The pH Diet and Your Fertility

If you’re like most people you probably have vague recollections of boring high school chemistry classes when you hear the word, “pH.” Don’t let chemistry class stop you from accessing one of the greatest factors for health, including your reproductive health.

All you need to know about pH to start reaping the health benefits of a more balanced body chemistry, is that it is a measure of acidity (think vinegar) or alkalinity (think baking soda) from 0 to 14. Zero is the worst level of acidity possible and 14 is the highest level of alkalinity possible, with neutral being in the middle. Your body maintains much tighter reins than that and will work diligently to balance your blood at a just slightly alkaline rate of 7.36. However, our highly acid-forming diet (meat, dairy products, sugar and other sweets, wheat and white flour baked goods and pastas, coffee, tea, trans fats, and food additives found in most packaged and prepared foods) and our high stress lifestyles can take their toll on our body’s pH balancing mechanisms, leading to acidity.

Microorganisms like yeast, fungi, bacteria, viruses, and others thrive in an acidic environment. Some of these nasty critters interfere with enzyme and co-enzyme production in the body, including ones that are essential to hormone health, as well as many other health concerns. If a particular coenzyme is depleted, hormones that are critical to fertility and reproduction, in both men and women can become imbalanced. Additionally, many of the microorganisms that begin to thrive in an acidic body can begin to feed on hormones, causing deficiencies.