Natural bone health with our Alkaline diet

August 13, 2019 | by Dr. Susan E. Brown

When it comes to improving bone health, very little you do matters more than improving your acid-alkaline balance with an alkaline eating plan. Even if you exercise and limit toxins, if your acid-alkaline balance is off-kilter, you’ll still have unnecessary bone loss in the long run. An alkaline diet is an essential part of natural bone health.

What is the Alkaline for Life® Diet?
The Alkaline for Life® Diet refers to an eating plan that supports bone and whole-body health by creating an ideal pH balance within the body. The alkalizing precursors it contains allow the bones to fulfill their metabolic functions without depleting themselves. In reality, the Alkaline for Life® Diet is the same eating pattern that supports prevention of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, and degenerative diseases. It is a diet rich in alkalizing minerals and health-supporting plant compounds. 

Alkaline for Life® eating focuses on the consumption of the following food groups, along with adequate protein and essential fats.  The diet is centered on:

Vegetables
Fruits
Nuts and seeds
Spices and pulses (turmeric, ginger, mustard seed, cloves, etc.)

Any Diet Can Be an Alkaline for Life® Diet!

No matter which types of foods you prefer, your diet can and become an Alkaline for Life® Diet simply by balancing your intake of alkaline and acid-forming foods as a path to alkalizing your body chemistry. Whether you’re enjoying a Mediterranean, Keto, Atkins, vegetarian, vegan, or Low FODMAP Diet, all you have to do is to incorporate more of the alkaline-forming vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds that are allowed in your eating program. Also, the use of alkalizing mineral supplements can be helpful to make any diet Alkaline for Life® Diet!

Is your diet acid-forming or alkaline-forming?

Eating “alkaline” means that you’re trying to keep your body’s acid base (pH) between 6.5 (slightly acidic) and 7.5 (slightly alkaline). Most of the food we eat has the potential to alter our pH. When digested, some foods leave acidic by-products in the body (acid-forming foods); others leave alkaline by-products (alkaline-forming foods).

Acid-forming foods include most high-protein foods, such as meat, fish, eggs, and most legumes (beans and peas, except lentils, which are alkaline-forming). Sugar, coffee, alcohol, and most grains are also acid-forming. See a chart of acid-forming foods.

Alkaline-forming foods include nearly all vegetables and fruits, many nuts and seeds, and spices. See our chart of alkaline-forming foods.

Our Stone Age ancestors ate hundreds of different types of natural whole foods. Seeds, nuts, vegetables, fruits, and roots were supplemented with game animals and fish, providing on average a pH-balanced diet. Our organs and body systems evolved in adaptation to this diet. It’s as if Nature said, “You can eat acid-forming meat, beans, and other high-protein foods, but you must balance these with an abundance of the alkaline-forming vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and spices.” And for thousands of years, that’s exactly what we did.

What are problems with an acid-forming diet?

Unfortunately, we’ve strayed from the acid-alkaline balanced diet that our ancestors achieved. We favor meat, sugars, grains, low-mineral processed foods, and other acid-forming foods and get far too few alkaline-forming vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds.

The net result is that our eating patterns create a condition known as “chronic low-grade metabolic acidosis.” While our bodies can easily handle an occasional acid load, long-term acid build-up can exhaust our available alkalizing reserves. Unless we take steps to neutralize these acids, they can damage our health in many ways — and this is the underlying cause of many of our modern health problems, including osteoporosis.

Do you have signs of an “acidic” diet?

Weight gain
Nonspecific aches and pains, especially in the bones and joints
Acid reflux or heartburn
Poor digestion, irritable bowel, intestinal cramping
Fatigue, feeling of being “run down”
Muscle weakness/loss of muscle
Urinary tract problems
Receding gums
Kidney stones
Bone loss
Skin problems