pH Balance

While more people are turning in huge numbers to filtered bottled, spring and reverse osmosis water, most of us give absolutely no thought to whether the water we're drinking is acid or alkaline. Yet drinking acid water can be bad for you and your health.

Water is the most plentiful resource on this planet. We spend nine months suspended in it before birth. It comprises some three quarters of our body weight, making up the greater part of cells, blood, digestive juices and body wastes. We can't live without water and yet we have grown increasingly suspicious of it.

Water has become polluted with dioxins, pesticides, disease-making organisms like cryptosporidium and has become increasingly acidic. Consider, for instance, a common disease like osteoporosis (brittle bones disease).

The statistics on osteoporosis are truly staggering. In North America, about 25 million people suffer from osteoporosis; most are women. According to Alan Gaby, MD, and Jonathan Wright, MD, "nearly one-third of all American women will, during their lifetimes, develop osteoporosis severe enough to cause a fracture." Sometimes, especially in the case of elderly women, complications from broken bones end up all too tragically as fatalities.

The causes of osteoporosis are many, but conventional wisdom has it that there's one easy solution: take more calcium. The only problem with this solution is, it doesn't work. That's because, unless calcium is taken with magnesium and other nutrients, it won't be absorbed properly.

The good news is that a great deal of benefit can be derived simply by drinking water. Yet here we run into a problem. Although we're all encouraged to drink plenty of water at least eight glasses a day the acidic water we often drink can actually increase our risk of osteoporosis! Acid water is as bad for you as acid rain is for the environment.

Are You Acidic?

Drinking acidic water puts a huge strain on the body. If you're also eating too much acidic food, such as wheat, sugar, corn and eggs, one way your body will try to neutralize this acidity is by using alkaline minerals such as calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium. It does this by leaching those minerals straight out of your bones.

Unfortunately, the long-term effects of having an acidic metabolism can be devastating. As long ago as 1930, Otto Warburg won the Nobel Prize for discovering that cancer will thrive in an oxygenless, acidic environment. So it follows that our bodies need to be in a balanced acid/alkaline state if we are to remain healthy.

It's important to find out if your system is acidic; ideally, of course, it should be alkaline. An excellent way to do this is to have a Biological Terrain Assessment (BTA). You take a sample of your morning urine to a BTA practitioner, provide some saliva and the equipment will analyze these fluids. Without any need for a blood sample, this will provide a reading of your own unique internal environment, or "terrain."

The reading will show not only the amount of acidity in your body and the mineral content of your body fluids, but also the amount of any free radical damage. BTA equipment can show your risk of developing osteoporosis, as well as revealing any viral and bacterial infections, heavy metal levels and lymphatic and circulatory disorders; in fact, it, will give a complete overall analysis of your health. With this information, you can make informed decisions about diet and supplementation.

In my experience as a BTA analyst, the majority of people who are tested have acidic terrains. Over the course of time and with the right alterations in diet and supplements, they reduce the acidity of their bodies and dramatically improve their health.

Get Alkaline

The water you drink should be alkaline. The ideal way to do this is to use a water ionizer, a machine which produces purified alkaline "reduced water" from ordinary tap water. This reduced water neutralizes free radicals and acts as an antioxidant within the body. Since free radicals are at the root of all degenerative diseases, drinking ionized water is a wonderful way to redress the damage they do. For example, lines and wrinkles, arthritis and atherosclerosis are all indications of free radical damage.

A water ionizer will remove acidic minerals and chemicals, like chlorine and phosphorous, and it can raise water from an acidic pH of five to as high as pH 10, a strongly alkaline level. Hormone imbalances are common in an acid terrain. Since the body can't produce energy efficiently in an acidic environment, people whose terrains are acidic may suffer from low energy levels and even fibromyalgia. An acidic environment is also responsible in large part for obesity. Acids are stored in fat that can't be shed until the acids are removed.

Another excellent way to make acidic water alkaline is to add concentrated ionic trace mineral drops to it. Usually three or four drops per 225 millilitre (eight-ounce) glass is enough. Most spring water is alkaline, but these days it can contain pesticide residues and other contaminants, so reverse osmosis and mineral drops may be the best solution for most people.

It's quite possible that, with a little adjustment, water can be the easiest and best cure for what ails you.