Nutrition for Athletes Should Incorporate Alkaline Foods   by Everett Smith

in Health    (submitted 2011-06-04)

Why is it important to consider alkaline foods when selecting the best nutrition for athletes? The alkaline forming or acid aspects of foods are a factor when the body uses them for fuel. After digestion, they create an alkaline or acid ash. That is why everything that enters the digestive system has an impact on the acid/alkaline balance throughout the body, often referred to as pH balance. In order to maintain proper pH balance, dieticians suggest a balance of 80% alkaline foods to only 20% acid foods. Most people have this 80/20 alkaline/acid diet upside down. This can have an effect on many aspects of fitness and needs to be considered when seeking nutrition for athletes.

The body is so beautifully designed that it will not permit the blood pH balance to diverge significantly from 7.4. It will do whatever is warranted to alkalize the acid in the bloodstream, even if that means using calcium from healthy bones. With a lack of alkaline foods to help manage that delicate blood pH balance, the body has to extract calcium from bones in order to counterbalance excess acid in the bloodstream. You can undoubtedly see how that causes bone weakness, and that's the last thing anyone wants when seeking high quality nutrition for athletes.

Here is my firsthand story of how alkaline foods created positive results for me. A large amount of the cartilage in my right knee was removed at age 18, after a back yard football injury. So for more than thirty years my right knee has been bone on bone. Before implementing dramatic changes to my diet a Doctor told me I had the knee of a seventy-eight year-old man, but I was only 39 at the time. He said I would most likely need a knee replacement before too long. Well, it's been over 10 years and I just finished a 3 hour, 23-mile mountain bike ride over grueling terrain in the Arizona desert, and my right knee feels as strong and able as my other knee, without needing surgery or drugs. I also snow ski moguls all day when possible. Other men I have explained this to can't fathom how this is doable. I can only say the difference is that I know the need for alkaline foods as part of a diet that supplies superior nutrition for athletes.

While eliminating various acid foods from my diet, as soon as I became conscious of the need for more alkaline foods, I started to discover more ways to get them. It's like what happens if you buy a blue car, suddenly you start to catch sight of blue cars all over the place. So, now that you are cognizant of this requirement for alkaline foods when looking for the highest quality nutrition for athletes, you'll start to discover them as well.

About the Author

Cliff Everett Smith constructed the free Alkaline Food Test at http://www.besthealthfoodstore.net for people to study more about the benefits of alkalizing the body. Take the test to achieve better understanding about the most powerful nutrition for athletes and the role that alkaline foods play.