PH & Weight Loss

If weight loss is your goal, you don't have to look far for a plan guaranteed to work. Diet pills, meal replacements and food-specific diets make promises that often fail to live up to the hype. The most successful weight-loss plan incorporates commitment, healthy eating habits and exercise. It can be helpful in achieving your goals to understand how factors such blood pH affect the weight-loss equation.

Identification

In order to lose 1 pound a week, you must reduce your calorie intake by 3,500 calories, burn the equivalent of 3,500 calories through exercise or use a combination of both methods. Keeping weight off requires striking a balance between the calories you consume and the calories you burn. Blood pH, or the acid-base balance in your blood, plays a role in weight loss and determines how you burn fat. If the foods you eat upset this balance, weight loss becomes difficult or impossible.

Types

Why Is PH Balance Important?

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A normal blood pH is between 7.35 and 7.45, which is a little more alkaline than pure water, according to chiropractor and acupuncture specialist Dr. Ben Kim. The foods you eat affect pH in that they are either acid- or alkaline-forming and produce a byproduct of metabolism called acid or alkaline ash. According to Kim, the problem concerns the buildup of acid ash from continually choosing acid-forming foods.

Process

To maintain balance, your body first tries to neutralize and excrete excess acid via urine. Continually choosing foods that produce acid ash can overload this buffering process. According to Health Styles 4 U Rx, a natural medicine, integrated health care site, acid ash your body cannot neutralize or excrete becomes stored in body fluids and body fat cells 3. Once inside your cells, acid waste disables enzyme reactions, changes the process of metabolism and stops weight loss.

Prevention/Solution

How Does Sodium Bicarbonate Affect Blood pH Levels?

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According to Dr. Susan E. Brown, a medical anthropologist and New York state-certified nutritionist, you can avoid acid-ash overload and prevent its effects from inhibiting weight loss by following a diet that consists of 35 percent acid-forming foods and 65 percent alkaline-forming foods. In general, this means increasing your intake of fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts and decreasing your intake of grains, meats and refined sugar

Expert Insight

A report published in September 2009 in Medical Hypothesis Journal by science expert Shoma Berkemeyer addresses the issue of blood pH as it relates to weight gain. Berkemeyer acknowledges a relationship between blood pH and weight and suggests that although more research is necessary, it might be less important to eat less of some foods, such as:

• fruits
  
• vegetables