The Come Alive Project

Tag: nutrition

  • Energy Bite 380 – Your Acid-Alkaline Balance

    Want more Personal Energy and Vitality?  Want to feel better fast?  Want to make fighting disease easier and develop a stronger immune system?  Here’s a quick way to do it:  Eat a more Alkaline diet.  Many of you have heard of the importance of an alkaline diet but don’t know what it is or why you should do it.  So to discover what it is and why it works to make you feel better . . . read on.

    You know how your body temperature can vary up and down with an average healthy body temperature of 98.6 degrees?  Well there’s a similar scale that refers to the acid-alkaline balance in your body.  This is called pH balance or acid-alkaline balance.  Although pH ranges are different in various parts of your body, the most important for health and personal energy is the pH value of your blood.

    By the way, the term pH means “Potential Hydrogen”.  If you are interested in the chemistry, you can find a less than elementary explanation online at Wikipedia.

    The pH scale ranges from 0 to 14 with 7.0 being neutral, 0 being the most acidic and 14 being fully alkaline.  The pH for stomach acid is around 3.5 (highly acidic), but that’s not relevant to our energy level as discussed here.  The ideal blood pH is 7.36 which is slightly alkaline.

    How can you tell what your blood pH is?  A regular blood test from your doctor or medical lab is the most accurate.  You can also purchase pH strips at most pharmacies for both urine and saliva measurements. Follow the instructions and the results you get will be close enough.

    What are the primary benefits of an alkaline blood pH?  They include:

    • Increase in personal energy and vitality
    • Feel better overall
    • Empower your immune system to help ward off disease
    • Often you will lose weight as your blood pH becomes more alkaline
    • And many more.

    The way to get to a more alkaline blood pH is through the food you eat.  Most Western diets are highly acidic.  Other factors include alcohol, caffeine, stress and many medications.  The most important way to develop a slightly alkaline blood pH level is by being aware of the pH makeup of various foods and making simple adjustments.

    Meats, dairy (including cheeses) and sugars are considered to be the biggest acid producers.  Green, leafy vegetables are the most alkaline with most other vegetables still high on the alkaline scale.  Most fruits are somewhere in the middle with some being slightly acidic and others more alkaline.  As for grains, there still seems to be inconsistency among nutritionists as to the pH range.

    Here’s a surprise.  Lemons, limes and Apple Cider Vinegar provide an alkaline response in the blood.  That’s why you often read or hear about drinking water with lemon or Apple Cider Vinegar to help promote weight loss and nutritional detox.

    Nutritional scientists have produced strong evidence that a diet of alkaline foods will help prevent chronic disease.  They seem to agree a diet that is 70 to 80 percent alkaline and 20 to 30 percent acidic will provide an ideal alkaline blood pH.

    And here’s a real kicker.  Although all the evidence is not in, there is evidence to indicate that most cancers cannot survive in an alkaline environment.  This bears out evidence that many people claim to have cured their own cancer by changing to a heavily plant based diet, and have significantly cut back on, or eliminated, the acidic meat and dairy from their diets.  (Disclaimer:  That’s not a recommendation.  It’s simply evidentiary, based on claims of others).

    You can find numerous charts and graphics online which provide the blood pH values of various foods.  I suggest you take a look at them.

    There is strong and increasing evidence of the nutritional and medical benefits of adjusting to a more alkaline diet.  It simply means increasing your veggies and cutting back on meats and dairy.  I strongly suggest that you look closely at your own diet and see where a change might be beneficial.  We all can use more energy and vitality.  We all would like to feel good as we age.  We all would like to eliminate chronic disease.  This could be one of the ways for you to do them all.

    Thank you for reading.

  • Energy Bite 357 – What Next? The Carnivore Diet

    Just when you thought you had heard everything about dieting, along comes the newest form of diet, The Carnivore Diet. Let’s see, we’ve had the KETO, Paleo, Atkins, Whole 30, Pritikin, Ornish, South Beach, etc, each with it’s own characteristics, dietary principles, nutrient focus, products and supplements.

    This article is not an endorsement of the Carnivore Diet. I happen to enjoy many fruits and vegetables, and for those I don’t, I add enough herbs and spices to make them tolerable. I also like seeds, and love nuts. The concept of a mostly meat diet is interesting enough to look at, and sometimes even the most controversial thinking has it’s positive attributes.

    In it’s simplest form, you eat only animals, no plants. No nuts, and no seeds. A main thrust is organ meat, particularly liver. It seems there are a ton of nutrients in liver. In a slightly lighter version, you can eat some plants (disguised as vegetables) such as avocados, olives and squashes, plus a few with strange sounding names. No broccoli, no lettuce, no spinach. Honey is part of the diet and some dairy seems to be OK.

    According to it’s proponents, eating a primarily meat diet fulfills all “real” dietary requirements, including enough Vitamin C to prevent scurvy.

    Eat the animal “nose to tail” to get all the benefits. Most people aren’t really interested in eating animal cartilage, so the main proponent of the diet, Dr. Paul Saladino, MD has his own supplement company (of course) and sells ground up and otherwise rendered, inedible animal parts. Dr. Saladino is also the author of The Carnivore Code, which you can find on Amazon.

    It’s hard to say who are the major beneficiaries of this form of diet other than “everybody”. Apparently, Dr. Saladino believes that metabolic efficiency and immune system improvement are the keys to good health and that anyone who wants good health will benefit from the Carnivore Diet. That’s pretty much all of us.

    What does the research/science say? I am not a scientist and have my own problems interpreting research studies. But Mark Sisson, one of the people whom I trust in the Fitness and Nutrition business, does well at interpreting these studies.He published an article on his own blog, Mark’s Daily Apple, where he discusses the the research involved in The Carnivore Diet in detail. It makes interesting reading, so here is the link: https://www.marksdailyapple.com/carnivore-diet-research-science/

    Sisson’s article is very interesting but fairly lengthy. I recommend following the link and reading it. I must point out that Sisson wrote the forward to Dr. Saladino’s book.

    Dr. Saladino has also been on many of he major health and fitness podcasts, including the Joe Rogan Experience and is gaining a following in the field.

    So is an all meat and some fruit diet with no veggies good for us? Will it provide the dietary needs of all of us, particularly seniors? Or is it just another Fad Diet promoted by another supplement salesman? Will it play out after a few short years like most FAD Diets, or will it be around long term. As always, an open mind is needed when absorbing something like this, and as I said above, sometimes the most controversial thinking can provide the most positive results.

    Will it work for you? Should you try it? I must admit that I loved beef liver and onions when I was growing up and asked for it for my birthday dinners when I was in my teens. I still love fried chicken livers to this day. But I did like some sort of veggie to go with them. I still consider vegetables of all sorts to be necessary for good health.

    So, what’s the takeaway here. There is another diet on the scene that is gaining a following. My goal in writing this is simply to make you aware of it and to provide some useful information about it. I get my “ground up animal parts” from gelatin and a Collagen supplement which I wrote about last week. I’m not prepared to give up veggies quite yet.

    So I encourage you investigate further if you want to be primarily a meat eater. If you are vegan or vegetarian, I hope you got a chance to see another “new” choice on the diet spectrum.

    Thank you for reading.

  • Energy Bite 356 – Gelatin, a Secret Ingredient for Seniors

    One of the big dietary “things” over the last two years has been supplementing your diet with gelatin (or sometimes collagen).

    Gelatin is a processed version of the protein collagen, found in humans and animals. Collagen is the most common protein in the human body, making up nearly a third of our total protein. Collagen strengthens connective tissues in the body and helps your joints stay mobile. It’s been called “the glue that holds our tissues together”.

    I became interested in the potential healing effects of gelatin after watching an interview with someone I respect in the nutrition and fitness field and who said that he totally healed an Achilles tendon injury after a couple of months of taking supplemental gelatin.

    Since I had injured my shoulder and a bicep tendon doing something stupid at the gym, I started looking into it as a possible healing aid.

    I am not a great believer in supplements. It’s hard to believe some of the claims of many “experts” because the claims must be “adapted” to support the sales pitch. I take a Senior multi-vitamin but that’s it.

    But gelatin is different.

    Apparently as we get older, our bodies don’t produce all the collagen we need. Unlike our ancestors, we eat only the choice cuts of meat. Our ancestors ate the animal “nose to tail” and the collagen is found in the cartilage, the skin and other parts of the animals which we civilized folks don’t normally eat. So most of us don’t get enough. Note that gelatin is not for vegetarians or vegans. There are some religious restrictions on gelatin consumption as well.

    There are many benefits claimed for gelatin. I’ve listed a few below. Some are anecdotal with years of anecdotal evidence. Others have a strong basis in science.

    • Gelatin may be beneficial for overall joint and health, and may reduce joint pain of arthritis.

    • It has been demonstrated to improve skin and nail health.

    • It can help with hair growth and with long term use, has been shown to make hair shiny and healthy.

    • It can help you sleep.

    • It can help digestion.

    • And more.

    Where do you get gelatin? Most grocery stores carry unflavored gelatin. The most well known brands are Great Lakes and Knox in powder form. Great Lakes makes two kinds of gelatin, regular powder and hydrolyzed. The difference? Regular gelatin must be dissolved in hot liquid. Hydrolyzed gelatin will dissolve in both hot and cold liquid so it can be easily included in smoothies.

    Good old Knox gelatin can be dissolved in your coffee or can be used to make your own “jello” or even “gummy bears”. I’ve used it in coffee and I’ve made “jello”. The “jello” was great — every bit as good as real store bought Jello.

    You can also get high quality gelatin from bone broth, either from the store, or by making your own. That’s a topic for another day.

    I would be curious as to whether any of you have given gelatin (or collagen) a try, and what the results have been. How about letting me know know at bob@thecomealiveproject.com.

    Is gelatin a great “secret ingredient” that seniors particularly can benefit from? It reportedly works as advertised based on the information I have seen. Let’s see if it works for me. Perhaps for you too.

    Thank you for reading.