Tackling obesity naturally

pH and obesity
By way of definition, obesity is simply the accumulation of too much fat in the body. So when you look at such a person, you can tell whether he or she obese or not. Obesity can therefore be said to be a visual sign of something going on in the body. Because there is an underlying process going on in the body, obesity may not be a primary process on its own. It is a visual sign of an internal system that has gone wrong as a result of an unhealthy lifestyle. To put this differently, one can say obesity is a symptom of an underlying disease; the symptom is the excessive weight, which is the visual manifestation of a disease.

We need to understand and agree with this definition to be able to successfully combat this fast growing epidemic called obesity. If you are overweight you will agree with me that all your effort to deal with this problem in the past have failed so woefully that you have decided to quit trying. The reason why all those that are obese have failed to reduce weight is because they have been dealing with the symptom and not the actual cause of the disease.

Obesity is indeed fast becoming an epidemic all over the world and understanding the root cause of it will go a long way in reducing the prevalence of the disease. There is no doubt that obese individuals have made genuine efforts at controlling their weight. But these have been genuine efforts targeted at the wrong things. If the root cause of a disease is not known, practitioners and the patients will focus on the symptoms only, without much positive result.

The pH and obesity
To begin with, we have to talk about the basics and to do so we must look into the relationship between water and the pH of the body fluids and blood. For now let me talk about pH and other physiological processes in the body related one way or another with obesity.

Simply put, the pH is the hydrogen potential [the power of the hydrogen ion]. The concentration or activity of the hydrogen ion in any given solution is measured in a pH scale that is from 0 to 14. In chemistry, an atom is made up of protons, electrons and neutrons. The protons and electrons have charges and the neutrons have no charge. The protons have a positive charge while the electrons have a negative charge. An atom always carries an equal number of protons and electrons; positive and negative charges which cancel out each other.

However, in a situation where an atom loses an electron, the atom becomes positively charged. If, on the other hand, it gains an electron the atom is negatively charged. The charge that is predominant in any given solution determines the pH of that solution. When electrons are more the solution is said to be negative and when protons are more it is said to be positive. Now note this:

A positive solution is acid and depending on the number of protons present in the solution the pH will register anywhere from 0 to 7 on the pH scale. In contrast, if there are predominantly electrons present in the solution it is alkaline and will register on the pH scale from 7 to 14; a neutral solution registers as 7. What I am saying in other words is that all acids are positive and all bases [a base is another word for alkaline] are negative. The more acidic a solution is, the lower the pH and the more alkaline it is, the higher the pH.

What then is the ideal pH of the body? Generally speaking the ideal pH of the body is alkaline but there are some parts of the body like the stomach and the vagina that are highly acidic. The pH of the blood is said to be 7.365 and there is a highly sophisticated mechanism in place to ensure that this pH is maintained at that level always.

The intra and extra-cellular fluid spaces do experience some variations in pH but not so with the blood. These variations in pH can be as a result of the things that we eat and drink. The food that we eat, being over-cooked, always render our bodies acidic. Also, considering the fact that most people do not drink water, rather they prefer things like the sweetened, carbonated and caffeinated beverages. These also render their bodies acidic. On a long term therefore, our bodies have become chronically acidified, setting the stage for obesity.