Did You Know...Alkaline Foods Prevent Muscle and Bone Loss

The photos I included in this post are from the U.S. White House album revealing this years planting of the house garden with First Lady Michelle Obama. I included these because I support early education of healthy nutritional dietary habits as the First Lady is doing above. To me this is the way to prevent muscle and bone loss by forming by proper habits early on. 

Practicing an alkaline diet can be a group, family or community affair. It also reduces the expense of your weekly groceries. Planting with seeds is even cheaper and yields a large harvest of produce. I encourage you to try your hand at gardening so your back yard can also act as your farmers market. Hint: Home grown produce makes the most special gift for any occasion or age.

USDA Study Shows Alkaline Foods Prevent Muscle and Bone Loss

Fruits and vegetables contain essential vitamins, alkaline minerals, fiber that are key to good health. Now, a newly released study by Agricultural Research Service (ARS)-funded scientists suggests alkaline plant foods also may help preserve muscle mass and bone density in older men and women.

The study was led by physician and nutrition specialist Bess Dawson-Hughes at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston, Mass.

The typical American diet is rich highly acidic in protein, cereal grains and other acid-producing foods. In general, such acidic diets generate dietary amounts of acid each day. With aging, a mild but slowly increasing metabolic "acidosis" develops, according to the researchers.

Acidosis appears to trigger a muscle-wasting response. So the researchers looked at links between measures of lean body mass and diets relatively high in alkaline potassium-rich, alkaline-residue producing fruits and vegetables. Such diets could help neutralize acidosis. Foods can be considered alkaline or acidic based on the residues they produce in the body, rather than whether they are alkaline or acidic themselves. For example, acidic grapefruits, lemons and limes are metabolized to alkaline residues because of their high alkaline potassium bicarbonate content.

The researchers conducted a cross-sectional analysis on a subset of nearly 400 male and female volunteers aged 65 or older who had completed a three-year osteoporosis intervention trial. The volunteers' physical activity, height and weight, and percentage of lean body mass were measured at the start of the study and at three years. Their urinary potassium was measured at the start of the study, and their dietary data was collected at 18 months.

Based on regression models, volunteers whose diets were rich in alkaline buffers such as potassium could expect to have 3.6 more pounds of lean tissue mass than volunteers with half the higher potassium intake. That almost offsets the 4.4 pounds of lean tissue that is typically lost in a decade in healthy men and women aged 65 and above, according to authors. The study was published in the March issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Sarcopenia, or loss of muscle mass, can lead to falls due to weakened leg muscles. The authors encourage future studies that look into the effects of increasing overall intake of foods that metabolize to alkaline residues on muscle mass and functionality.

ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific research agency.

According to Dr. Robert O. Young, a research scientist at The pH Miracle Living Center, "a diet high in protein and/or dairy is a diet high in lactic, uric and nitric acid when not properly eliminated through urination, perspiration or defecation will breakdown connective tissue, muscle tissue and bone. If you want to maintain or build muscle and bone mass then get off the acidic animal protein, diary and high sugar fruits that will eventually break your body down. Acids are the cause of aging and the best anti-aging advice is to eat and/or drink 12 servings of alkaline fruits and vegetables every day."

Dr. Young as tested 100's of foods to determine their acid/alkaline benefits after digestion. You can find this list of foods that are alkaline to heal and build the body and foods that are acidic that ferment and break down the body by reading The pH Miracle, The pH Miracle for Diabetes, The pH Miracle for Weight Loss or you can go to: http://www.phmiracleliving.com/t-approach.aspx?affiliateid=10464