Superfoods For Optimum Health: Chlorella and Spirulina
by Mike Adams, the Consumer Wellness Research Center - page 18 of 39

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Most people consume diets that are far too acidic. Nearly all refined foods -- made with sugars, white flour, and other unwholesome ingredients -- are acidic in nature. Soft drinks and most processed fruit drinks are especially acidic. These acidic foods, when routinely ingested, create a pH imbalance in the human body.

pH balance is critical for human health. In fact, the pH of your blood must be kept as a precise level (around 7.2 on the pH scale). Consuming highly acidic foods and beverages causes an imbalance in the pH of the body, and so the body responds by countering the acidity with behavioral and biochemical strategies that eliminate these excess acids. There's a cost to all this, however, as you'll see below.

One such strategy for countering excess dietary acids is to increase respiration, since carbon dioxide is acidic and oxygen is alkaline. By breathing in more oxygen and exhaling more carbon dioxide, the body works to regulate its own pH. This is exactly why diabetics with high blood sugar are frequently seen to be hyperventilating: their blood is too acidic and their bodies are simply trying to get back to the proper pH balance.

Another strategy pursued by the body is to pull alkaline minerals out of the bones -- which are great stores of calcium and other alkaline minerals -- and use those minerals to counter the acidic foods and beverages that have been consumed. This is why the consumption of soft drinks is well known to cause the depletion of minerals from the body's bones, which results in loss of bone mass density and the onset of osteoporosis. The more soft drinks you consume, the weaker your bones get.

Micro-algae offer a convenient solution to the pH problems of most diets. Both chlorella and spirulina are alkaline foods, which means they counter the acidic foods and help raise the pH level towards the alkaline side of the scale. This, in turn, promotes increased bone mass (since your body doesn't have to sacrifice calcium to balances its pH), and vastly improved metabolic functions. Consuming more alkaline foods has been strongly linked with improved immune system function, mental function, kidney function, and higher levels of energy, among other important benefits.

Both chlorella and spirulina can be used as pH balancing foods. Of course, your best results will come when you add these superfoods to your diet and avoid consuming acidic foods and beverages like soft drinks.

High-protein / low-carb diets are also known to be highly acidic, since meat is squarely on the acidic scale. That's why some of the weight loss on a nutritionally poor low-carb diet actually results from loss of bone mass, not body fat! By replacing some meat with protein from spirulina, low-carb dieters can improve their overall pH balance while still getting their protein (and from a more nutritionally sound source, too).

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Next: Chlorella and spirulina for preventing and reversing cancer

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