Ah, very interesting! When I was plagued with an on-again, off-again, full body rash last year, I'd done copious research on the net to see what could help me. I ran across a site promoting apple cider vinegar - some drink it by the cupful! - to cleanse, detox and balance the body's pH. At the time it seemed crazy: VINEGAR? But now I see on various food charts that apple cider vinegar digested leaves an "ash" residue that actually promotes alkalinity in the body. And we auto-immune folks tend to have too much acid going on in our inflamed bodies. So that makes sense.

I also wondered if my neck rash was the result of my hair being colored on Tuesday; dufuss gets in the shower Wednesday, uses Fekkai shampoo and conditioner that may remove some dye and/or also irritate my own pathetic body as it runs down my neck and chest.

I finally stopped "wishing" the rash away last night and took 5mg Cetirizine; then applied OTC cortisone to my rash. It's still RED, but the pimply bumps seem to have flattened out a bit. And it doesn't itch one bit. Glory be.

I sit munching a pro-alkaline apple as I ponder all this SHITE going on with my body. Palms and tops of feet still peeling (from antibiotic I think?).



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I Bug U

Bugjune, I never actually thought to check my urine or saliva pH until you asked. I am much more concerned with what I eat than my body fluid pHs.

But I do have pH strips, I just tried it, and though they are not very accurate in the desired range (mine go from 2-10 by color change, for urine and saliva something like a 5-8 range strip would be better) and urine looks around 7.5, saliva around 7-ish.

I think it would take less than 24 hours of a high f+v diet to read a pH change.

But if you are taking medication that can give you unexpected results depending on the active and the excipients.

Larazelle, pH of the food itself does not come into the calculation for potential renal acid load (PRAL). PRAL is calculated by this equation, which has some modifications in different papers:

PRAL (mEq/d) = .49 x protein (g/d) + .087 x phosphorus (mg/d) -.021 x potassium (mg/d) - .026 x magnesium (mg/d) - 0.013 x calcium (mg/d)

So you can see what contributes. If you eat a lot of protein, you can offset it with a lot of vegetables and still be in the "good." But measures aside from urine pH contribute to bone health, such as having a high calcium intake to offset a high protein intake, which is why I don't think the pH of urine in itself is highly predictive of a good diet. I think a good diet depends more on a high and varied fruit and vegetable intake.

Acidic foods (i.e. foods with low pH) and some drugs can upset an empty stomach. If you put cream or milk or some pseudo-dairy product in your coffee or tea, or take them with other foods, they are more tolerable.

I was skeptical about vinegar having any effect on metabolism but there might actually be something to it:

Acetic acid may inhibit lipogenesis by decreasing gene expression of certain enzymes key to the process. It also lowers serum triglycerides by down-regulating such genes.

ref:
http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bbb/73/8/1837/_pdf

I eat about 3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar a day, because I like it on my veggies (with olive oil). That it might be contributing to my weight maintenance is an unexpected bonus.

The acid/alkaline diet priciple is generally a good one. Eat more fresh fruits and veggies, eat less dairy, meat, sugar and grains. We do however need a combination of both, but in general I would recommend 70% alkaline and 30% acid forming foods. I don't know if it is in fact the higher pH that is beneficial as much as all the nutritents, antioxidants and phytochemicals in the produce.

I do however believe that the pH does make a big difference when it comes to bone strength and density. When the blood/body is too acidic, Ca is pulled from the bones to buffer the acid and maintain homeostasis. This long term obviously can cause significant bone demineralization.

The first thing I would do is remove all forms of junk, processed foods, rancid/processed fats and other non foods. Just cutting out the crap will really help to give the body a boost. Then focus on eating lots of fresh fruits and veggies, some grains, soaked legumes (except soy) and a little free range/wild/organic poultry and low Hg/PCB fish. Occasional grass fed bison is ok too.

I also really like Miss J's suggestion of juicing raw fresh greens and other vegetables. Normally I am not a huge fan of juicing (too much sugar without the fibre to slow it down), but juicing veggies is great. All dark leafy greens, brassica veggies, dandelion greens, lemons, fennel, artichokes etc are all fantastic for the liver. Adding small amounts of apple will also help the gall bladder. Drinking the juice of one lemon in 8 oz of warm water fist thing in the morning on an empty stomach will also help to cleanse the liver and encourage liver detoxification.

With all the antibiotics you have been taking you may also want to consider a high dose probiotic. I take Nutritional Fundamentals of Health's ProBio SAP, 3 bid (sometimes more if the course was strong) away from food whenevee I finish a course of antibiotics.

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"My friends, love is better than anger.
Hope is better than fear.
Optimism is better than despair.
So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic.
And we’ll change the world."

Here are a couple interesting articles on apple cider vinegar: what it's used for, some possible complications with it:

http://tinyurl.com/2b3hk4b and http://naturalmedicine.suite101.com/article.cfm/tips_to_balance_ph

And here is the comprehensive apple cider vinegar site I stumbled across a year ago:

http://tinyurl.com/2as3gmj

It *almost* convinced me to try it out; I was desperate to try ANYTHING to rid myself of a full body rash I'd had for several weeks following a trip to Hawaii.

Oddly enough, a few months later (and long after my rash was gone), I had my annual derm doc app't and mentioned the odd rash I'd had. He had found a bump on the back of my calf, which I told him was a NASTY bug bite I'd gotten in Hawaii (from a hideous, man-eating horsefly). He said a common occurrence after such a bug bite is ... you guessed it! FULL BODY RASH. I just never put the two together, but the bug had bit me a day before returning home, and my rash set in the day after I arrived home. Frickin' bug. I'd like to smash it even now.


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I Bug U

cold, hard math can be used to determine how healthy a food item is. Then it's up to me to use the food charts and actually make informed choices based on scientific FACT, not marketing BS.

I used to use a nutrient calculator. I found that the only way I could reach vitamin and mineral requirements was by eating lots of vegetables--considerably more than standard recommendations. A shortcut for doing the math is to eat lots of greens of different types (lettuce, cruciferous, and goosefoot families) with additional servings of other colors and plant parts.

I don't pay much attention to marketing, though.

[I do however believe that the pH does make a big difference when it comes to bone strength and density.]

Yeah, but it's not as good as actually eating well. There have been a couple of studies showing no association between fracture risk, BMD, and urine pH. I suspect that this is because the pH of urine can be influenced by bacteria, exposure to air, drugs, time of day, and other things, and also that bone health depends on more than things that influence the pH of urine, like exercise, vitamin D, etc.. Eating well in general is a better aim.

Another thing, and this is something that exasperates me, is that many studies that examine vegetable intake use a cutoff for the highest quartile or quintile at maybe 2-3. Or they look at cruciferous vegetable intake over a month and define 4x/month as "high."

Well, maybe it is compared to the general public but it's probably not high enough to make more than a minuscule contribution to health.

Also things depend on how authors define "vegetable"--whether or not it excludes the starchy vegetables, for example.

And of course people lie about and/or misremember what they eat when they keep diaries or answer food frequency questionnaires. The only way one can know for certain is to lock them up in a metabolic ward and strictly control their intakes.

14 million cultures is pretty low. The one I take has 11 billion/capsule, and I take 3/day. It is more important to take the probiotics after you are finished the antibiotics to restore flora balance. Antibiotics will kill most of the probiotics off as well unfortunately.

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"My friends, love is better than anger.
Hope is better than fear.
Optimism is better than despair.
So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic.
And we’ll change the world."

Ooops! Double checked my bottle: it's 14 BILLION - well sheesh, after a mil, it could be a gadzillion - a whole lotta live stuff in it. But it's BILLION for sure.

I will definitely keep taking my two pills (14 bil each) every day, a.m. and p.m. I was taking them 45 min to an hour after the antibiotics .. and the PB8 has a pre-biotic to make sure it gets through the stomach, but even still, that was a super high dose and long course of Keflex antibiotic for me.

Palms and tops of feet continue to peel. I'm sipping lemon water all day now to try and yank my body's pH back into balance.


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I Bug U

Actually ANY VINEGAR will help with weight loss. The acetic acid inhibits the enzyme amylase that breaks down carbohydrates , so you won't digest them. Thanks for the link Kosmed - you are our Resident Researcher - and an excellent one at that -

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Hotels in Cleveland

The die off is largely avoidable if you don't try to kill them off too fast. Slow and steady wins the race. Ingredients like caprylic acid, oregeno oil, thyme oil, garlic extract, lobelia oil and goldenseal are all used, but I would strongly suggest working with an ND to determine dosage and frequency as it will vary from person to person. Saccharomyces boulardii is a probiotic yeast that is also good to take and can also help reduce the chances of a negative die off reaction.

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"My friends, love is better than anger.
Hope is better than fear.
Optimism is better than despair.
So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic.
And we’ll change the world."

This could be a coincidence of two things, but my neck rash is REMARKABLY better today! Not gone - but overnight, it is about 50% or more improved! YOWIE! I am wondering if it's due to one or both things: on Saturday night, I took my first 5mg of Cetirizine, plus I started to drink several glasses of lemon water.

I now take 5 mg of Cetirizine a.m. and p.m., and continue to drink easily 32 oz or more of lemon water during the day. It's been probably 30-odd hours since I've been doing this ... and there was not much improvement until this very morning.

Oh boy would I LOVE (love! love!) to see this rash go away. Cuz now my lips are HUGE with swelling. I guess all my MixTo healing was dormant while my body rid itself of the toxic effects of Valtrex followed by Keflex. Now, perhaps I'm going to start molting and healing. We shall see!

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I Bug U