The Cycles of Balance & Imbalance
There is always talk of the importance of consuming greens and citrus fruits to help balance blood pH. This is true, and our juices offer loads of this. But I thought I’d dwell a little deeper into how body pH is affected, and why keeping it neutral is so important…
I’m sure you’ve heard of the “ying yang” principal? It is an Asian philosophy that describes how seemingly opposite forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and give rise to each other in turn. Yin and Yang are not opposing forces, but rather complementary opposites that interact within a greater whole as part of a system to create balance.
When things get out of balance, a sign usually appears to make it known, and to me, some of the best examples of this principal at work lie in health and eating.
To me, health signifies balance. But the concept of “health” is so relative. To many of us, when we hear the word “health” we shy away and feel intimidated, thinking that we could be healthier, look healthier, stronger, skinnier. I am a huge culprit of this, often bringing myself down for not being healthy enough, considering all the knowledge I have of food and nutrition. On the other hand, you get some people who are obsessively “healthy”… Following a sugar-free, dairy-free, wheat-free, caffeine-free, carb-free, fat-free, alcohol-free, organic-only, vegan-only, 4 hours-of-exercise and 2 hours-of-meditation-a-day type lifestyle. That is what people (like me) often feel guilty about not achieving. But is that balanced? And if it is NOT balanced, how can it be considered healthy?
Regardless of what floats your boat in terms of health, your body tries to maintain a balance of influences within itself: when your stomach is empty, you experience hunger. When you are lacking certain nutrients, you tend to crave certain foods. When you need sleep, you feel tired. Many things come into play, and the examples just given are basic. But when it comes to the “ying yang” of illness and wellbeing, the 3 most important factors are a balanced emotional state, hot and cold, and… the chemical balance between acid and alkaline conditions in the blood and tissues.
Acid and alkali are opposites. When they meet in equal amounts they cancel each other out. Problem is that it’s easy for the body to become too acidic, and not something that can simply rectify itself. The signal it sends out when there is imbalance, is illness.
Therefore, regardless of the degree of effort you put into living “correctly”, when your body is in pH balance, you are less likely to get sick and can regard your immune system as being “healthy”. I came to realize this about 2 years ago when I fell very ill and was later diagnosed with an autoimmune condition called Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. I was also told that my system was off the charts acidic. The ironic thing is that I fell ill at a time that I was following the most obsessively “healthy” principals ever, and the sicker I fell, the stricter I became with myself to try and rectify my symptoms.
My body began to heal the day that I let go of all the rules and just started being kinder to myself. On paper, the foods that I started enjoying were too acidic and inflammatory for someone with such an acidic blood pH and high antibody levels, but I began to realise that it’s not always about what the books say and more about what makes a person feel good. One of the disturbances of pH is destructive emotions and negative thoughts. I now believe that you can put the healthiest food into your body but if you are obsessive about it, you are being negative. Obsessions and negativity cause stress, which leads to disturbance. On the other hand, if you lovingly enjoy your “bad” foods in moderation, they trigger positive emotions, which can only promote balance! We here at Essentially are all about balance and our juices provide the perfect nutritional boost that you may need to attain this balance in your day-to-day life.
And so we come back to the “ying yang” principal. Honour the force and feed your body what it is asking for (good or bad), not what your mind says is right (or wrong?).
May the force be with you…
Cara