Weekly Healthy Advice From VÄXA

The Acidosis-Osteoporosis Connection

If your body is too acidic, your blood can steal calcium from your bones and teeth. What can you do to stop this silent thief?

Your body's highest priority is to maintain the proper acid-alkaline balance in the blood. A high-protein diet of meat and dairy products can pose an increased osteoporosis risk because it can make the body pH highly acidic.

According to Susan Brown, PhD., who heads the nonprofit Osteoporosis Education Project in East Syracuse, NY, thin and fragile bones are really the long-term negative result of short-term positive coping mechanisms. These positive coping mechanisms provide for the minute-to-minute removal of calcium, magnesium, potassium and other minerals compounds from bone. These nutrient compounds are taken out of bone to support the maintenance of critical body functions.

These bone-derived nutrients are essential for the regulation of systemic pH balance, heartbeat, muscle contraction, nervous function and other activities. Of special concern is the role alkali salts of bone-derived nutrients play as buffering agents for the maintenance of the body's critical acid-alkaline balance, Brown says.

The blood will always maintain a slightly alkaline range of 7.35 to 7.45. Because the pH of the body is so delicate, it will steal from other parts of the body to maintain the balance. While an internal alkaline balance is optimal, our biochemical functioning, the processes of living and the metabolism of food, produce a great deal of acid. For example, when we exercise or move we produce lactic acid and carbon dioxide. Lactic acid is by its nature acid and the carbon dioxide represents an excretion of acids.

When we eat, we generate acids. Sulfuric acid can be produced from the metabolism of sulfur-containing amino acids and we consume phosphoric acid as a food additive. Long chain fatty acids also produce excess acids when metabolized. Further, immune responses - manifest as allergies, hypersensitivity and even stress - generate substantial amounts of acidic by-products.

Brown frames the acid-alkaline issue as one of mineral adequacy and depletion. "It's a little like over-farming and depleting mineral levels in soil," she says. "If we eat foods that create and acidic pH in the body, we will deplete our bones of minerals."

Testing urine is the most effective way to gauge your systemic pH. Simply hold the pH strip in your urine stream for a second or two and read immediately, using the color chart provided for the correct indication.