Whether you like it or not, the pH of your body is a crucial aspect of your overall health. When it’s balanced, it helps you maintain muscle mass, reduce cardiovascular factors, decrease body fat, and improve memory and cognition.
Yet, if your pH levels are unbalanced, you may suffer from tissue damage, heartburn, constant fatigue, kidney stones, liver dysfunction, sepsis, and even osteoporosis, which can lead to mobility problems in your late twenties and thirties.
So, your body’s pH can seriously impact your overall health, which leads to the obvious question: what is the ideal pH of the body? Let’s find out!
What Is the pH Scale?
The pH scale measures the acid-base balance in your body. In simple words, it measures how alkaline or acidic things in your body are. The scale ranges from 0 to 14, where:
- A pH below 7 is mild to highly acidic.
- A pH of 7 is neutral.
- A pH higher than 7 is mild to highly alkaline.
What Is Your Ideal Body pH?
If you think a neutral pH sounds great for your body — you don’t want to burn from the inside out, after all — you’re right.
Basically, your blood thrives in a pH of anywhere from 7.34 to 7.45, which, if we look above, means your blood likes to stay mildly alkaline.4 This pH allows the cells, tissues, and organs in your body to maintain peak efficiency without denaturing or dying prematurely.
But what happens if your blood pH level becomes imbalanced?
What Is a Blood pH Imbalance?
A pH imbalance happens when your blood’s pH level falls below or increases above 7. It usually leads to two conditions: alkalosis and acidosis.
Alkalosis occurs when your blood becomes too alkaline with a blood pH greater than 7.45, while acidosis happens when your blood pH level falls below 7.35.
When your blood falls below or increases above the 7-pH mark, you can begin experiencing problems like kidney stones and damage, increased inflammation, diabetes, bone loss, muscle wasting, and heart disease. Why does this happen?
Causes of a pH Imbalance
Several factors can cause your blood pH level to become more acidic or alkaline, including:
- Eating sodium-rich processed foods
- Taking too many drugs, such as aspirin, methanol, sleep medications, and narcotics
- Consuming artificial sweeteners, refined grains, food coloring, and preservatives
- Increasing stress levels
- Having asthma, chronic bronchitis, sleep apnea, pneumonia, emphysema, or high bicarbonate levels in your blood
- Being overweight or obese
- Becoming dehydrated
- Misusing alcohol.
2 Ways to Maintain Your Ideal Body pH
There are several ways you can maintain a healthy pH balance in your body. Here are some remedies you can try:
1. Stay Hydrated
Water is life — literally. Yet, many Americans don’t seem to think so. In fact, around 75% of Americans don’t prioritize their water intake and suffer from chronic dehydration, which can permanently alter their blood pH level.
So, drink plenty of water, no matter what you’re doing. However, if you’ve tried and failed to increase it in the past, you could go for a water delivery service in Los Angeles by aDivineh2o. They’ll deliver your weekly water allowance to your doorstep. You’ll have to drink it then.
2. Eat a Balanced Diet
Excessive consumption of meats, eggs, oilseeds, and beans contributes to the release of acids into the bloodstream. Similarly, eating lots of vegetables and fruits can increase the base percentage in your blood.9
So, don’t become a vegetarian or a keto-enthusiast. Instead, opt for a balanced diet and eat everything in moderation.
The Takeaway
A balanced blood pH is crucial for leading a healthy life, and most of the time, you don’t need to make an effort to balance it because your body has all the tools to maintain it on its own.
But if your pH level is out of whack, and you’re constantly feeling tired, depressed, and sleepy, take matters into your own hands and solve your alkalosis or acidosis problem for good.
