Body acidity

This is not about the burning feeling in the stomach and œsopagus. It's about acids that build up inside your body tissues and that can lead to severe problems and pain:

Chronic anginas, bronchitis, flus...

Chronic inflammatory diseases like allergies, arthritis, arthrosis, heavy muscle pain...

Migraine.

Depression, anxiety, mental fatigue, mood problems...

Overall weakness.

Sleep problems. Do you often wake up around 3 o'clock?

Obesity.

Bone loss. And hence teeth loss, when the jaw bones are damaged.

Poisoning with toxic metals, even if the food contains no abnormal quantities thereof.

Maybe cancer, child autism...

The acids involved would be things like phosphoric acid, sulfuric acid, uric acid...

I understand there are two ways by which those acids can build up:

Insufficient neutralization of the stomach acid. A normal digestion implies that the stomach produces a lot of hydrochloric acid to make a first rough cut of the proteins and to sterilize the food. After some time, the food then dwells towards the duodenum, which can be seen as a second stomach. There, more complex chemical operations will happen on the food, using several different enzymes produced by the pancreas and the liver. Those enzymes need the acidity from the stomach to be activated but they cannot work in acid. That's why the pancreas also produces alkalies like sodium bicarbonate, to neutralize the acid from the stomach. The enzymes make that the starches are broken down in sugars, the fats become soluble and the proteins are broken down to amino-acids. Then the food passes through the small intestines, where everything that can be directly absorbed will get into the blood (sugars, hydrolyzed fats, amino-acids, vitamins, minerals, the water...) What cannot be absorbed will then form a small compact mass that will get into the big intestine, which acts as a biochemical reactor. Bacteria will manage to extract some more nutrient out of the food and they will even produce some necessary molecules like vitamin B12 (in return for eating a part of the food for themselves...) Inside the big intestine, the food is made slightly acidic again. The problem we speak about, happens when the pancreas and the liver do not manage to neutralize the food that comes from the stomach. In other words: there is not enough sodium bicarbonate injected inside the duodenum to neutralize the hydrochloric acid produced by the stomach. This leads to several problems:

What flows towards the small intestine will be acidic hence acids will get into the bloodstream. The acids will be piled up inside the body cells, in an attempt to keep the blood sane.

Proteins are not broken down into amino-acids. Small segments of proteins can get into the bloodstream and act as morphine on the brain.

Fats are not enough hydrolyzed and starches are not enough broken down in sugars. This means that the blood will not receive enough fat and sugars from the small intestine. Hence, the need will be felt to eat again, despite the fact that the intestines do contain enough food. Also, overtime this makes that one will tend to prefer food that contains a lot of sugar. (This leads to a second mechanism that makes the victim crave for frequent and/or heavy meals: the sugar gets in the bloodstream at a dangerous rate and the body is forced to store it away in cells, anarchically, to keep the sugar level in the blood below poisonous levels. The command to store the sugar (insulin) can be exagerated and the blood will ultimately become depleted in sugar, which leads to craving to eat new sugar and so on. Instead of being used for energy, the sugar stored in the cells will be transformed into fat, which is a far less dangerous kind of molecule for cells to store. In a healthy body, the excess fat and sugars stored in the cells would be released and used for energy or even simply burnt up. But this implies good working enzymes in the cells and a good working liver, which you may not have if you eat wrong food, the wrong way, with wrong living habits. See your physician or nutritionist for advice.)

The big intestine will receive far too much easily digestible fats, proteins and starches. This can make the fermentation degenerate into rotting, producing at lot of poisonous toxins.

A too high proportion of the kind of food that, once absorbed from the intestines, can turn into acids. In this case, there is no problem with the digestion process. But it is so that, once in the body, some kind of food will lead to the formation of acids and other food will lead to the formation of alkalies. For example: animal proteins tend towards acids. If the proportion of acidifying foods is too high...

How can this be diagnosed?

It would seem that body acidity is a very frequent problem amongst Westerners. Some of the recommendations in this text are mainstream and should be followed even in the absence of an obvious problem of body acidity.

If you have some of the problems mentioned in the beginning of the text, there is a fair possibility that they are caused or aggravated by body acidity. I have been sick half of the time for 30 years. I had continuous anginas in wintertime and hayfever in summertime. Simply, there was always at least one part of my body with an ache. Since I learned to control my body acidity, I haven't been sick. It's really amazing. I even make fun of giving a kiss to people who warn that they have the flu or something. I simply cannot manage to get sick...

If you often awake in the middle of the night, that can be a sign.

Diabetes can lead to high body acidity. This would be due to the fact that the body uses almost solely fat as a source for energy. Bone loss can be severe for persons with diabetes. (If you have diabetes, check with you dentist to help protect your teeth.)

Test the pH of your urine. Some hours after a meal, the urine will show if many acid came into the bloodstream. Also, during the night the body will try to eliminate the acids that piled up inside the cells. Hence the first urine in the morning will show if the body had to eliminate acids. Some herbalists sell dedicated paper tests for urine pH but common test paper should do (about $10 in lots of pharmacies). Neutral urine would be a pH of 7. It seems that a slightly acidic urine is normal; a pH of 6.5. I start worrying when the pH is 6 or lower. The worst I measured is 4.5 and I really was not in a good shape. If I'm feeling unwell, I know there is a high chance that my urine will show up to be very acidic.

What can be done?

If the problem is mild, then probably you can just opt for better eating habits:

Eating too much at a time forces the stomach to produce too much acid. I believe some fast food restaurants rely on this to keep some customers coming back. Heavy meals are wrongly digested and cause a craving for the next heavy meal. The toxins produced by the rotting in the intestines and the opioid effect of the undigested protein segments make you need the caffeine from the drinks.

Take your time to eat and chew the food to a find grind. Have your meals with friends or family, with no television in the background.

Diversify your meals.

Organic food and unprocessed food seem to help

Have physical activities. One of the many advantages of sport is that it makes the pumps of the lymphatic system operate. The lymphatic system drains toxins from the body and allows cells from the immune system to circulate.

Have regimen with less acidifying food and more alkalizing food. You will find books and pages on the Internet with lists of acidifying and alkalizing foods. Mixing acidifying foods makes things even worse. My worst enemy is rice (but I do eat some regularly, provided I have sodium citrate at hand). (Increasing the alkalizing food is what the NASA is currently trying out to help reduce the bone loss of astronauts in orbit. See http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/Pro_K.html . Potassium-rich foods would tend to be alkalizing.) Google yielded for example this page that contains a list of alkalizing and acidifying foods: http://www.lugositas.b74.hu/english.php

Citrates

During a few years, I had to implement a more drastic approach. I had to add a few grams of sodium citrate to each meal. I made that sodium citrate myself by mixing one volume of sodium bicarbonate with a little more than one volumes of citric acid, in half a glass of water. It does not taste bad, provided there was enough water. Herbalists sell citrates that contain sodium and other useful metals, which would be better than my receipt. Don't play with this! Too much sodium can cause severe problems. When my urine shows to be too alkalized, I don't feel much better than when it is too acidic. You have to continuously monitor your urine pH and tune the dose of sodium citrate accordingly. By now I know exactly the quantity I need with every meal but I go on testing my urine pH almost everytime. A slight increase in acidity does not bother me, I know it will be regulated in a matter of hours or days. But if I'm suddenly far too alkaline, I have to stop taking sodium citrate for a day.

The best way to take my sodium citrate is together with each meal. About an hour after the meal is fine. If I took too much the previous meal, it will protect me for the next meal (in which case I will take none with that next meal). If I forgot to take some and the meal was very acidifying yet it has been digested hours ago, it will help if I take some sodium citrate anyway but I must not take a lot of it on an empty stomach. Best for me is to take a dose with each meal, even with meals that do not make it mandatory. Best is to have a continuous intake of mild doses. Strong doses are bad. Do not try to compensate if you forgot during several meals; just take your regular dose with the next meal, twice that dose if things are realy bad.

If you have only sodium bicarbonate at hand (and no sodium citrate, no citric acid nor even simply lemon juice...) it can do the job but this is more difficult. The content of your stomach *must* be acidic. The advantage of sodium citrate is that it is neutral. It does lower the acidity of the stomach but it cannot make it alkaline. The stomach acidity is necessary to start the digestion process and also to activate the enzymes from the liver and from the pancreas that flow into the duodenum. If you are in pain because your stomach is far too acidic, a gram or two of sodium bicarbonate will make wonders, with no side effect. But if the acidity of your stomach is about normal and you take sodium bicarbonate to mend your body acidity problem, this is more tricky. Just a gram of bicarbonate will tremendously lower the stomach acidity. If the content of the stomach is still a little bit acidic, your digestion may be less efficient but it will still be a normal digestion. But if you take too much bicarbonate and the content of the stomach becomes alkaline... this will be a catastrophe and a waste of food. (If the food contains a lot of fats or oils, you will probably vomit. Anyhow you will not benefit from the food.) (Reciprocally, If one day you ate too much fat and you feel some nausea and may vomit, drink a gram of citric acid in a glass of water or a lemon juice.)

If you start taking a salt of sodium, you should ask your physician for advice. A diet with a high intake of sodium can have severe side effects.

(Just to avoid some misunderstanding: common table salt is "sodium chloride". Like "sodium citrate", it is not poisonous in quantities around a gram. But pure sodium is a very dangerous substance in any quantity above an atom. As is chloride. Do not infer from this text that you would need "tablets of pure sodium". What you need is a *salt* of sodium, where the sodium is neutralized by another atom or molecule.)

I suppose that sodium citrate has the following effects:

It lowers the acidity inside the stomach.

It feeds sodium to the pancreas, which allows it to make more sodium bicarbonate to neutralize the acidity from the stomach. (unverified)

It feeds sodium to the liver and the kidney, which allows to neutralize and eliminate the acids. (unverified)

Fruit

I now have switched to another approach: I tend to replace sources of starch with fruit. Instead of eating rice, pasta, quinoa, bread, pizza, fried chips and any such sources of starch, I will eat fruit. Most meals will contain about 4 fruits, like 2 big pears, an apple and a banana...

I mostly avoid fruit like oranges or kiwi, that tend to irritate the intestines and void the digestion. Yet if I drink fruit juice far away from any meal, I will gladly drink organic orange juice.

Fruit works so well that I sometimes get too alkaline and I *have* to eat some rice or such.

Switching to fruit can cause problems, if your intestines are not accustomed. Maybe try to increase the quantity of fruit over a few weeks. What worked for me is to use those pills with "good" bacteria that are sold in pharmacies, for people who travel in exotic countries or who take antibiotics. Once the intestines are used to the fruit, you will enjoy much healthier digestions.

I still eat meat but far less than years ago. I prefer white meal and well-cooked. With not too much fat. I don't know why, but fruit also had the effect that I now need far less mayonnaise and such. But I never could diagnose, in my case, that red meat and fat were the culprit of my acidity problem.

I don't know why but vegetables give me problems. I do, and must, eat some vegetables every day but I cannot base my nutrition on huge quantities of vegetables like I was able to base it on fruit.

Cucumbers are fruit.

On the long run, I went on eating sources of starch. So the compromise became that I eat more fruit and take less sodium citrate, together with the starch.

Aspirin

This is still experimental but a tablet of 500 milligrams of aspirin together with a meal seams to decrease or even avoid the acidity problem, even if that meal contained too few fruit. Maybe that, at least in my case, the irritation of the intestines plays a role in acidity problem and the anti-inflammatory action of the aspirin would help.

What's the link with metal poisoning?

Trying to eliminate the acids is a heavy task for the body. It will use "healthy" metals like magnesium to neutralize the acids. Hence it can get depleted in those metals, that are vital for numerous body functions, like the operation and constitution of enzymes. In the absence of the adequate metals, the body will start using toxic metals like mercury, cadmium, lead... For example: people who lack zinc can typically get intoxicated with lead, because the body will confuse lead for zinc, once zinc is depleted. This happens even if the quantities of toxic metals in the food and in the environment are below the acceptable thresholds.

Metals like copper, that are considered to be useful for the body and "healthy", become toxic if their amount is too high or if the body lacks another key metal.

If a metal intoxication built up over a long time, it will not be visible in simple blood or urine tests, because the metals stick in cells with a low turnover. If mercury is involved, it can be very difficult to cure the problem. See for example http://www.4p8.com/eric.brasseur/toxic_metals.html

Signs of metal intoxication are a bad temper, irritability and the inability to cope with menaces and challenges.

Is that citric "acid" in the citrates not a problem?

It is an organic acid that is very useful to the body (especially the liver) and above all it can be easily eliminated. It is not poisonous and difficult to eliminate like the acids mentioned in the beginning of the text. You should not swallow huge quantities of it... but up to a gram is healthy. A few grams can be disturbing because of the acidity...

In a general way, while fruit are "acidic" they will not add to the problem of body acidity. On the contrary. I heard about two examples of fruits used to cure:

The mother of a friend had very painful arthritis since years. After reading about it, she ate only fruit during 40 days. Her arthritis disappeared. The rule now is that she must not eat meat. If somebody serves her say a soup with a just a little bit of meat inside, she will feel some pain in the coming hours. (On a less stringent basis, I must not eat red meat with a source of starch like rice. I would automatically start an angina. If I need both meat and a strong source of energy, I will take something fat like mayonnaise.)

Day one, you drink one lemon juice. Day two, two lemon juices. And so on up to day ten. Then you step backwards: day eleven, you drink nine lemon juices. Day twelve, you drink eight lemon juices. Down to one lemon juice. That would trigger the body to eliminate the acids... I wouldn't dare try this out but I know people who just need to do this once in a while.

If I eat wheat products, I'll add about 2 grams of citric acid in my glass, to make the content of the stomach acidic from the start on. This lowers the opioid effect of the digestion of wheat, which is a real problem in my case.

If you ate a fat meal and feel some nausea, take about a gram of citric acid dissolved in a glass of water.

My thanks to:

The many authors who made data on the subject available.

Françoise Westerloppe, who allowed me to understand the problem. This gave me my life back.

Dimitri Gathy, who made numerous tests together with me.

Scott M. Smith, who made me understand the second way of acid buildup.

The present text is not an authoritative work. It condenses my experience and what seems to be the likely explanations, in the hope of being useful to others.

Eric Brasseur - June 26 2008 till October 19 2011