Natural bone health with the Alkaline for Life® diet
When it comes to improving bone health, very little you do matters more than improving your acid-alkaline balance. You can get many of the needed nutrients, and you can exercise and limit toxins, but if your acid-alkaline balance is off-kilter, you’ll still have unnecessary bone loss in the long run. An alkaline diet is an essential part of natural bone health.
Most of the food we eat has the potential to alter our pH. When digested, some foods leave acidic by-products in the body (acid-forming foods); others leave alkaline by-products (alkaline-forming foods). Acid-forming foods include most high-protein foods, such as meat, fish, eggs, and most legumes (beans and peas, except lentils, which are alkaline-forming). Sugar, coffee, alcohol, and most grains are also acid-forming. Alkaline-forming foods include nearly all vegetables and fruits, many nuts and seeds, and spices (see our charts of acid-forming foods and alkaline-forming foods).
For millennia, our Stone Age ancestors ate hundreds of different types of natural whole foods. Seeds, nuts, vegetables, fruits, and roots were supplemented with game animals and fish, providing on average a pH-balanced diet. Our organs and body systems evolved in adaptation to this diet. It’s as if Nature said, “You can eat acid-forming meat, beans, and other high-protein foods, but you must balance these with an abundance of the alkaline-forming vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and spices.” And for thousands of years, that’s exactly what we did.
Unfortunately, we’ve strayed from the acid-alkaline balanced diet that our ancestors achieved. We favor meat, sugars, grains, low-mineral processed foods, and other acid-forming foods and get far too few alkaline-forming vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds. The net result is that our eating patterns create a condition known as “chronic low-grade metabolic acidosis.” While our bodies can easily handle an occasional acid load, long-term acid build-up can exhaust our available alkalizing reserves. Unless we take steps to neutralize these acids, they can damage our health in many ways — and this is the underlying cause of many of our modern health problems, including osteoporosis.
The general guidelines for an alkaline diet emphasize whole foods, particularly vegetables, root crops, and to a lesser degree, fruits, nuts, seeds, spices, whole grains, and beans (especially lentils). It also includes alkalizing beverages such as spring water and ginger root or green tea, and smaller amounts of essential fats, meat, fish, eggs, and dairy (if tolerated). Processed and artificial foods, caffeine, white sugar, and white flour are eliminated, when possible, but don’t be afraid to use real butter and full-fat milk (if you use dairy), and you may dress salads or cook with high-quality fats such as cold-pressed virgin olive oil, coconut oil, and avocado oil.
