By Thalia Goodman
Foods can be used to reduce the acidity levels in the body: this naturally influences the bowel flora.
Inside of us live vast numbers of bacteria without which we could not remain in good health. There are several thousand billion in each person more than all the cells in the body. When we take this into consideration it is easy to appreciate the importance of their role to our overall health and vice versa.
Most of them live in our digestive tract and depending upon which type of foods we eat either good or bad bacteria will proliferate.
Certain bacteria help to maintain good health, whilst others can do quite the opposite and have a detrimental effect upon our wellbeing.
The level of local acidity is one of the major influences upon the function of the friendly bacteria. As we know acidity levels in the body are mostly defined by what foods we eat, and the body’s ability to remain fluid and free of toxicity and dis-ease.
By helping to reduce body acidity through the intake of mostly alkaline producing foods (a diet rich in vegetables, non glutinous grains, legumes and low in animal fats, fatty meats, sugar and dairy products) we create the right environment for our health and the health of our friendly bacteria. Not surprisingly the diet which is best for people is also ideal for healthy bacteria.
We live in true symbiosis with them. As long as we provide them with a healthy diet and as long as they remain in good health, these bacteria provide excellent service in return.
“Exactly which bacteria happen to grow depends to a great extent on what we eat”
The food we eat along with the processes it goes through in our intestines prepares a sort of meal for the bacteria in the colon. In this way, the culture medium that we create inside the large intestine determines to a great extent what kind of bacteria will grow there.
If the body acidity is high and we are eating a diet fill of refined and un-natural foods we are setting up just the right basis needed for the growth of harmful bacteria.
The intestinal lining serves as an interface of immense proportions between man and his internal environment, acting as both barrier and portal entry for all nutrients.
This bacterial mucous coating is in constant flux, as are the cells of the lining which are completely cast off and re-built every 24- 48 hours. As a result the mucosal ‘terrain’ and it’s ‘vegetation’ are at any given point in time a momentary reflection of this constantly changing equilibrium:
“….health can be maintained by attention to the well- being of the infinitesimal entities which build up our bodies and which we may justly call ‘life’s primal architects”
There is every reason to believe that by eating a diet full of natural, alkaline non-challenging foods we can support this precious internal environment and gradually alter the balance of microbes present in the intestinal tract:
“ The result is that in turn these ‘internal guests’ return there favour by exerting an increasingly beneficial effect on our health”
The reduction of body acidity would call for the individual to pay attention not only to the dietary aspects that increase this condition but also the influence of drug toxins especially antibiotics, due to their negative effect they have on the villi and microbes.
Also let’s not forget the role and effect of our mental and emotional well- being:
“we might say that the microbial culture created in our intestinal tract reflects the totality of our personality and our physical/ mental being”
Whatever we ‘feed’ our bodies in way of nutrition, emotions or mental processes they all have an important part to play.