Can You Please Briefly Discuss Alkaline vs Acid Foods?

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Can you please briefly discuss alkaline vs acid foods? This is JJ Virgin, four time New.

York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert.

And and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert.

Evie.

Todd from Facebook Hey Evie Todd, longtime follower. Good to see you here. Anyway, Evie Todd from Facebook asks can you please briefly discuss alkaline versus Acid foods to help cleanse and clear one's system and dealing with strengthening the immune system? I've been looking into it actively as it also lowers mucus and phlegm for voice work, et cetera, but there seems to be a disconnect ari which foods are and which foods are not on which list as well. I wonder if it's a one stop for everyone. Does individual body chemistry impact alkaline levels? And I'm used to my body being a chemistry lab from the Virgin Diet. I wonder if I should incorporate the same approach here as well. All right, I'm going to break that down. There's a lot of questions within that question. I'll break it all down when we come back.

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All right, Evie, Todd, good to, good to see you here. First off, when you talk about phlegm, I'm always going to point back to food intolerances and point back to the virgin diet. So I always want to make sure that if you're suffering from phlegm, what the heck is going on? And let's make sure, because that's such a common sign of a food intolerance, especially to dairy, gluten, or eggs. So let's make sure first that that's not happening because of that. Okay, that's number one. And you may want to look at eating more mucolytic foods, things like cayenne, warm foods that can help break that up. So that's number one. Number two, this acid alkaline balance. So here's what's very interesting. You asked an important question. You said, okay, there's all these lists, and there's different foods on different lists. We're really looking at how these foods report to your body. So something you might think of as traditionally acidic may report alkaline to your body. Okay, so that's why you're looking at a list going, wait, I thought that was. That food feels like it's acidic. A tomato, citrus, et cetera, but it's actually alkalinizing. That's because it's how it's reporting to the body. The other thing, though, is probably we're not eating these foods in isolation. And so just like, you'll have a different hormone response when you put more foods together. You know, we look at, like, how much is our blood sugar and insulin going to respond to a food? Well, you're probably not eating that food in isolation. And it will be tempered by the other foods you're eating with it. Same with when you're eating a variety of foods, it's going to be the buffering of those foods put together. And that's why I always look at, let's make sure that we're getting plants with our acid producing foods. What tend to be acid producing foods. Animal products are big ones, right? So look at that and go, okay, if animal foods tend to be more acid producing, what could we do there? We could eat greens with them. This is something that my friend Dr. Anna Kabeca figured out in the keto green 16 diet where she makes sure that you're eating animal protein with vegetables to create acid alkaline balance. So kind of the simple thing to think about when you're really working on having acid alkaline balances. Eat your greens, there you go. Eat your plants with your animal protein. You can learn this in your body by doing a little pee test. Pee on the strip and see where you're at. But remember, this is also a moving target. And one of the things that you mentioned is super, super important. Is this different for different people? So, yes, because of stress. Here's a big play here. There's a couple things to look at, is what else could affect the acidity in your body beyond just food. While food is a big driver, so is stress, right? Stress makes you catabolic. It breaks things down. It makes you more acidic. So this is another thing that you want to think about here. If other things can have this type of response in your body. So what we want to look at, and it's why you want to be calm while you're eating, you want to be calm all day long as much as possible. But let's look at eating more plants, right? I love what Dr. Mark Hymon says, condominium. So eating your protein, like, you know, let's say you had some wild salmon for dinner with a lot of shaved brussels sprouts and maybe a little bit of wild rice there, you got great acid alkaline balance. See how easy that was? And making sure that you're also handling and managing your stress. And if you want to learn more about your own personal chemistry lab, then you can take the strips and check your acidity throughout the day and just start to see your responses. But the reality is, if you're managing your stress and you're eating a lot of plants with those more acidic types of foods, then most likely you're probably doing just fine. Foreign.

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