Alkalizing: What does that mean?

The word alkalizing gets thrown around a lot in health and wellness world. Organic Krush considers it an important element in making daily decisions for lifelong personal health. We like to think of an alkalized state as being an internal state of calm and balance. The foods and liquids you ingest (as well as stress levels) play a part as to how balanced your internal system is functioning.

Scientifically, pH stands for potential hydrogen with the “p” meaning potential (or power) and the “H” standing for hydrogen. The Power of Hydrogen. The pH Scale is a scale that is used to rank the relative basicity or acidity of substances to other substances, based on the amount of hydrogen ion activity in a substance.

For good health, ideal blood pH levels need to be slightly alkaline (between 7.365 and 7.45).

Naturally your bloodstream works to stay at this level, because when it is, you are able to maintain health. When you eat and drink, the item taken into your gut affects your state of alkalinity. Alkalized foods are the foods that tend to be low body burden and super fresh. Things like leafy plant greens, bananas, broccoli, cabbage and tons of other whole fresh fruits, plus olives, seaweed, and almonds. Acidic foods are more highly processed foods that take more work to digest: meats, dairy, coffee, carbonated water, wheat. Here is a great article and a great pH scale of foods that can be helpful; I printed this chart and have it hanging at my desk so that I always have an easy reference!

At Krush, we aim to “overload” our system with the good stuff so that it can crowd out the cravings for the harsher stuff. When we prioritize vegetables and fresh fruit, nuts and legumes, our internal systems buzz with happiness and lightness. Our kidneys work hard to maintain homeostasis, and we can help that balance, by skewing our diets towards alkaline foods.

We think of it as this: disease and sickness can’t live in a buzzy and happy environment, but if we get too acidic internally, we become inflamed. Inflammation leads to feeling unwell and ultimately chronic disease.

One of our favorite foods for alkalizing are lemons: while they seem acidic, they actually cause your stomach to produce juices that balance out the citrus; this production causes your entire system to lean extremely alkaline. Same for leafy greens- with their internal chlorophyll – this pushes your gut to produce the gastric juices that encourage alkalinity.

As we’ve stated before, Organic Krush doesn’t focus on extreme behaviors around food, but instead balanced behaviors. We really like the idea of adding in copious amounts of greens, a couple glasses of lemon water, and moderating meat dairy and gluten! Daily healthy choices add up to a lifetime of wellness!