A Key to Vibrant Health: Digestion

The digestive system is one our greatest keys to Health. Truly, it is the hub of the entire body and the life of every cell depends on it.

This "machine" processes every nutrient that enters the body. Most people have severely polluted their digestive systems, compromising digestion and the assimilation of vital nutrients. The digestive system feeds the brain, the liver, the heart and every other organ, gland, and tissue right down to the cellular level. Many doctors have estimated that more than 90 percent of all disease known to humanity today is related to a faulty digestive system, and I am in full agreement with them. The good news is that we can cleanse and rebuild the digestive system and experience vibrant health.

Pollution sources

How do we pollute ourselves and degrade the integrity of the digestive system? It seems that very few people have the answer to this question. Most digestive problems are due to diet and are compounded by thoughts and emotions. Feelings have an intensely profound effect upon the digestive system. When the digestive system is polluted by a poor diet and toxic mental patterns, it will malfunction. To put ourselves back on the road to health, we need to clean up our diets as well as our thoughts and feelings.

Acid diets

Most Americans eat a high-protein diet. High-protein diets create excessive acid levels in the body. A heavy emphasis on meat, grains and breads, dairy products, sugar, and overcooked, refined and processed foods leaves the average American with a serious overabundance of acids to handle, If a person has enough electrolyte minerals in reserve to compensate for dietary acids, the body can easily handle a short-term imbalance of over-acidity with no apparent problems. However, the typical American consistently indulges in the overconsumption of acid-forming foods. The constant processing of all those excess acids eventually drains the body's electrolyte mineral reserves, leaving the body unable to compensate. Unfortunately, a steady diet of acid-forming foods takes its toll over time.

Electrifying electrolytes

For those who are not familiar with electrolytes, basically, they are minerals that have the capacity to conduct an electric charge. They are used in every metabolic function, including the neutralization of potentially damaging acids. Electrolytes are essential to the health and chemical balance of every cell of the body. Any deficiency results in some kind of dysfunction; the greater the deficiency, the greater risk of disease. A full reserve of electrolytes is essential to maintain health and for any healing activity the body may require. In fact, we cannot live without electrolytes.

Our electrolyte reserve is most easily measured by pH (pH means potential hydrogen). The more hydrogen atoms you have, the more acid; the less hydrogen that is present, the more alkalinity. We measure acid-alkaline balance in the form of pH from 0 to 14. The numbers 0 to 7 represent an acidic tendency; 7 to 14 indicate an alkaline tendency.

Our bodies are designed to function on the alkaline side of the spectrum. For instance, the blood must have a pH from 7.35 to 7.45. If it drops below or rises above that, a health crisis will occur. If it falls as low as 7.2, the person is seriously ill. If it gets down to a 7.1, that person would probably need to be hospitalized and is in danger of going into a coma. Or, if the pH rises too high, a seizure could occur. Sometimes the pH can rise to a state of over-alkalinity. This occurs because excessive acids have damaged the body's normal ability to eliminate ammonia, which the body has created in a desperate attempt to handle severe, ongoing over-acidity. When ammonia enters the blood, alkalosis occurs. Both over-acidity and over-alkalinity indicate that the body is seriously electrolyte-deficient.

Next to breathing and sustaining the heartbeat, the most important physiological activity the body performs is to maintain proper blood pH. This is done, in part, through the breath, as the body can rid itself of some acids through breathing. It also uses another system called the buffer system.

Essential sodium

Before the body can use any food, it must neutralize the acids in that food. It does this by first taking sodium (a primary electrolyte mineral), combining it with bicarbonate, and then using that to raise the pH of the acids to 6.1. Then the acids can be. removed from the body safely. However, most Americans, despite a diet high in salt, are running short on sodium. Unfortunately, sodium chloride is not the type of sodium that the body requires. It is toxic and it actually creates acids in the system.

The body requires an organic form of sodium. This type of sodium is chelated (bonded) to a plant protein molecule, which can be found exclusively in plants.

Consuming sodium chloride actually aids in the depletion of organic sodium. When the body becomes depleted of organic sodium, it has an emergency situation to handle. It responds to that emergency by going within itself to retrieve sodium from various fluids or tissues in the body so that it can maintain adequate electrolyte levels in the bloodstream and keep the body alive. When sodium is removed from a fluid, such as bile, the fluid becomes acid. When sodium is removed from a cell, the cell dies. The body is then degenerating into a diseased state.