Acid/Alkaline

I understand your outrage about the clinic but I didn't want to pretend that they were my words, although it is my thinking.

I don't think you are wrong but the story may be more complicated. You probably know that the acid/alkali pH table is not linear. A pH of 2 is 100 more acid than a pH of 3 because which is 100 times more than a pH of 4, etc.

Hydrochloric acid has a pH of 2 but the hydrochloric acid secreted by the stomach has a pH of 1.0 which is strong enough to burn cotton.

Depending upon what you eat the stomach will react in different ways. At this point I must depart from biological chemistry because it doesn't satisfactorily explain what happens to food in the stomach and digestive system.

Dr Hay is the pioneer on explaining food digestion and its effects on health. Doris Grant and Jean Joice must be accredited credit for bringing his research to the populous in their books on food combining.

Proteins require an acid medium for digestion and carbohydrates (starches and sugars) require an alkaline medium.

When animal proteins are consumed and pass into the stomach they stimulate the production of hydrochloric acid which activates the enzyme pepsin. The function of pepsin is to split and digest proteins. This action in the stomach can only take place in a wholly acid medium; the presence of any high starch or Sugar with its accompanying alkalis interferes with, or neutralizes, this acid medium, and the proteins are then incompletely digested in relation to allergies.

The digestion of carbohydrate is initiated in the mouth by the action of the enzyme, ptyalin, which splits the starches into lower forms before entrance into the small intestine where their further reduction and main digestion takes place. All starch foods must be thoroughly chewed, otherwise the small intestine, although alkaline in all its secretions, cannot complete what the ptyalin started higher up in the tract.

The stomach is a mixing chamber in which the saliva, with its active ptyalin, is thoroughly incorporated into the starches. During this early visit in the stomach, lasting about thirty to forty-five minutes, the normal acidity of the stomach is insufficient to cancel out, or interfere with, the alkaline medium necessary for preparing the starches for their intestinal digestion. The presence of meat, however, or other acid-compelling foods, or acid fruits, arrests this preparation and fermentation follows; the splitting-down process of starches can only occur in a positive alkalinity.

Note: If starches are eaten with acid fruits and if the stomach contents are withdrawn at intervals during digestion, it will be observed that the action of ptyalin has ceased and that the starches are not being split. Note: it will give the intense blue reaction of Iodide of starch when Iodine is applied to the chyme removed from the stomach. The same test may be performed with a combination of starches and proteins. The extraction of parts of chyme at intervals, as they happen during our digestion, will always show this arrest of ptyalin digestion meaning that the starches then un-split will never be properly split

The teaching has been that the highest levels of acidity are in the resting stomach. This belief has been responsible for the advice given to ulcer sufferers 'to avoid letting the stomach get empty. But a number of authorities disagree with this belief (now in disrepute in certain medical quarters), including the physiologist A.H. James. In Physiology of Gastric Digestion (Arnold, London, 1957) he states: The highest acidities of all are reached during the digestion of food, not when the stomach is empty!

This fact supports the theory that if no protein accompanies a starch food entering a resting stomach the amount of hydrochloric acid is insufficient at first to fully neutralize or overcome the alkalinity of the saliva present.

Note that although the pH level of an empty stomach is reported as being 1.0 the capacity of an empty stomach is only a few mL a tenth or twentieth the size after a large meal. Consequently the initial acidity directly following a meal and before the stomach excretes more digestive acid is lower. This statement is conditional on what and how quickly one eats.

In 1936, the work of three Philadelphia investigators provided interesting laboratory confirmation of the starch-protein concept. The study revealed that, one and a quarter hours after meals were eaten, the stomach contents were most acid after the high protein meal, least acid after the high starch meal, and half way between both states after the mixed meal. Moreover, when the mixed meal was eaten it was clear that the proteins were being digested under difficulties as the acidity present was far lower than that shown as required by the all-protein meal and had actually been cut to one-third less by the presence of the starches and their accompanying alkalis.

This investigation shows that when high starches and high proteins are mixed at one meal there is too much acid to permit the continued alkaline reduction of the starch part, and not enough acid to start the digestion of the protein part.

The usual teaching, however, is that when we eat food of any kind (such as proteins and starches) we produce gastric juice which contains hydrochloric acid. The answer, here, is that hydrochloric acid is stimulated in exact ratio to the amount of protein presented by the digestive task. The protein in starches such as grains is both very small (about 10 per cent) and incomplete in character, and therefore does not stimulate sufficient hydrochloric acid to interfere, for the first thirty to forty-five minutes, with the alkaline medium necessary for the digestion of starches. During this time, saliva, having a pH value of 6.6, as compared with the pH 0.9 of pure gastric juice acts as a natural buffer of the gastric acid.

Some physiologists and physicians disagree with these explanations of the starch-protein theory and claim that the gastric acid is necessary for the splitting of the starches; the starch is often contained in protein 'envelopes' which require the acid for digestion so that the starch can be released. This claim is undoubtedly correct but it does not alter the fact that starches have a preliminary digestion in an alkaline medium which buffers the gastric acid for the first thirty to forty minutes in the stomach. There is, therefore, still plenty of time for the gastric acid to work on the starches during the remaining three or more hours that they are in the stomach before entering the small intestine. There, of course, the pancreatic juice completes the digestion of carbohydrate (starch, dextrin and the like), and also of protein, in a mainly alkaline medium.


The Importance of the Chemical Balance

For optimum health and heightened resistance to disease the diet should, ideally, consist of alkali-forming foods and acid-forming foods in the ratio, approximately, of four to one, which, when metabolized, will produce a corresponding ratio in the body. Taking into account all of the excretions through the four avenues of elimination, we find that the loss in alkali is four times as great as that in acid. This means that if we would replace our losses fully we need four times as much of the alkaline intake as of the acid intake. This is a fact well known to physiologists and can be verified in almost any work on physiology.

With regard to the chemical balance of the human blood, the slight difference between a pH 7.1 and 7.6 spells the wide difference between an acidosis and an alkalosis and even this slight variation makes all the difference between function of the most chaotic variety and that of high efficiency.

It is not difficult to distinguish between alkali-forming and acid-forming foods:
Alkali-forming foods comprise all vegetables (including potatoes if cooked in their skins and the skins are eaten); all salads; all fresh fruits (except plums and cranberries); almonds; milk.

Acid-forming foods comprise all animal proteins such as meat, fish, shell-fish, eggs, cheese, poultry; nuts (except almonds); all the starch foods such as grains, bread and flour and other foods made from cereal starches; sugars.

There is sometimes confusion for some people regarding the classification of 'acid' fruits (grapefruit oranges, lemons, berries, etc.) as 'alkali-forming'. It should therefore be understood that this classification does not relate to the 'acid' taste of the fruit but to its end-product in the body. The acid fruits, moreover, are the foods which deposit the highest alkaline ash of all foods. It is an interesting fact that the acids of these fruits leave the body within an hour or so of being eaten. They do so via the lungs (mainly), and the skin, urinary tract and bowel. The alkalis, when released from their combination with the acids, provide a highly valuable contribution to the body's alkaline reserve. The only way in which acid fruits can be said to be 'acid-forming' is when they are wrongly combined with starches at the same meal, when they can cause an uncomfortable 'full-up' feeling, or even pain.
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