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Balance Your Bases

The human body is a remarkable machine capable of responding to almost all changes it faces. A topic that is often left unexplored by those seeking optimum health and fitness is the body's acid and base balance. Improper balance between acids and bases can result in a loss of muscle tissue, bone tissue, growth hormone resistance, and decreased insulin growth factor-1 (IFG-1) activity. As you may guess, all of these issues can have harmful implications on health and performance goals. Fortunately, this can be prevented. Let's explore.
Acid is produced in a number of ways in an active person. Carbonic acid is produced during aerobic metabolism, lactic acid is formed by anaerobic glycolysis, and, perhaps of the one that athletes are most ignorant, numerous acids can be introduced to the body through the foods you eat. Because most are unaware of how foods effect acid-base balance, the scope of the article will be placed upon the nutritional considerations that can be used to manipulate the effects to help body composition, health, and performance goals.
Blood pH in humans is 7.41, which is slightly basic, and it is tightly regulated through the body's numerous components of the pH homeostatic mechanism. The first component is a chemical buffer, which will immediately begin to prevent drastic changes in hydrogen ion concentration. Buffers consist of a weak acid and a basic salt of that acid. They are present in pairs throughout the body ready to spring into action upon detection of even the slightest change in pH. The most powerful of these buffers is the bicarbonate buffer system which is responsible for reducing the effects on blood pH of hydrochloric acid and lactic acid1 that cannot be cleared through respiratory action alone. This buffer system is also used to limit changes caused by eating. Although buffer systems do a great job in maintaining homeostasis, they cannot get the job done by themselves. The next step in maintaining acid-base...