When I first started writing this blog I was very eager to balance the acidity in my body. At that time I thought it was absolutely crucial for the body to become as alkaline as possible, at all costs. I faithfully read the p.H. of my urine and saliva everyday to track my status, I poured over charts on the internet showing exactly which foods were acid forming and which foods were alkalising and I endeavoured to move my p.H. reading as far to alkaline as possible by eating alkaline-forming foods.
That was six years ago and every so often I take a p.H. reading: my saliva is always spot on 7.25, my urine spot on 6.25, with hardly any fluctuation during the day.
The whole idea of balancing alkalinity in the body had aways baffled me, as I assumed different organs are bathed in different p.H. values and therefore the body could not possibly be either acid or alkaline in totality and furthermore it was near impossible to measure it. So, when I discovered the paleo diet, p.H. testing quietly went out of the window as I was eating so many acid-forming foods (meat and dairy) anyway and felt relatively good, I decided that there was no truth to the alkaline-forming diet after all.
But that is not quite the whole story, there IS something in it, but not in the way I had initially thought: the truth is, we are individuals and therefore need an individual acid/alkaline diet; some of need acid forming foods, some of us need to alkalinise. I found this out this morning as I read an interview with New York metabolic typist, Dr Gonzalez:
RC: There are many books in health food stores which say that the underlying cause of disease is that we are all too acid, in large part because of a meat-based diet, and need to push our body towards a more alkaline state by eating more fruits, vegetables, almonds, millet, etc.
NG: That is absolutely incorrect. Sympathetic dominants tend to be more acid, parasympathetic dominants tend to be too alkaline, and balanced people tend to be somewhere in between. Sympathetic dominants do well on alkalinizing foods like fruits and vegetables. Parasympathetic dominants need acid forming foods, of which red meat is the most powerful.
Since discovering metabolic typing at the end of 2011, most of my world view has completely changed. For the first time in a long while, actually since I started my journey into nutritional research, something makes complete sense at last. The confusion has been replaced by growing joy that I now have a way to pinpoint exactly what I should be eating according to my body’s needs, not groping around in the dark.
I looked up Dr. Gonzalez after being told by a close friend that her sister-in-law was making trips to New York from the UK twice a year to visit him. She had been diagnosed with bone cancer and after three years of following Dr. Gonzalez’s metabolic diet, which was created specifically for her (with supplementation and cleansing protocols included), she was in remission, 5 months pregnant with her first child AND in the best of health. Here’s more from the interview:
RC: How do you determine which part of the nervous system is dominant, and why is that important to your therapy?
NG: Because out of that we are able to determine which diet and supplements will suit the patient best. Their sympathetic or parasympathetic dominance tells me what kind of program they need.
RC: Let’s say a person comes to you who is parasympathetic dominant, and you put them on the wrong diet, will you make things worse?
NG: You can kill them.
RC: Even if it is a vegetarian diet that is low in fat?
NG: Parasympathetic dominant people need red meat three times per day. Putting them on a vegetarian diet is like raising a lion on hay.
RC: Are there personality types associated with these different types of autonomic dominance?
NG: Sympathetic dominants are aggressive, type A businessmen that get up at six and get more done by noon than the rest of us do in the whole day. They are very ambitious, smart, and energetic in the morning. Parasympathetics would like to sleep until noon, and are very creative. Artistic ability tends to be in the parasympathetic side of the nervous system.
from here
