How acidic is your body?

In Today's Email: 

• How acidic is your body? Is an acidic body causing health issues and how to fix it...

• Morning Energy Boosters: Warm and nurturing breakfast routine to give you a calm and an energizing start to the day…

• The act of folding over yourself: A pose that helps improve digestion, calm the mind and nerves, relieve headaches and menstrual cramps….

Picture of The Day 

How Acidic is your body?  

Bodily fluids such as saliva, urine and blood play a vital role in how our body functions. However, too much acid buildup in these fluids can cause severe illnesses and health issues. Find out below how to fix these problems and get on the road to better health.

What is “Acidity”?

Acidity or acidosis refers to the amount of acid buildup in our bodies. For our bodily fluids to do their job, we must maintain a healthy pH of 7.0 or above. Anything below that number is considered acidic.

You may have an excess of acid in your body if you are experiencing one or more of these ailments:

• Struggle to Lose Weight

• Muscle Aches

• Fragile Bones/Osteoporosis

• Dental Issues

• Tiredness or Insomnia

• An Increase in Mucus

• Dermatological Problems

Our bodies become more acidic for many reasons. The kinds of food we eat and beverage choices all affect the buildup of acid in our bodies. Alcohol, caffeine, processed foods, and sugar all increase the body’s acidity levels. The air we breathe and environmental factors can also have an impact on acidosis forming.

The tip

The way that you breathe makes a lot of difference in your body being acidic or alkaline. The deeper you breathe, the more alkalizing the effect on your body. When you don’t breathe in a deep manner or take shallow breaths, more carbon dioxide is trapped in your blood, which makes your system highly acidic.

Shallow breathing also means that your stress, which makes you produce more cortisol (stress) hormones, which leaves you with more toxins in your blood making your body more acidic. Just by taking five deep breaths, you put more oxygen in your system, which helps clean your system. The less the carbon dioxide in our system, the less acidic is your body.

How to Fix Acidity:

While you may feel the damage is already done, it can easily be fixed. Follow these tips to help rid your body of acid build-up:

Stay Hydrated – One of the easiest ways to neutralize acid in your body is by consuming alkaline water. Alkaline water offers the premium hydration your body needs. By staying hydrated, your body will naturally eliminate the excess acid through the digestive tract.

Remove the Junk – Processed foods, sugary drinks, caffeine and alcohol all affect our body’s acid levels. They strip the calcium and magnesium from our muscles and bones leaving us susceptible to developing osteoporosis and other illnesses.

Change your Diet – Eating right goes hand in hand with a healthy lifestyle but it’s what you eat that helps neutralize the acid in your body. Green, leafy vegetables such as kale, broccoli, arugula, and celery have alkalizing properties that can combat the acid. Dried fruit and seafood (salmon and mackerel) provide the calcium and magnesium your body loses due to acidosis.

Rid your body of harmful acid and toxins by following a healthy regime of the right foods, exercise, and staying hydrated.

Morning Energy Boosters

To give your body a proper start to the day, try a few Ayurveda morning practices 30 minutes before your meal: Drink a herbal tea made of cinnamon, clove, ginger, and black pepper; do a few minutes of invigorating pranayama; get your body moving with a bit of yoga or walking.

Not only will these simple acts start to move toxins out of your body and activate your Agni (Agni in Samskrita means "fire", and according to Ayurveda, Agni happens to be the entity that is responsible for all digestive and metabolic processes in the human beings.), they’ll also awaken your hunger.

If you’re hungry, your digestive fire is active. This is our body’s way of telling you it’s ready to eat. With your appetite awakened and digestive fires strong, it's time to say grace, which serves the dual purpose of focusing your attention on the food in front of you and relaxing your body. A relaxed body digests food better than one that is tense and distracted.

Another tip for supporting healthy Agni in the morning is to refrain from drinking anything during the meal, which is thought to douse your internal fires. Most important, eat slowly and savor the wonderful breakfast before you. Enjoy a delicious bite, knowing there’s no better way to fire up your body’s furnace and start the day right.

🧐 DID YOU KNOW?

When to break the fast: Some Ayurveda practitioners such as Vasant Lad suggest that if you are not hungry, your Agni isn’t ready for food yet. So it’s best to delay or even skip breakfast until your Agni fires up.

The act of folding over yourself...

In a pose like Paschimottanasana (Seated Forward Bend) is like retreating into your own personal cave. Distractions recede from your awareness, making way for introspection. Paschimottanasana is also thought to improve digestive function, calm your mind and nerves, relieve headaches and menstrual cramps, and increase agility in your hips, legs, and lower back. Its gifts are many, but for years Paschimottanasana was my husband’s nemesis.

 When Paul began a serious yoga practice in his 20s, he had very stiff hamstrings that barely let him nudge his torso forward. It took months of sitting almost upright with a strap around his feet and diligently lifting his back before he could let go of the strap and catch hold of his feet.

That should have been celebrated as a great milestone, but Paul was all too aware that he had a long way to go before he brought a long torso over his legs without hunching his back.

Paul put intense effort into his practice and tried to go deeper in the pose, but it wasn’t until he began to apply nonattachment that he could work on Paschimottanasana without a painful struggle.

The seemingly opposing concepts of effort or perseverance (Abbyasa) and nonattachment (Vairagya) appear early in Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, and they are often referred to as the two wings of yoga practice.

You need to apply both to find the peaceful stillness that yoga promises. Abbyasa is an informed effort with the goal of self-understanding. Vairagya is detachment from the final results of your actions; it involves reflection, stillness, and surrender.

For example, if you’re sufficiently flexible in the final version of the pose, the entire front of the torso and head rest on the legs. But if you’re stiff, you may have to surrender the idea of taking your head down and instead put your effort into working patiently on folding from the hips and keeping a long spine so that the front and back of your torso lengthen evenly.

When you’re able to balance effort and surrender and apply this approach to Paschimottanasana (or to any other asana), your frustration with your limitations will lessen, and you’ll experience the pose’s physical and mental benefits. Distracting thoughts and mental agitation will decrease, and you’ll be able to enter your personal refuge, that is, a calm, wakeful state of pervasive attention.

Meme

NAMASTE ❤️

Have questions or feedback?Email us at:[email protected]

Want to advertise your brand to tens of thousands of readers?Email us at: M[email protected]