How To Test Yourself To See If Your Body Is Too Acidic

How to check your pH level at home to see if your body is too acidic?

Hello Everyone! This is an easy, at-home test that you can do to determine if your body is too acidic overall.

But first, let me explain how the Acid / Base scale works.

How does the Acid / Base scale work?

The pH scale goes from 0 – 14.

A pH of 7 is considered Neutral.

Anything less than 7 is acidic

Anything greater than 7 is alkaline/basic

The normal pH of human blood is about 7.4, so it’s not extremely alkaline.

Different parts of the body have different pH’s. Stomach acid has a pH of about 2, which is super acidic, so it can denature your food. We don’t want our bodies to be TOO acidic or TOO alkaline, this can cause death.

What are the Dangers of Being too Acidic?

Dr. Alex Vasquez shared a position paper on urinary alkalization written by emergency room physicians. These doctors worked with suicide patients that had been acutely poisoned or had cases of industrial poisoning. ER physicians found that when urinary pH was 7.5 (alkaline), the body was able to excrete toxins more readily.

When our bodies are too acidic, we have more incidence of:

Lower functioning immune system
Risk of cancers
Overall poorer health
Osteoporosis and Osteopenia

If you put cancer cells in a petri dish containing an alkaline environment, the cancer cells would die. Cancer and illness can only live in an acidic environment.

What Causes Our Bodies to Become Acidic?

1. Stress

Stress increases the production of stress hormones such as cortisol and interleukin-6, which can turn on inflammatory cascades in the body.

Constant cortisol secretion can cause weight gain, more food sensitivities (because it deteriorates the gut lining), and sleep disorders (more things too).

Blood tests show that a chemical called Interleukin-6 sharply increased in the blood of those who are stressed.

Previous studies have associated IL-6 with several diseases, including heart disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, type-2 diabetes and certain cancers.

More detrimental is that the increase in IL-6 can be turned on for up to 3 years after a highly stressful and chronic situation.

2. Diet

Not eating enough vegetables and fruits is the #1 contributor to an acidic environment. Eating grains, wheat, sugar (not fruit), processed foods, dairy, very non-nourishing foods can cause the leaching of calcium from bones to buffer the acidic environment and lead to osteoporosis.

Especially with dairy!

Dairy is highly acidic in the body, and several studies have confirmed that dairy does not prevent bone loss or make your bones strong.

It does the opposite, and more incidents of osteoporosis are seen in countries that consume more dairy. Alcohol is another thing that when overindulged can do a lot of damage.

3. Mood

Studies also show that when you are a more pessimistic person, negative in nature or hold a lot of anger, it causes your body to have a lower functioning immune system.

On the contrary, having an attitude of gratitude actually improves the regulatory T-cell function in your immune system.

4. Emotions

If you watch a scary movie and you’re feeling afraid, you will temporarily become acidic.

If you see someone get hit by a car, boom acidic. If you are anxiety ridden or thinking so many overwhelming thoughts, you will drop down into acidic.

We really don’t realize how powerful our mind is and how it can master us if we do not master it first.

Okay, now that we are all clear on what creates an acidic environment, let’s move onto the test!

A chart showing the result of saliva lemon test -a reference range to check PH levels in the body

This is the chart that you will use for the reference ranges.

What You Need to Test Yourself To See If Your Body Is Too Acidic

1. pH Strips

2. 1 Tbsp of lemon juice in like 3 oz of water

3. A stopwatch.

4. The chart above.

How it Works — The Steps to Test Yourself

Start by taking 1 strip of the pH paper and placing the yellow side down on top of your tongue, close your mouth for 5 seconds. Make sure the yellow part is fully saturated with your saliva.
Pull the strip out and match the color to the colors on the bottle of the pH strips. This is your starting pH.
Now take the water mixed with 1 tbsp of lemon and drink it. Take another pH strip and place it on top of your tongue again as you did before. This is your pH after you have challenged it with acid. This will temporarily drop your pH down (which is what we want.)
Now, start your stopwatch. You will wait 1 minute from the time you tested your pH after drinking the lemon, and then test your pH again with another strip.
You are going to continue to do this for a total of 5 minutes. Record your pH results each time you do this.
At the end of the test, if your pH is following the red line or above it, you have a good buffering system. Your body is not too acidic! Congratulations! If your pH is not good, and you dropped off after a certain point, you have some opportunities here.

What to do If You’re Too Acidic

First, assess your Diet and Lifestyle.

Are you consuming enough fruits and vegetables? How are you at managing your stress?

Do you find ways to relieve your stress? Do you drink lemon/lime water often?

Do you smoke cigarettes or over drink?

Are you eating too much sugar in the form of processed foods or grains/dairy?

Do you live on coffee?

These are all pertinent questions that you need to ask yourself.

The diet is first and foremost the biggest thing that can contribute to being too acidic. I can suggest supplements to help you, but if you are unwilling to change any of these factors — it’s not going to work. It’ll be like throwing a bucket of water on a house fire.

If you turn out to be too acidic, don’t freak out! This is just an area that we have an opportunity to improve.

I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed writing it!

How To Test Yourself To See If Your Body Is Too Acidic

How does the Acid / Base scale work?

What are the Dangers of Being too Acidic?

When our bodies are too acidic, we have more incidence of: