As I mentioned in my previous article on an over-acidic body, it’s believed over acidity may cause many health problems including arthritic pain and inflammation and even osteoporosis. As a follow on, this week I will expand on the concerns of high levels of acid in the body leading to those problems.  

For many years I have been focused on maintaining the right acid/alkaline balance in my body through diet as well as including barley grass powder in my health regime. Interestingly one of the things I noticed, not long after starting my barley grass/juice regime, was a dramatic improvement in my digestive system. All my life I had suffered from a very poor digestive system. I had tried many regimes and supplements with varying degrees of success. However, after focusing on alkalising my body, my digestive system improved 100%. To be quite honest I was absolutely stunned at the results as it wasn’t really a benefit I had expected.

This prompted me to do further investigations into why there had been such a significant improvement in my digestion. Once again, putting it simply for good digestion, our gut needs to produce hydrochloric acid to help digest our food. When our bodies are over acidic, it’s believed the gut doesn’t produce sufficient hydrochloric acid thinking the body already has adequate acid – hence the poor digestion. The other concern with poor digestion is undigested food often becomes acidic in our stomach and intestines, causing excessive acid to be absorbed into our bloodstream and being stored as fat.

The more research I did on maintaining the correct acid/alkaline balance, the more I became convinced this was one of the keys to good health. Obviously, eating the right foods is important. Ideally, we should eat 80% alkaline foods and 20% acidic. Unfortunately, our Western diet seems to be the opposite of this, with more of an overconsumption of acidic foods. However, for those wanting to find an easier way I suggest drinking alkalising greens such as barely grass powder in juice. There are several combinations of powdered alkalising greens available which are very popular, however, barley grass is the important one when it comes to alkalising. I often mix my barley grass powder and chlorella powder in yoghurt and add it to my fruit salad for breakfast.

Recently I also wrote about the benefits of collagen gelatin in healing the gut wall as well as helping digestion by improving gastric acid secretion. Often suffering from poor digestion can also lead to leaky gut syndrome. Leaky gut syndrome arises when large spaces occur between cells that make up the gut wall, allowing food, toxins, and bacteria to enter the bloodstream. This then causes health issues such as food intolerances, skin allergies, inflammatory diseases as well as IBS. Combining the barley grass powder with collagen gelatin is a great way to heal the gut, alkalise our body AND get our digestion back on track.

If you wish to check your acid/alkaline levels, call in to collect your FREE TEST KIT from our store as well as a chart setting out acid/alkaline foods.

For more information on this subject call in to see Bev and the team at Go Vita, Your Health Shop at 5 North St, Batemans Bay, or phone at 44729737. To learn more don’t forget to tune into Bev on 2EC every Wednesday at 12.45 pm