Alkaline may be the answer to ailments
High alkaline diet helps fix author’s agonizing back pain
Julie Cove was a thoroughly modern mess. An interior designer with a home furnishings store and three children to care for, she was a superwoman who’d met her kryptonite. She suffered agonizing back pain.
What good is a superwoman who can’t even stand up? She threw everything at it: massage, chiropractic, laser light therapy, physiotherapy, osteopathy, Chinese medicine, cortisone shots, prescription drugs and finally, surgery, which helped, until it didn’t. That was 10 years ago.
“I was so out of commission I couldn’t be a mom, I could only stand up three to five minutes at the most,” Cove, 52, said from her home in Brentwood Bay on Vancouver Island. “I didn’t even realize what a disaster I was until I was out of commission on my back.”
Desperate, she looked for answers and liked what she read about balancing the body’s acid/ alkaline pH to recover health. The idea is that our modern culture tends to make us overly acidic. While the body maintains the ideal 7.365 pH in our blood, poor diets, stress, lack of exercise and toxins from our chemical world can assault us like acid rain in our other operating parts. It’s not unlike the oceans acidifying and putting sea life at risk.
“The biochemistry in maintain- ing one’s blood alkalinity is quite extreme. The body will sacrifice all other organs and organ systems by borrowing alkaline minerals (sodium, chloride, magnesium, potassium and calcium) from organs to maintain the delicate and mandatory pH balance of the blood at 7.365,” says Cove.
“Our body’s blood pH will appear normal but behind the scenes it is working overtime to maintain it, especially if your body is overly acidic. Alkaline minerals are mandatory to buffer the excessive ac- ids from one’s diet, lifestyle and/ or metabolic acids.”
When alkaline minerals are constantly “overdrawn from our body’s bank” to buffer acids and maintain the delicate alkaline pH of blood and tissues, it borrows from organs and tissues, Cove says.
“An overdrawn bank account can result in an array of health challenges from arthritis to osteoporosis to cancer.”
It’s been long established that certain foods are alkaline and others, acidic. Most vegetables are alkaline but some are more so than others. Some fruit (including lemons and limes) are alkaline but according to Cove’s list, most are moderately acidic, as are many dairy products, and meat. Alcohol, coffee, fruit juices, cocoa, eggs, and deep-fried foods are highly acidic.
Cove includes a chart in her book listing different degrees of alkaline and acidic foods. Google brings up dozens and dozens of such lists online. “Lemon is acidic outside the body but once it metabolizes, it’s full of alkaline minerals,” she says explaining the contradiction.
On the first three days of her alkalinity diet, Cove only drank nutritious alkaline juices (“like five salads in two glasses) and she also took alkaline supplements (calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium). She then progressed to solid food, eating 75 per cent alkaline and 25 per cent acidic foods at meals.
“I started in late September and by Christmas, I was completely out of pain and off anti-inflammatory medication. The doctors were pretty amazed and I didn’t need a second surgery,” she says.
Cove was so amazed at the results, she closed her business and became a certified holistic nutritionist. And now she’s sharing her experience and has written Eat Better Live Better, Feel Better (Appetite by Random House) with 150 highly alkaline recipes.
“Modern life takes away from the body’s ability to maintain a balance,” she says. “We’re subject to (acidifying) toxins all around us like off-gassing rugs, car fumes, pesticides and other chemicals. When you’re stressed and eating a lot of acidic foods, the pH can drop in small increments.”
Over time, Cove says, the body can’t neutralize acids and that can cause inflammation, fatigue, irritability, bloat, plaque buildup, indigestion, or chronic disease.
While ill, Cove’s pH (taken via urine and saliva, which is not the same as blood pH) hovered between 6.2 and 6.5; a few months after changing to her alkaline lifestyle, readings were between 7.5 and 8.
To maintain healthy alkalinity, she recommends eating 75 per cent from the alkaline side of her food chart and 25 per cent acidic foods such as whole grains, nuts, legumes, low sugar fruits, plant protein and some fish.
As well, Cove recommends drinking three to four quarts of alkaline or filtered water daily, exercising daily (not over-exercising and creating lactic acid), dealing with stress and finding joy. Exercise, she says, helps release acids and toxins, increases breathing capacity, stimulates metabolism, improves digestion and reduces stress hormones, promoting alkalinity.
Two nutritionists we interviewed agree that alkaline foods are healthy but wonder if it isn’t just the fact that they are healthy, period.
“I incorporate the concept into my practice but don’t put it into an alkalinity context. I recommend similar foods — eating more whole plant-based foods, adding lemon, drinking more water, reducing coffee, alcohol, red meat — all considered acidic — but I talk of it in a more general way,” says Vancouver nutrition consultant and chef Mikaela Reuben (who worked with Ben Stiller, Woody Harrelson and Owen Wilson when they were in Vancouver).
“I’m a science nerd and went deep into the science background for validation and found things tricky to prove. There’s a little debate because studies show the body naturally regulates itself. That said, it’s hard to say who funded the studies.
“If people eat 75 per cent alkaline and 25 per cent acidic foods, it’s a good approach. I believe in alkalinity, I’ve read the books and am a proponent for sure, but not sure to what extent diet affects it. I choose not to use the word alkalinity. I just want people to eat more vegetables,” says Reuben.
Leslie Beck, registered dietitian and author of 12 books on nutrition, wants more science and clinical trials before saying that eating alkaline foods changes the body’s alkalinity.
“The alkaline food we’re talking about is really, really healthy but I have yet to be convinced it changes the pH of your blood stream,” she says.
Cove points to a study published in the Journal of Environmental and Public Health (The Alkaline Diet: Is There Evidence That An Alkaline pH Diet Benefits Health?) which shows some support scientifically.
“There may be some value in considering an alkaline diet in reducing morbidity and mortality from chronic diseases. Further studies are warranted in this area of medicine,” it concludes.