A cleanse for restoring ph balance

At the beginning of this year, I wanted to shed the extra kilos I came back with from my Christmas trip to Portugal. To do so, I went for a two-days fasting followed by a few days of keto diet, and that has put my weight back on track (and maintained it since). I was quite proud of myself, losing 3kg and 10cm in belly circumference, in just a few days. Just look at the before and after measurement tape around my waist. But the better appearances were masking a bigger problem that I spotted while doing this post-vacation diet (that I will share in a future blog post).

So here was the twist: the keto pee strips I used to measure my ketones levels were also measuring my pH levels, and the pH turned out to be acidic even after the keto days, and even on a few days of going vegan 😱

I had never measured by pH levels before, but one thing I knew: an acidic pH is a perfect environment for any pathogens and diseases to thrive in, and that’s definitely not something I wanted. Plus, the body draws calcium from the bones to compensate and that can lead to even more problems.

Although an acidic pH is a leading indicator for diseases many years later, I was happy I spotted it early and now I wanted to figure out how to fix it.

First, some basics: The human body pH is around 7 when it’s balanced, below that it’s an acidic environment (prone for diseases), and above that it’s an alkaline environment. Some foods like coffee and meat increase acidity, while most fruits and vegetables increase alkalinity. It’s normal that it fluctuates.

What wasn’t normal in my case is that it wasn’t fluctuating at all. Days of meat or days of veggies made no difference. Having a glass of water with a teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate (the ultimate alkalinizing agent) only raised my pH for a few hours, and then it was dropping back to acidic.

I searched for potential causes.

Some were pointing to diabetes. Well, I knew for sure my glucose levels are fine, as some months before I even had a continuous glucose monitor on my arm for weeks, and the readings were always great.

Next on the list were parasites and other types of pathogens, like fungus, bacteria, viruses, etc. that release a lot of toxic compounds. I searched how can one get them, and it turned out that it’s very easy. Anything ranging from not properly washed veggies, undercooked meat and fish, or simply breathing in viruses, mold, or parasite eggs, was a way to get the nasty things in. Then I searched for methods to remove them, and I realized that people used to have herbs of all sorts more regularly, and do cleanses more regularly, but now we never do. I never did it.

So I decided to enroll myself in an anti-everything diet: anti-parasites, anti-fungus, anti-bacteria, anti-viruses. I searched for herbs that help with these, and I bought myself around 20 different types of supplement capsules and teas. I read that it needs to be a long treatment, of one to three months, and I was determined to claim back my body from whatever was profiting inside of me, and damaging me slowly but surely in the process.

I took these herbs for two months. By “these herbs” I mean: garlic, oregano, papaya, grapefruit seed oil, pumpkin seeds oil, thyme, cloves, andrographis, spirulina, and many more. I also got some pharma prescription pills as anti-parasites treatment twice (once you kill the “adults”, and then you kill whatever was still around from the newly hatched eggs).

Something worked. I don’t know what I had, and what exactly worked, but it worked. How do I know? My pH levels are now back to balance. So mission accomplished, and let me tell you that made me extremely happy (I was imagining how I probably dogged some hard-core future disease in my mid-40s). But also, I noticed my hair stopped falling after a lifetime of losing tons of hair everywhere, even though I was getting my B vitamins and trying all sorts of other remedies that never worked before. It turned out that something was eating my nutrients, instead of my own cells. And, my energy levels got visibly higher too, as another obvious effect of redirecting nutrients back to…myself.

Since then I started paying more respect to cleanses, especially longer term and recurrent cleanses.

People used to do these a lot, even if driven by religion or other social norms. But we’ve lost this healthy practice. Now we have a cleansing juice once in a while and feel that we’ve done something.

My next adventure now in the land of cleansing is exploring liver cleansing. I learned recently quite a lot about how the liver filters out the toxins, viruses, and other pathogens, but as we constantly bombard it with fats, sugars, and more and more toxins, it needs some help once in a while to restore its balance. I’m still exploring the whys and hows of a liver cleanse, and will share this later.

Most importantly, in this journey I had over the last 3 months with my own body, I understood better than ever the importance of taking care of inner balance even if nothing hurts, and that looks are not what we should optimize for, but take undesired looks (weight gain, skin problems, etc.) as the first output of body imbalances that need to be treated.

The body is a complex ecosystem, and we need to respect the ripple effects of anything going out of balance and try to address them as early as possible. The body also has a huge capacity to heal itself, given the right nutrients and care.

Check out the health retreats I’m organizing to learn more and connect more with your body and nature.