"I guess I am just a very Acidic Person...I will have to work on that"

We know sugar should only be eaten in moderation, we know its best to eat sparingly. We watch our sugar intake when we are working on fitting into our swimsuits…but its not just about the calories. It is so much worse….

Sugar and Salt are in most everything in excess amounts in this culture. They both cause high blood pressure and they both lower your body’s PH, which leads to inflammation. Now, think for a moment of all the common ailments people may complain of (depression,  colds, fever blisters, bad skin, athletes foot…) and then think of all the major health concerns and life threatening diseases (cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s…) and then think about what just about all of these have in common: high blood pressure and inflammation.

I have been limiting my sugar for a while now. For years I avoided coffee because I thought it was the caffeine that was affecting me so negatively. Every time I had a coffee, I wouldn’t feel the caffeine, but I would feel the sever crash afterwards. After working as a barista, I came to understand it a little differently. Before I was a “coffee drinker” my drink was a single shot coconut cappuccino. Basically, it tasted nothing like coffee. I started drinking single shot lattés with one raw sugar, and finally made my way to a double tall Americano, splash of milk, NO SUGAR. And guess what. No crash. Turns out, the caffeine speeds up your metabolism, and the massive amounts of sugar I was drinking to mask the coffee taste previously, caused me to have a severe sugar low. Equals crabby Mel.

So, I did a bunch of research and learned about way more than anyone wants to read here. Besides all of the obvious negatives to sugar, and how it affects blood pressure and all that, I want to just say a little about Acidity.

A lot is being realized now about chemicals in our bodies. Simple things like negative thoughts actually produce measurable levels of cortisol, your stress hormone, in the body. So you can think bad thoughts and actually cause yourself to get physically stressed or physically ill.

Sugar also causes stress on the body. Sugar causes your body chemistry to turn more acidic. Your immune system functions at its best in an alkaline environment. More sugar =weakened immune system. When your body is more acidic it is also more prone to inflammation.

This concept of your body’s pH playing such a huge role in your overall health is just amazing. I never thought about it before-this has been such an eye opener for me. I hope that I will be able to see some positive changes in my life as I work on becoming a less acidic person.

I could rant on and on about this topic. But I wont. I will just stop here, and share a couple of links.

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/are-you-too-acidic-symptoms.html

http://www.acidalkalinediet.com/alkaline-foods-list/alkaline-food-charts-for-optimal-health

http://www.naturalbodyhealing.com/balance-your-body-ph-levels.html

http://articlesofhealth.blogspot.com/2012/02/all-sugars-are-acidic-and-toxic-to-body.html

fun fact- Acidic Women  tend to have more girls, and Alkaline women have more boys…

Toxic Lullaby

We buy it at the store, we assume it’s safe. But, it’s not necessarily that simple. Unfortunately, “safe” doesn’t mean “‘not likely to harm”, instead it more accurately means “not likely to cause a lawsuit in the immediate future”.   Another part of it is we often have to weigh a small chance of drastic harm, or a sure chance of gradual harm.

Take sleepers and nightgowns for example. Since synthetic fibers melt and shrink in heat, a child in their jammies in the unfortunate circumstances of a fire would likely find their clothing fusing to their skin in the heat. Bad! So, it is required that all sleepwear is doused in flame retardants. This sounds like a good thing, but what do the flame retardants do to your children? The chlorinated and brominated flame retardants used in children’s sleepwear is harmful to the environment and accumulates in the body. Many of these have been linked to cancer, reproductive and nervous system damage and imparing thyroid function. Also Bad!

(On the positive note, in the 1970’s we identified chlorinated Tris as a human carcinogen, and banned it from being use in children’s sleepwear.)

What to do? Buy pajamas made with natural fibers like cotton. All sleepwear made from synthetic fibers has flame retardants (as does your carpet btw!)  If it says “must be snug fitting” that is a good giveaway that it doesn’t have any flame retardants in it.  It is harder to find sleepwear that is free of flame retardants for little babies.  If you must use synthetic fibers, wash the clothes a few times first. That helps a little. The more you wash it the better (here’s where second hand clothes come in handy).

Speaking of washing….like I said, flame retardants are in your carpet too, but that’s not all. They are in so many things from furniture to electronics and we are absorbing the PBDE’s through our skin from the things we touch. New research has shown that frequent hand-washing can drastically reduce the levels of PBDE’s in our bodies.

So, buy natural fibers, wash your clothes, and wash your hands. Simple enough?