The impact of adding Yoga to my life is a marvel. I spent last Friday and Saturday at a yoga-intensive workshop and I’m again astounded by what a completely transformative experience a yoga practice can be….

I highly recommend 3 days a week of yoga for healthy aging.

I’ve only practiced yoga for 2 years and the anti aging impact is so profound that I know I’ve altered the course of my aging journey.  My musculoskeletal problems were taking away more and more of my functionality. From what I have experienced, yoga has uped the odds that I’ll age as a fit, functional, vital woman. I won’t join the ranks of the frail elderly without a fight and yoga is one of the powerful puzzle pieces I’ve found to help me.

Scientific study supports my observation of yoga’s benefits on my body and mind and has shown that yoga:

• Reduces low back pain
• Improves balance
• Straightens spinal kyphosis (the excessive hunching over that happens to people as they age)
• Improves muscle strength and reverses the muscle loss that happens with age
• Improves rheumatoid arthritis symptoms
• Improves menopausal symptoms including hot flashes, insomnia and mood swings
• Decreases anxiety and depression
• Improves control of type 2 diabetes
• Increases flexibility

Being the good doctor that I am, I did a medical literature search on the benefits of yoga and this is what I found:

I started doing yoga for my back pain and I can attest to it’s benefits so I wasn’t surprised when I saw The Harvard Women’s Health Watch recommending yoga to help people reduce back pain. Scientists have also found that yoga helps straighten the hunched over back that we get as we age (called kyphosis).  In my experience, this hunching over makes doing everything harder because it puts new strain and stresses on our body that we aren’t designed for, thus leading to more injury and disability.

Another study found that yoga decreased pain, improved balance and increased functionality for people with rheumatoid arthritis. Kaliji, the founder of Tri-yoga which is what I practice, notes that she is the only member of her large family not suffering from severe rheumatoid arthritis. She attributes this to her 30 plus years of yoga and her vegan diet.    It’s certainly worth a try for anyone suffering from  rheumatoid arthritis, since all the treatment alternatives have significant side effects and don’t really stop this debilitating disease.

Yoga also provides excellent total body resistance exercise training which slows the loss of muscle that we all experience as we age. The Buck Institute for Age Research demonstrated that resistance exercise training actually reverses a good portion of age related muscle loss, which is otherwise an inevitable consequence of aging for us all.   My yoga class give me the most total body resistance workout of my life; both small and large muscles work against gravity moving the mass of my body weight (which is heavier than any dumbbell or weight machine setting I ever used).  My strength continues to increase and I’m certain my yoga practice is serve me and my muscles well as I age.

The study that surprised me the most was that yoga-nidra helps control type 2 diabetes! I would have never of expected that, but in a study from India, people with type 2 diabetes had better blood glucose control when they added 30 minutes a day of yoga-nidra to their lives. Yoga-nidra is the meditative relaxation exercise done usually at the end of a yoga class.  This benefit of yoga is fascinating to me.

On the other hand, I’m not at all surprised that menopausal symptoms are reduced by yoga, mine certainly were.  Scientific evidence suggests that a yoga practice reduces hot flashes, insomnia and the lovely mood issues we women get with when we hit menopause.  It’s curious that I gravitated towards yoga during menopause and I’m glad I did  (Hmmm… survival instinct,inner guidance, guardian angel or just a coincidence?). Amazing!

Finally, yoga is great for us mentally and emotionally, even for the lucky folks who aren’t in menopause.  A study published in Behavioral Cognitiveve Psychotherapy showed that yoga increased mindfulness, which the authors define as attention to the present moment, having an accepting and open attitude toward experience, and insightful understanding.  The authors conclude that this indicates that yoga may help prevent the negative emotional states of anxiety and depression.  Again-fabulous!

There are different styles of yoga and different quality instructors.  I think the most important aspect to studying yoga is to pick the right instructor. In my experience, there are some great yoga instructors and then there are people with a yoga teaching certificate who have very little experience and knowledge and who don’t really know what they’re doing.  Until I found my present (and wonderful) yoga teacher, I actually managed to hurt myself in yoga classes. Yoga is an ancient practice that’s stood the test of time.  It’s the instructor that determines what you learn and therefore critical to your experience. I recommend that you follow your gut and search until you find a really good yoga instructor.

For my local Sonoma County readers, I study with Kashi at the Devi Yoga Center.  Kashi has practiced a form of yoga called Tri-yoga for over 20 years.  Her experience, judgment and the authenticity of her yoga makes for an extraordinary yoga class.  I’ve also found that the Tri-yoga style of yoga practice is the perfect fit for me.  The Hatha yoga poses are choreographed into slow and continuously moving routines (flows).  This constant movement not only works the big muscles, but also works the small muscles around the joints as we move repeatedly between the postures.  This also creates a nice meditative state during the entire ‘workout’ that crosses two things off of my ‘to do’ list-meditation and resistance exercise. Add to that the stretching poses which fend off old age stiffness, and I’m in ‘self-help multi-tasker’ nirvana! There’s also some crazy breathing exercises and funny finger workouts that my body seems to benefit from as well.  I just love my yoga class!

The final benefit I’ve found with my class at the Devi Yoga Center is the social camaraderie and mutual support of  people who share my interest in health and well being.  We’re on the same paths, trying to take good care of our bodies and minds.  Sharing that with compatible people reinforces the efforts I’m making in my own life.

I highly recommend that everyone interested in healthy aging add a yoga practice to their life!

Wishing you all the best.

If you found this information helpful, you may want to read:

Post Holiday BMI Shocker Gets Me Serious About My Middle Age Belly Fat

Why I Do A Detox Cleansing Fast To Improve My Health

Cynthia Bailey MD’s Recommendations For The Alkaline Mediterranean Diet

References

Resistance exercise reverses aging in human skeletal muscle, Melov S, Tarnopolsky MA, Beckman K, Felkey K, Hubbard A.( The Buck Institute for Age Research, Novato, California, United States of America) PLoS One. 2007 May 23;2(5):e465.

Yoga therapy helps relieve chronic lower back pain, Harv Womens Health Watch. 2009 Nov;17(3):4

Effect of yoga-nidra on blood glucose level in diabetic patients,  Amita S, Prabhakar S, Manoj I, Harminder S, Pavan T. Indian J Physiol Pharmacol. 2009 Jan-Mar;53(1):97-101.

A pilot study measuring the impact of yoga on the trait of mindfulness, Shelov DV, Suchday S, Friedberg JP.  Behav Cogn Psychother. 2009 Oct;37(5):595-8. Epub 2009 Sep 15.

Yoga decreases kyphosis in senior women and men with adult-onset hyperkyphosis: results of a randomized controlled trial. Greendale GA, Huang MH, Karlamangla AS, Seeger L, Crawford S. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2009 Sep;57(9):1569-79. Epub 2009 Jul 21.

Exercise to reduce vasomotor and other menopausal symptoms: a review, Daley AJ, Stokes-Lampard HJ, Macarthur C,  Maturitas. 2009 Jul 20;63(3):176-80. Epub 2009 Mar 13.

A pilot study of a Hatha yoga treatment for menopausal symptoms,  Booth-LaForce C, Thurston RC, Taylor MR, Maturitas. 2007 Jul 20;57(3):286-95. Epub 2007 Mar 2.

Functional and physiological effects of yoga in women with rheumatoid arthritis: a pilot study, Bosch PR, Traustadóttir T, Howard P, Matt KS, Altern Ther Health Med. 2009 Jul-Aug;15(4):24-31.

Photo attributions:

This is my fight against my middle age bulge.

I’ve been blogging about my personal diet and exercise programs and want to update my readers on how they’re going.  I’m experimenting on myself, as usual.  I’m having good results and want to share what I’m learning.

My post holiday BMI shocker kicked me into a frenzy to send the new  belly fat packing; having my lifelong pear get joined by an apple, forming what I call a papple, isn’t something I’ll take lying down.

Diet Program

In a January blog post I outlined the Alkaline Mediterranean Diet that I created.  This is the diet I feel best on and have aimed for over the years.  Aiming doesn’t always mean I hit the mark so I fortified my resolve after the holidays when my BMI tipped up to 25.

On my Alkaline Mediterranean Diet, a minimum 60% of foods that are eaten should be alkaline forming foods and a maximum of 40 % of what I eat are acid forming foods.    This is a primarily vegetable and fruit based diet with low glycemic whole grains, lean meats and dairy, and some fish, nuts and oils. I’ve been good at making sure that  60% of my food is low calorie alkaline foods. I also limit the dairy, and protein food portions to 6 oz. serving sizes. I eat all the veggies and fruit I want.  I mostly keep the 40% acid foods healthy, low calorie choices.

The low glycemic, low calorie food choices went well for 5 weeks, steadily sending the papple packing. Valentine’s Day weekend was a bust, however, and for the next 2 weeks decedent gourmet foodie treats became my 40% acid forming foods. I was holding steady weight wise, but boy those foods are hard to kick once they make their way into my diet.  Chocolate, wine even a piece of a lemon tart-argh!

Time for an intervention.  To reset my metabolism for weight loss I decided to use my March week off to do another detox cleansing fast. A detox cleanse also quickly fixes my food driven musculoskeletal aches and pains.   Bodies however have inherent alarm bells that go off when calorie intake falls below calorie usage; a primitive survival mechanism held over from the days of famines, obsolete and not useful in our modern land of abundance.

During the first day of a cleanse my body always complains. I’m hungry and fantasizing about foods. By day 2 I’m in the groove.  Belly fat obviously melts on a cleansing fast, and at day 4, melting it is.  I feel great, pain is just about gone, and Iplan to keep it up for 7 days this time.  After 7 days I’ll taper off the cleanse by slowly going back to the Alkaline Mediterranean diet.

A detox cleansing fast isn’t for everyone.  Anyone in fragile health or with a tendency for diabetes or other metabolic diseases needs to do this under their doctor’s supervision.  There are a number of residential programs that help people do a cleanse. I don’t have time for that so I created my own program and integrated it into my life.  Patients ask me about it so I posted my program in my blog.

Exercise

Adding 150 minutes of cardio per week back to my life boosted my vitality and kept me loosing belly fat in spite of the Valentines diet slide. I added three 50 minute cardio workouts a week to my 4.5 hours of yoga and 3 hours of ballroom dance.  This made a huge difference to  shrinking the papple as well as to my overall quality of being.

Consistent cardio exercise, done every week is a must for anyone working on maintaining good health.  I’ve done regular cardio my entire life until last year when my back forced me to quit my cardio dance class.  I never filled the cardio void and this probably has something to do with the appearance of the papple.

I’m not pushing myself with the cardio while on the cleansing fast.  I do a power walk every other day and continue with yoga, but the spinning and swimming will wait a week.

So…….

My do-it-yourself physical health rehab program.

Created by a doctor and aimed at the middle age obesity and  belly fat that’s become an American way of life.

If you found this information helpful, you may want to read:

Post Holiday BMI Shocker Gets Me Serious About My Middle Age Belly Fat

Why I Do A Detox Cleansing Fast To Improve My Health

Cynthia Bailey MD’s Recommendations For The Alkaline Mediterranean Diet

Photo attribution:

The first time I did a real cleansing fast the results were extraordinary!

I did a 3 week fast as an act of desperation; at the time I was struggling with pain from degenerative joint problems and on the brink of taking time off from my medical practice to figure out what to do.  One of the alternative health practitioners I know here in Northern California (of which there are of course many) encouraged me to try a cleansing fast first.  Instead of phoning my disability insurance agent, I did a 3 week cleanse.  By day 5 of the cleanse, I was absolutely and totally pain free! I slept through the night without being woken up with pain, I could bend over without pain, nothing ached-frankly it was a surprising and welcome miracle.

At that point, I knew my musculoskelatal pain problem was somehow related to my diet.  Apparently my pain was caused by something reversible that was happening around my degenerative joint areas (probably inflammation) and not the structural joint issues themselves.  This was 2 years ago and since then I’ve been able to turn my pain on or off like a light switch with my diet. I’ve worked hard to figure out what dietary choices bother me and what I can tolerate.  Pain is highly motivational and I’m pretty dedicated to maintaining a diet that controls my pain.  (I’ve posted some of what I’ve learned in prior blog posts) I’m not perfect at avoiding foods that trigger my pain however, so doing a shorter cleansing ‘detox’ fast is a good way for me to reset my body. It’s much like how cleaning out my garden shed or cleaning out my email box keeps me focused and productive.  I sustain a cleanse for anywhere from 1 day to 3 weeks.

I do a short cleanse when I feel like my body needs it and I always feel better afterwords.  I’m out of the office this week and I’ve decided to use the time to do a 1 week cleanse.  For the past 5 weeks I’ve been working on upping my cardio work out plus sticking to my Alkaline Mediterranean diet plan and the boost I get from a cleanse will be nice.  See my Post Holiday BMI Shocker post.

These days it’s trendy to talk about ‘detoxing’ and ‘doing a cleanse’.  The terms are loosely used and poorly understood.  As I see it, the necessary components of a detox cleanse are:

1. Consuming nothing that your body is troubled by
2. Eating only simple vegetables that don’t cause spikes in blood sugar, are organic and fresh so that your body can reset itself
3. Adding supporting herbal supplements and treatments to help your body flush out any troublesome byproducts from consuming troublesome things in the past

This last point is highly controversial among my traditional medicine colleagues where the general view is that the liver and the kidneys do just fine at getting bad things out of us.  I think extreme examples of  consumption based diseases like gout and high blood pressure make it pretty obvious that our bodies do vary in how completely we’re able to process and eliminate what we consume.

The cleansing program that I’m doing right now

During my detox cleansing fast I only consume highly concentrated and nutritious organic vegetables.  I use support herbs and a few other products to theoretically help ‘get bad things’ out of my body.  I chose the method and picked the supporting products after investigating many of the resources and products that claim to support the body in cleansing.

The supplies and information resources I use for my detox cleanse are:

• I used The Martha’s Vineyard Diet Detox as a guide and modified their recommendations (I bought the book and recommend anyone thinking about doing a similar cleanse buy it and read it first)
• I chose not to buy the Martha’s Vineyard Detox supplies. Instead I went to my local Whole Foods Market and selected the following items based on reading the labels and talking with the Whole Foods staff about product quality.
• The products I use are:

The actual cleanse schedule:

• First thing in the morning I take one of the CleanseSmart herbal supplement (the morning formula), have a 1 oz. shot of the mangosteen in 12 oz of water and have my usual pot of organic green tea (I try not to have soy milk)
• Midmorning I have a green drink made with a heaping tablespoon of the Barlean’s Green Powder in 12 oz water
• At noon I have 8 to 12 oz of freshly juiced veggies (see below) and an enzyme capsule
• Mid afternoon I have another green drink
• Late afternoon I have another shot of mangosteen in 12 oz water
• For dinner I make a boiled soup (see below) and have an enzyme capsules
• At bedtime I have the evening formula CleanseSmart herbal supplement and 1 tbs of the aloe vera concentrate in 12 oz water
• All day long I have lots of organic herb tea and many glasses of water.

Preparing fresh veggie juice: The veggies I use for juicing always include carrots, celery and kale.  I also juice beets, fresh sprouts, and parsley.  You can juice just about any veggie, but some taste bitter.  Carrot juice is sweet and tastes good, so I always include carrots.  Beets are yummy but have to be cut and the juice will stain so I don’t always do them.  Veggies should always be organic, fresh and washed well.  I always drink the juice fresh.  If I can’t make it myself, I go to Whole Foods and have them make it.  I also occasionally do a separate shot of wheat grass, which I really dislike but it’s apparently good for me.

Preparing the veggie soup: For the veggie soup, I boil about 3 cups of water and throw in whatever veggie I have.  I always use onions, carrots and celery.  Other options include cabbage, kale, beet greens, dakon radish, green beans, or whatever is growing in my garden or looks good in the fresh produce section at the store.  I sometimes add curry powder, herbs or other spices but I try not to add much salt since that’s one of the things that’s nice to clean out of the body.  Towards the end of the fast, or if I’m really getting desperate I’ll add frozen soy beans, dried lentils, potatoes or a low glycemic grain like add rice, quinoa, millet or amaranth to my soup.  I have as much of the soup as I want and I don’t puree it.

Soup ingredients

Additional considerations when doing a cleanse

My cleansing detox fast is very alkaline for the body.  Eating alkaline foods are one of the important ways I keep my body feeling good.  I outlined the benefits of alkaline foods in my posts on the Alkaline Mediterranean Diet.

While I’m doing a cleanse, I don’t have fruit, except to occasionally squirt fresh lemon juice into a glass of water.

I don’t do vigorous exercise while I’m doing a cleanse. Doing an intense cardio workout or maintaining a tough work schedule is difficult with so little food energy so I don’t try to do either.  Fasting is a nice time to rest and spend time in contemplative activities, allowing the body to function on less fuel.

The Martha’s Vineyard Detox Diet book recommends doing some additional alternative therapies during a cleanse to support the detox process.  I do some of these such as having a massage to enhance lymphatic drainage.  The book also recommends enemas and colonic therapy and I’m not going to tell you if I avail myself of those options but there are some good reasons why they would be beneficial.

Of course, no one who is frail or has serious health problems should ever do a fast, cleanse or ‘detox’ without their physician’s supervision.

All of the supplies I list can be found on their companies web sites.  Your natural food store may be able to order them if they don’t normally stock them.  The Martha’s Vineyard Diet Detox book is also called 21 Pounds in 21 Days.  As the name states, you will lose weight doing a detox cleansing fast.   The book is written by Roni DeLuz RN,ND and can be ordered from mvdietdetox.com or from Amazon.

I’d love your comments-please send me your detox cleanse thoughts and your diet/health stories.

Photo attribution:

After the holidays my BMI tipped up to 25-the gateway BMI of the overweight! There’s no denying it anymore, this time I really am fat!

I’ve always had a BMI of around 23.  I’ve been health conscious since I was 15, and I’ve always exercise regularly….. so what’s happened at 51?

• Yes, my clothes were getting tight.
• Yes, clothes shopping was becoming traumatic.
• And yes I’ve begun taking on a middle age shape that I don’t recognize.

From what I can tell, this new middle age BMI problem is also a middle body problem.

At 51, my post menopausal pear shaped body is morphing into an apple too.  Together, my fruit make a papple; there’s a fruit basket happening between my waist and my hips and it’s not pretty.  It’s gotta stop!

Like most women, I’ve never been thrilled with my pear body shape, but I’d made peace with it.   Pear shaped bodies are healthy, according to science. We have less cardiovascular, high cholesterol and diabetes risk than our apple friends.  The apple that’s joining my pear comes with trouble and I mean to send it packing.  I’ve been ineffectively trying to shoo it off with a little more exercise or a little less food, but now with a BMI of 25, I mean business.

My plan to slim down and loose the belly fat:

• Add 150 minutes of sustained cardio per week in three 50 minute segments
• Continue with my other physical activities like yoga, ballroom dance and gardening
• Adhere more closely to my Alkaline Mediterranean diet by limiting my acid forming protein portions (fish, chicken and beans) to 6 oz per serving and really cut down on acid forming ‘treats’

I tested whether this would work over the last 3 weeks and so far it’s amazing!  My belly blubber has slimmed down, cloths fit better and I feel great!

It’s do-able with my busy work schedule, I’m not hungry, the foodie in me isn’t feeling deprived and I feel like I can keep this up.

I plan to post what I’ve learned about belly fat, optimal fitness activities and diet over the next month.  I’ve been doing a lot of research and this is an area of ongoing interest for me.  Menopause and middle age has brought it front and center-literally-and I’m surveying both the scientific and popular literature on the subject.  There’s a lot out there, some good and some so-so.  Being the good doctor, I’m filtering the information I find using my western scientific skills, but I also look at it from my vantage point as a baby boomer post menopausal female consumer with a new found papple of belly fat sharing her body. I want my pear back! Wish me luck!

Photo Attributions:

Selma90, Sarah Baker, Jill Clardy

Alkaline foods are the foods that our ancestors ate when they were primitive hunters and gatherers. Our bodies like these foods.  Before humans learned to farm, they ate fresh foods; things that they could find or hunt.  Today, processed food and animal based foods are so easy to come by, but they aren’t the foods you should eat as the foundation of your diet.

I became intrigued by The Alkaline Diet because it had a remarkable impact on some health issues I had in my own life.  I first encountered the concept of acid/alkaline foods from Elizabeth Sherman, a very knowledgeable Herbalist and Acupuncturist in Sonoma County.  She helped me implement an alkaline diet in my own life and I experienced a much welcomed resolution of the health problems that where troubling me (life impacting aches and pains from musculo-skeletal issues, digestive misadventures, Raynaud’s Phenomenon, peri-menopausal sleep issues to name a few).  Elizabeth gave me a reading list and reference charts for acid/alkaline foods (see below).  I’ve found that alkaline food lists are complex and often contradictory.  It’s taken a lot of study on my part to develop practical guidelines for my own diet and for sharing with interested patients.  The end result is what I call an Alkaline Food Pyramid. It’s very similar to the Mediterranean Food Pyramid and so I’ve termed the combination The Alkaline Mediterranean Diet.

I recommend that you look over my general guidelines then refer to the food chart links to find the alkaline foods you like best.  Let these foods become the foundation of your diet.  Use the same charts to find out which of your favorite foods are highly acid.  Eat these in smaller amounts so that your overall daily diet is composed of about 60% alkaline foods.

The Alkaline Food Pyramid

• The base of your Alkaline Food pyramid should be vegetables.
• Fruits come next, eaten liberally, but to a lesser extent than veggies.
• Whole grains are above fruits.
• Oils, nuts and lean sources of protein (fish and chicken) come next.
• Acid forming treats like sugar, wine, steak, fried foods, refined ‘junk’ food etc are thrown in sporadically at the top.

Explaining the Relative Acid/Alkaline Values to Foods

The hardest part about trying to eat mostly alkaline foods is in knowing which foods are acid or alkaline in the first place.  There is inconsistency among food charts and alternative medicine experts regarding the acid and alkaline values of specific foods.  Plus, the values don’t make intuitive sense. In general, alkaline forming foods include: most fruits, green vegetables, peas, some beans, lentils, some grains, spices, herbs and seasonings, and some seeds and nuts. Some alkaline foods are more alkaline than others.  Acid forming foods include: meat, fish, poultry, eggs, most grains,some beans and nuts, sweeteners, refined/processed foods, coffee and alcohol. Some acid foods are only slightly acid and others are very acid forming.  Ideally about 60-80% of what we eat should be alkaline foods or only slightly acid forming.  (60% for maintenance, 80% for restoring health).

From my research, I’ve found two fairly good reference charts for acid/alkaline food values:

1. A simple list of acid/alkaline foods from Thebestofrawfood.com
2. The best list of relative acid/alkaline values within a food category (eg. comparing which grains are best) from Perque.com

12 Steps to The Alkaline Mediterranean Diet:

1. Eat mostly veggies, either cooked or raw.
2. Eat fruits, but eat more veggies than fruits. Within the fruit category, emphasize avocados and citrus.  The most alkaline fruits are apples, bananas (especially not overripe) nectarines, blackberries, dates and raisins.
3. Eat whole grains but emphasize those that are more alkaline, plus, eat more veggies than whole grains.  My recommendation is to emphasize millet, spelt, buckwheat and quinoa over wheat and rice.   I use millet and quinoa like rice and will post recipes over time.  Wheat is more acid and wheat bread thus should be a treat, not a diet staple.
4. Eat legumes (beans), but they can be a little acidifying.  They’re certainly less acidifying than other sources of protein such as meats.  They’re extremely healthy and a great source of non-animal protein.  Try to eat the most alkaline legumes like soy bean, including tofu. Other more alkaline legumes are lentils, lima beans and white beans. Again, like whole grains, the idea is to eat more veggies than legumes.
5. Nuts and seeds are generally slightly acid so moderation is important. They’re packed with nutrition and belong in a healthy diet.  Almonds and sesame seeds are alkaline and the best choice. Plus, eat raw nuts because raw nuts are less acid than roasted nuts.
6. Goat and soy are your best dairy choices. Dairy is generally acid forming.  Again, moderation is important here.  Goat dairy is preferable to cow or sheep dairy because it is less acid forming, and possibly even alkaline forming. There are a lot of great goat cheeses and goat yogurt is delicious so substituting goat dairy products for cow dairy isn’t impossible. Substituting soy milk for cow milk is also easy.
7. Chicken and fish are your best meat protein sources. Protein from meat and fish is acid forming. Lean fish and chicken are much less so and thus the animal protein of choice.  Consider the other animal proteins a treat and not staples in your diet.
8. Olive and flax oils are your best oil foods.  Oils are acidifying, but olive oil and flax oil are the least so and should be your main oil sources.  They’re packed with other great nutritional riches as well. (I’ll cover oils in a future post because they are a complex and really important part of a healthy diet)
9. Most popular beverages are acid forming so don’t forget to notice what you drink during the day.  Beverages have a really big impact on your body’s acid/alkaline balance because most of us drink a lot of our favorite beverages throughout the day.  Acid forming popular beverages including coffee, wine, beer, liquor,soda and sports drinks.  From what I can tell, green tea is more alkaline and thus better than black tea. Herb teas of course are best.  Plain mineral water is alkaline and a great way to recover from an acid food binge.
10. Miscellaneous foods that are acidifying include eggs, chocolate, artificial sweeteners and condiments like ketchup, soy sauce, salt, mayonnaise, mustard.
11. Sprouts of all kinds are very alkaline so it’s good to include them in your diet.
12. Finally, Green Drinks (a powder added to water) are very alkaline and many holistic practitioners recommend using them to gain and maintain an alkaline body pH. My favorite is Barlean’s Greens which I buy at Whole Foods.

The even simpler guidelines that I use for my own alkaline diet are:

1. Ideally about 70% of the foods I eat should be alkaline.
2. I try to eat more veggies than anything else.
3. I stock my kitchen with lower sugar fruits with an emphasis on apples, citrus and bananas.
4. I use more quinoa and millet over wheat. I also use raw oats and brown rice.
5. I substitute goat cheese and yogurt for cow milk cheese and yogurt.  I use soy milk in place of cow milk.
6. I eat a lot of soy beans and tofu,and I try to use white beans and lentils more than other beans.
7. I use olive oil as my main cooking and salad dressing oil.  (See my Olive Harvest Post) Flax oil is also good for salads, but I never cook with it because it looses it’s rich nutritional value when heated.
8. I use almonds as my main nut. I also eat a lot of flax seeds and some sesame seeds.
9. Green tea is my primary caffeinated beverage.
10. I use acid foods sparingly as treats.  I’m a foodie and I regularly enjoy my acid forming treats, but they’re not the main foundation of my diet.  If I do go on an acid food binge, I use an alkalinizing green drink according to the package instructions, natural mineral water, plus a week of focused alkaline dietary choices to get back on track.

My aches, pains and other health issues are so much better since I’ve been living on The Alkaline Mediterranean Diet.  It also helps me maintain my weight in my middle age years.  The occasional ‘treat’ doesn’t raise havoc with my health now because the foundation of my diet is alkaline.

What foods make your health problems worse?  What dietary changes have you found helpful? I’d love to hear what you’ve learned about diet and your health.  Send me your stories using my Contact Page.

Resources on the web to further explain the acid/alkaline diet and to give you more specific ideas which foods are alkaline or acid:

Acid/Alkaline food list
The Acid/Alkaline Food List from Thebestofrawfood.com ( http://www.thebestofrawfood.com/support-files/alkalifoodlist.pdf)

Dr. Russell M. Jaffe’s Acid/Alkaline Chart at Perque.com (http://www.perque.com/HSC_AcidAlkChart_7-07FINAL.pdf)

Dr. Susan Brown’s Website devoted to bone health (a big acid/alkaline issue):
http://www.betterbones.com/alkalinebalance/default.aspx

Books
The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods, Michael T. Murry, Joseph Pizzorno. (I use this book as a reference for nutritional health ideas, but I don’t use their acid/alkaline food values list because it’s not consistent with most of the other lists I’ve found. ) Available at Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Healing-Foods-Michael-Murray/dp/074348052X

If you found this post helpful, you may want to read some of my other posts on nutrition:

Understanding the Alkaline Diet

The Alkaline Mediterranean Diet- A Magic Wand For Overall Health And Beauty

Making Sense of the Vitamin D Dilemma And Sun Exposure

Dermatologist’s Recommendations for Natural Skin Health: Kefir, the best probiotic for healthy skin

Natural Skin Health: Dermatologist’s Diet Recommendations for Healthy Skin

Photo Attributions:

Thebittenword: http://www.flickr.com/photos/galant/ / CC BY 2.0