The pH Miracle: Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health by Robert O. Young, Shelley Redford Young

From Barnes & Noble

Few of us have even the vaguest notion of what pH levels are, but according to nutritionist Dr. Robert Young, the measurement of pH levels in our blood is the single most important health indicator. Yes, that means that the acid and alkaline levels of your blood are more important than the counts for cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, or hormone levels! The authors explain why pH levels are so significant; and how you can control them and maintain the balance. The book's diet guidelines are sensible, easy to remember, and appetizing. Fifty recipes supplement the text.

From the Publisher

Forget counting calories, fat grams, and cholesterol.

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Table of Contents

Read a Sample Chapter

The pH Miracle

Warner Books

Chapter One

A new day is dawning. A day of truly holistic health, vitality, and well-being. A time of energizing our very cells, maximizing the life force of our bodies. An era of naturally lean and strong physiques! This book is your key to letting that light into your life. It first helps you understand the revolutionary science I (Rob) call The New Biology, then explains the practical ways to change your diet and unleash the full power of your body to heal itself.

In truth, the light came over the horizon more than a hundred years ago. But the radical work of some great pioneering scientists has been overlooked by a mainstream medical model so deeply involved with its own myths that it was blind to larger truths. Until now. Now we're going to peel off the blinders and look at an entirely new model of human health-and disease. Working from decades of exhaustive research-my own as well as the work of those early (ignored) pioneers-we'll discover the basic pathways to illness and wellness. You'll get the science, of course, but also the practical applications that will allow you to put the science to work for you.

It's all about balance. The universe operates by keeping opposites in balance, and the universe contained within your body is no exception. When imbalance occurs, we get the signs of disease: low energy, fatigue, poor digestion, excess weight, foggy thinking, aches and pains, as well as major disorders. This book is about reclaiming balance (health): energy, mental clarity, smooth operation of all body systems, clear, bright eyes and skin, and a lean, trim body. With the program in this book, all that will be yours within weeks.

All you have to do is take a look around you to see that most people with our modern lifestyles are suffering from imbalance. They are obese. Tired. Prematurely aging. Perhaps you are too. Chances are at least one person you love is suffering from one of the top three killers in the United States-heart disease, cancer, or diabetes. When I ask the audience at one of my lectures how many of them have a family member with one of these big bad three, 70 to 80 percent raise their hands. In fact, half of us will die from heart disease or diabetes. A third will die from cancer.

If you're like most people in our culture, at this point you're thinking, Well, you have to die of something. We've forgotten that it is natural to die-and to live-healthy! In fact, it is your birthright to live healthy, right up until the day you die. Making that vision a reality is the great gift of this program. And believe me, it has nothing to do with mapping the human genome, cutting-edge medical technologies, or even more powerful-and dangerous-pharmaceuticals. The good news is, the answer is much, much simpler than all that. And available right here and now. Today.

The obvious clue is right there in the top three killers (cancer, heart disease, and diabetes). All are directly linked to diet. In fact, eight of the top ten causes of death in America today are (not to mention that diet is obviously the cause of the obesity of 60 percent of Americans). Eating the proper foods and getting the best nutrients, in balance, will help you avoid all that-along with the misery and poor quality of life that so often precede death, sometimes by decades. The simple secrets to finding the right combinations are what The pH Miracle is all about.

Even mainstream medicine agrees: "Foods contain nutrients essential for normal metabolic function, and when problems arise, they result from imbalances in nutrient intake and from harmful interaction with other factors. For ... adult Americans who do not smoke and do not drink excessively, one personal choice seems to influence long-term health prospects more than any other-What We Eat" (from the 1988 "Surgeon General's Report on Health and Nutrition": Emphasis added).

Since that landmark report from C. Everett Koop (and even before, depending on the circles you run in), Americans have been following one diet craze after another not only in an attempt to drop the excess baggage most of us are carrying around but also as a way to find our way back to good health. The result? We (as a country) are fatter than ever. And we're certainly no healthier.

The problem is that while diet is the key not only to slimness but also to overall health and well-being, it has to be a diet that properly balances our body chemistry. But each and every one of the diets Americans have tried-including not just the "average American diet" but also such supposedly healthful regimens as low-fat diets, the food pyramid, and vegetarianism-create wildly imbalanced body chemistry. Even if one way of eating does get rid of extra pounds (usually temporarily) or lower cholesterol levels or lessen digestive trouble for some people, it does not fulfill the promise of simple good health. We're so used to our modern medical machinery, in fact, that good health seems anything but simple. I'm here to tell you: It is simple.

Forget cholesterol counts. Forget calories and fat grams. Forget blood pressure, blood sugar, hormone levels, or any of the other markers of health you're used to at the doctor's office. It turns out that the single measurement most important to your health is the pH of your blood and tissues-how acidic or alkaline it is. Different areas of the body have different ideal pH levels, but blood pH is the most telling of all. Just as your body temperature is rigidly regulated, the blood must be kept in a very narrow pH range-mildly basic or alkaline. The body will go to great lengths to preserve that, including wreaking havoc on other tissues or systems.

The pH level of our internal fluids affects every cell in our bodies. The entire metabolic process depends on an alkaline environment. Chronic overacidity corrodes body tissue, and if left unchecked will interrupt all cellular activities and functions, from the beating of your heart to the neural firing of your brain. In other words, overacidity interferes with life itself. It is (as we'll see in more detail in the next chapter) at the root of all sickness and disease.

If that's not enough to get you interested in balancing your body pH naturally, nondestructively, keep this in mind: Overacidity is also what's keeping you fat (more about that later).

The goal, then-and what this program allows you to do-is to create the proper alkaline balance within your body. The way to do that is by eating the proper balance of alkaline and acid foods. That means 80 percent of your diet must be alkalizing foods, like green vegetables. (That percentage will go down somewhat once you've successfully rebalanced yourself.) That leaves much smaller portions of acid foods (such as meat and grains) on our plates. In addition, carefully chosen, high-quality supplements will help you achieve and maintain pH balance. You'll learn more about all this in detail in later chapters.

That's it. That's all there is to it. Get at least three-quarters of your plate covered with alkalizing food, use the supplements as explained in this book, and you'll be good to go.

The following chapters get into the details of why, and the remainder of the book shows you specifically what and how. You'll get the benefit of my own exhaustive research and the work of the great minds that have gone this road before me, and you'll also get Shelley's real-life, practical expertise in how to make all this happen for you.

Bottom line: This program will bring you increased quality and quantity of life. I guarantee you'll see immediate improvement. Your energy will increase, you'll find new mental clarity and powers of concentration, you'll build strength and stamina, and you'll lose excess body fat while increasing muscle mass. You'll have bright eyes and clear skin. You'll look better. You'll improve your athletic performance. Your entire body will function more efficiently. Whatever health challenges you've been facing will improve and most likely evaporate altogether. In short, you'll regain all the effortless energy and wellness you thought was lost with your childhood. With the healing, wholeness, and rejuvenation that this program brings, you'll experience, possibly for the first time in your life, vibrant personal health.

Over and over again, we've witnessed joy, relief, and renewed peace of mind in those who have turned a serious or chronic illness around, those who lost weight they had been battling for years, those whose cholesterol levels dropped, skin cleared up, itching stopped, energy returned. I've seen people who no longer required insulin injections for their diabetes. People whose aches and pains disappeared. Even people who had been diagnosed with cancer whose tumors vanished and who were pronounced cancer free. We hear frequently from people who haven't been able to work for months or years who are returning to work, people whose allergies are letting up, people whose infections clear. People who are well, whole, and energetic again. People like Sharon and her husband. I'll let her tell their story:

I was up to a record 192 pounds. I was depressed and tired and had attempted almost every diet known to humankind. I would lose weight and then gain it right back when I returned to my old eating habits. I became more and more discouraged. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired-and fat! I knew it was time to make some major lifestyle changes.

So, once again I stepped onto the diet roller coaster by going to a local weight loss organization. It worked for the first few months. I lost thirty-two pounds, traded in my diet sodas for water, and started to exercise. I thought I might really have the problem licked this time.

At this same time, my husband applied for a life insurance policy. The findings of the company's physical exam scared us to death. His cholesterol was practically off the charts at 340. He had fatty growths in his shoulder. He was at his heaviest ever, too: 227 pounds. For someone who is five-nine, that's quite a load to carry around. The report made him out to be a walking time bomb. An accident waiting to happen. Just like me, he realized he needed to make some serious changes. But he was confused about what and how.

Before he could take action, we moved into a new house and went on a vacation. I went back to my old eating habits, stopped exercising, and regained twenty of the thirty-two pounds I had lost. When things settled down again and we realized we had to take action, that's when The pH Miracle came into our lives.

We shared the same first thought: How on earth could we change our lifestyle so drastically? And the same second thought: We had to try. That night we committed to the program-and immediately headed over to a favorite local restaurant to pig out on our last barbecued pork ribs and mud pie. The next morning we changed our diets- and changed our lives. We've never looked back.

My husband's cholesterol dropped to 242 in six weeks, and is now under 200. He had been experiencing arthritis in the hips and had been thinking about surgery. But the pain has disappeared! For the first time in my life, I'm not depressed. I'm no longer a compulsive eater; no longer do I eat until I get sick-and then eat some more. I'm not a slave to my addiction to sugar and breads. Now the foods I crave are avocados and soybeans. We both would still like to lose a few more pounds, but we don't worry about it anymore. We know our bodies will reach an optimum weight. And we'll never regain it because we no longer crave the foods that made us sick, tired, and fat in the first place.

It turns out the weight loss is almost a side benefit. What we've really gotten out of this is feeling better. Our minds and bodies are stronger. We no longer feel sick and tired all the time. Even our relationship has benefited. We have a more fulfilling life. We can more fully enjoy the best things in life-mainly, our kids.

Speaking of our kids, we are now gradually working them into the program, too. They've been raised on fast food and pizza, candy bars and soda pop. And they've been addicted to sugar, bread, and meat-and been tired, obese, and depressed as a result, just like so much of their generation. Who would have thought they would ever be drinking green vegetable juice for breakfast? We feed them healthy meals, and they take supplements as well. They still have some sugar now and then, but we know this is not an overnight process. The whole family is headed in the right direction.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote: "There will come a time when we will sit down to the banquet of our consequences."

We were. And we are. I like this way much better.

Besides the huge volume of tales like this one-which I'll share more of throughout the book-I've seen the scientific proof of such transformation with my own eyes, though nothing is more persuasive than the radical changes in people's everyday lives. I've observed thousands of blood samples, including pH levels, from people all over the world, and seen the transformation that occurs-right down to the individual cells-when people change the way they eat.

HOW WE CAME TO EAT THIS WAY

All this healing occurs because people are willing to take responsibility for their own health and make the necessary changes. That was a mission Shelley and I were on for ourselves starting over twenty years ago. But it took quite a while to realize that what seemed in popular thought to be optimal was still leaving us tired, seemingly prone to every passing cold, and just not able to get the very best out of life. Eventually, through trial and error-experimenting on ourselves-we developed The pH Miracle program, and found, finally, the way to get fully, permanently, holistically healthy-physically prepared to live life to its fullest.

We had always been active, and on the lookout for ways to improve our health. By 1980, we were on what we thought was an ideal strictly vegetarian regime-mostly complex carbohydrates, along with some simple carbs (sugars), proteins, and fats. We were conforming to what seemed to be the best possible nutrition for our bodies and raised our children this way.

We ate the best of all foods sold in our favorite health food stores. Yet still we felt that afternoon fatigue. Our athletic endurance seemed to have plateaued, and we weren't getting any further improvements. We didn't have the strength and stamina we wanted. We were slowly but surely getting one common sign of aging after another. And it all seemed to be getting worse as we grew older.

Continues...

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Excerpted from The pH Miracle by Shelley Redford Young and Robert O. Young Copyright © 2002 by Robert Young, Ph.D.. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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