Posts Tagged ‘pH balance’

Gads, I’m wracked with diet guilt. Not only have I been eating chicken and turkey lately (why? why? why?), but I’ve also been a big ol’ dairy queen. In fact, I think we may have actually dined at an actual Dairy Queen during Road Trip 2011.

As someone who loves critters, I am not thrilled about this situation. Even the dairy, which is theoretically a byproduct, has put a massive guilt-bee in my bonnet. Although I’d like to believe that there’s such a thing as a humane dairy farm, I don’t think one really, truly exists. As I scrutinized the Horizon egg carton in our fridge the other night, I was hoping the fact that they say they give their chicks plenty of room to roam means they do in fact do that.

But how could I know?

Anyway, I figure that if I can’t critter-guilt my way back to my vegan-wannabe ways (and I’m sure I can if I read enough depressing chapters from my vast library of vegan cookbooks and such), I can definitely health-guilt my way into more optimal food choices.

Allow me to connect the dots in my usual round-about, mind-racing-at-a-million-miles-an-hour Momover way:

Because it’s summer, I’ve been slathering the Wee Lass with sunblock. Which led me to thinking about my own multiple skin cancer scares, which led me to thinking about redoubling my efforts to balance my pH level.

Although there’s debate about this in the medical community, a balanced pH level is considered – by many health gurus and holistic practitioners – to be one of cancer’s worst enemies.

Soooo…I fired off an email query to Dr. Susan Blum, one of my Mama Gurus and my unofficial integrative wellness mentor. Are there any easy, do-able shifts I can make to tilt my pH level in a more alkalinic / less acidic direction?

“Eat less animal,” Dr. Blum shot back, “and more vegetables and vegetarian proteins” such as beans and legumes (and even some grains and fruits).

Grrr…had she installed a hidden camera in my kitchen???

There was more to our conversation, which I’ll share with you tomorrow, along with other tips. But right now, I have to go pick up my little meat-lover from day camp.

No, your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you; I deliberately picked a fuzzy, blurry image to go along with this blog post because it perfectly sums up how I’m feeling right now. Three bottles of Champs, divided by four mommies and daddies = one rocking hangover.

At least for me. Hubby and the other hubster in the quartet “cheated” a little bit by splitting a can of Mercy, this genius-y new hangover-prevention beverage you can sip along with your other sippables, or down at the last minute before you hit the hay. It’s loaded with B vitamins (like literally 5000 percent of thiamine), and I don’t really know how it works, just that it does.

If only we’d had a six-pack of those puppies lining the fridge shelves…

So, how am I, Miss Mercy-Less, attempting to feel better? By quaffing gallons of pH-balancing lemon water, taking a nice hot shower and plowing through a stack of fashion magazines to distract myself. (New Year’s Res #953: Actually glancing at the piles of mags I spend so much of my precious $$$ on.)

And speaking of my precious $$$, I’m also slathering myself with the impossibly yummy Sphatika skincare products I splurged on this past summer: Facial Cleansing Crème, Gommage Exfoliating Crème and Bulgarian Rose Facial Oil.

You know how some women prefer unscented skincare? I am sooo not one of them. Provided I dig the fragrance, I say bring it on. That’s one reason I find the Sphatika stuff so swoony. For instance, the Gommage is chock-full of fennel. While, on paper, fennel may sound really wack and salad-y to scrub your mug with, in practice, it’s actually d-i-v-i-n-e.

At some point, once I scrape up the coin-age, I intend to treat myself to a little trip to the Sphatika Treatment Center. I’m dying to try the $375, three-hour “Gold & Platinum Crystal Singing Bowls Experience,” which allegedly “directs you to a state of rejuvenating deep sleep.” OMG, doesn’t that sound like the best hangover cure ever? Perhaps that’s New Year’s Res #954.

Because of what I do for a living, I’m very lucky to be surrounded by numerous Girl Beauty Geniuses. (GBGs, for short.) And my all-time favorite GBG is my great friend Tina Hedges, who has created probably 10 of the 15 products parked in your makeup bag right now. (She’s Co-President of the beauty brand incubator Twist new brand venture.)

One of Tina’s best look-great inventions is the Jonathan Product water filter. That little marvel (technically christened a “beauty water shower purification system”) is not only lovely to behold – the Maserati of the filter world, basically – it also zaps all the undesirables from H20 so that your skin and hair aren’t being bombarded with dastardly chemicals.

When Hubby and I hightailed it across the Hudson a few years ago, I left my beloved Jonathan Product filter behind for the lucky peeps who would next inhabit our Manhattan pad. I knew Hubby was quite smitten with the flying saucer-sized heads in our new showers, so I decided to pick my décor battles and move on.

Now, however, I suspect my locks might be paying the price for that sacrifice. Yes, I need a trim, but even before I hit the split-ends wall, my hair had a serious case of the blahs. Fried, frazzled, blech. And I think one big reason is the hard-as-nails wah-wah pouring forth from the New Jersey pipes.

Recently, I pestered Tina about my cockamamie scheme to wash my hair in bottled water. Turns out my plan is not so crazy after all. But, per Tina, there’s a catch: It has to be acidic water, not alkaline, because alkaline water roughs up the cuticle of your hair, generating frizz.

So essentially, the kind of water you want to wash your hair with is the opposite of the kind you should be drinking to balance your pH level.

According to Tina, one of the most alkalinic and pH-balancing bottled waters on the market (making it a great bet for quaffing) is Fiji. As for the most acidic bottled water, she didn’t have a ready answer for me (the gal’s got real work to do…), but suggested I buy a few varieties and test them using those little pH strips that you can get at any health food store. I’m such a wellness geek that I actually own some (Alkalive pH Stix).

But since we Momoverettes are also busy, busy, busy (maybe not as busy as Tina, but busy), and totally obsessed with our looks, I did some detective work so we wouldn’t have to test-strip. Voila, two options that tilt in the acidic direction: Perrier and Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring Water.

There were a few other acidic waters I stumbled upon, but they were flavored. And even I wouldn’t wash my hair in flavored water just to get rid of the frizzies. But can we please just discuss what a public service I provide? Who else would tell you just the right bottled water to wash your hair with? Only Momover Lady. Word…

Maybe I’m in the minority on this, but I don’t take it even remotely personally when Hubby forwards me links about weight loss. For starters, I’m the one who’s always banging on, as the Brits say, about wanting to shed a few. Plus, he knows that I’ll probably also share my newfound knowledge with my Momoverettes, so he is, in essence, providing both a public and private service.

So without further adieu, let’s get to that link, shall we? This one hails from CNN.com, and it’s based on a study recently presented at the annual meeting of an entity I’d previously never heard of: The American Chemical Society. Perhaps if I’d been brave enough to attempt chem class in high school I’d be familiar with this august governing body, but even my dear mama advised her science-challenged Wee Lass to steer clear and load up on the French and art instead.

Oops, veering off-topic…

So here’s the gist of this study, which was conducted on a mix of overweight or obese men and women, between 55 and 75, who were on low-calorie diets: Those participants who faithfully imbibed 16 ounces of aqua before breakfast, lunch and dinner lost much more than those who didn’t. Drinking water before meals was the only variable.

Okay, so you’re undoubtedly younger than these study-persons. But you’ve got something else going on in your world: baby weight. I say, give this trick a shot, and stick with it. I’m going to. In fact, as soon as hit “Publish,” I’m heading right downstairs to the kitchen for an ice-cold, pH-balancing glass of lemon water. After my morning coffee, it’s time to tip the scales back to alkalinity. (Ooh! Science-y!)