s just the typical American lifestyle. Just in case you’re still not sure this approach is what you need, take a quick look down the following list, counting up 1 point for any item that is currently part of your life. If you total 4 or more points, your body is no doubt acidic, you are most likely overweight, and you are at risk not only for obesity, but also for heart disease, diabetes, stroke, certain kinds of cancer, as well as other health problems. Here’s the list:
• fruit or fruit drinks
• alcohol or recreational drugs
• simple carbs, including bread, pasta, potatoes, and baked goods
• cigarettes or other tobacco products
• meat, including chicken, pork products, beef, turkey
• eggs or dairy products
• coffee or tea
• processed food or fast food
• sugar
• soda or sports drinks
• no daily exercise
• stress, negative emotions, or spiritual emptiness
In other words: This means you. You can go ahead and get the pH of your blood measured, but I’m confident in saying you’re going to discover the number is too low. In fact, you should get your pH measured (see chapter 3), because checking it again after four weeks on this program will convince you of the importance of keeping your body alkaline. In case you want more proof than what’s showing up on your scale!
[Your doctor can send your blood to a lab to check its pH; it generally takes about four weeks to get results. You can measure the pH of your urine first thing in the morning with special pH paper (available at your local pharmacy, or from The pH Miracle Living Center; see Resources in the back of the book); it should be between 6.8 and 7.2, with 7.2 being ideal. This won’t be as revealing as the blood, but it will at least tell you generally whether or not your body is in pH balance.]
You can’t escape acids altogether. The body creates them through digestion, metabolism, respiration, and cellular breakdown. What you can do is eliminate the acids you take into your body and consume lots of alkaline food and drink to enable your body to buffer the naturally occurring acids.
A healthy body naturally maintains its own ideal weight. The program laid out in this book is designed to produce that healthy, lean body by nourishing and alkalizing every single cell you have. Restoring balance to your system will create a new level of energy and mental clarity—and allow your body to seek its own ideal weight, naturally.
