The body is largely made up of water, a medium which is most biologically useful in allowing nutrients and various chemicals to be transported from place to place. Suprisingly only half of a woman's physical weight is made up of body fluids (generally because they naturally have more fat), while it's close to 60% of males, and 75% for infants. Of that, the sum of the fluids in each cell (intracellular fluids) make up 63% of total body liquid, the majority of the remaining 37% comes from Blood Plasma (10%) and Interstitial fluids (18%- the fluids between organs, etc.), and Transcellular fluids (5% -between cells) and Lymph (4%) make up the rest.
This liquid medium is quite sophisticated chemically, carrying electrochemical potentials which influence the pH (for acidity verses alkalinity) of the medium, and thus has the potential for becoming too acid or too base (alkaline) in nature, which can greatly impede the efficiency of how biological systems run. Since most of the body is liquid, the pH level (or acid-base level) has profound effects on body chemistry, health and disease. Acid-base, or pH management, regulates breathing, circulation, digestion, elimination, hormonal production, immune defense and inter/intracellular communications. In fact, pH is such an important factor that the body has developed strict accounting procedures to manage acid-base balances in every cell and biosystem. Fundamentally, all regulatory mechanisms serve the purpose of balancing pH, removing the normally acids from the body systems, without damage to living cells.
The body has 3 major systems which help control pH levels, namely (1) the Respiratory System (2) the chemical and Physiological Buffering System and (3) the Urinary System via the excretion of urine. But it is the Urinary System which quantitatively effects the body's ability to regulate and stabilize pH more than any other. A decrease in blood pH immediately accelerates the kidney's removal of free hydrogen (H+) and therefore acidifies urine. And indeed, by regularly measuring urinary pH, we can get a very good idea as to the safety of blood pH and the rest of our body pH as well. Notwithstanding these numerous chemical and physiological buffering systems which help keep the pH of our body slightly alkaline (pH= 7.35 to 7.5), the acid-buffering capacity of our biochemistry is often over-taxed on a regular bases.
As we grow older, and our diet changes, our chemical and physiological pH -buffering mechanisms often fail us, and the body begins to develop an overall acid profile. For most of us, a slightly more acidic pH blood plasma, extra cellular liquids and urine of the body, becomes the "dangerous norm" rather than the occasional exception. As it is so critically important for our blood plasma to remain slightly alkali, acid potentials (excess H+) must be neutralized and removed from our blood. However, when buffering systems become over-taxed, acids and acid forming residuals, instead of being neutralized, are simply relocated within the body and not removed at all, becoming stored within the extra cellular fluids and connective tissue cells, directly compromising cellular integrity.
As we've learned, the kidneys are capable of removing more acid than any other buffering system of the body. But there's a problem. The only way to transport excess acid to the kidneys is through the blood stream. However, since the blood is so especially sensitive to pH changes, it's only able to transport a very small amount of acid to the kidneys at any one time. Moreover, a further bottleneck occurs because the kidneys will generally not excrete anything more acid than a pH of 5.4. In order to protect the blood supply and without other options the body is then forced to dangerously store any excess toxic corrosive acid wastes within the connective tissue cells of the body. But this is only a short term solution.
Virtually all cellular functions are sensitive to alterations of the pH balance of their fluids. This is especially true of connective tissue cells. the body's metabolic processes depend on a precisely balanced pH value of 7.34 to 7.40 within cellular spaces. If it wavers beyond these limits either higher or lower, certain enzymatic reactions fail to occur, and cellular metabolism becomes difficult to regulate. If the pH deviates too far to the acid side, cell metabolism will stop and as connective tissue cells becomes poisoned in their own toxic wastes, these cells will die.
When connective tissue cells die, they close the critical bridges and passage ways between the cardiovascular system and the rest of the cells and organs of the body. Such an effect is disastrous. Indeed, when these bridges are closed, nutrients can no longer be supplied, nor can wastes be removed. this causes the "plumbing to back-up on itself," dumping acids back into the bloodstream and other critical organs.
As more and more acid is accumulated, and storage capacity is exhausted, the body slowly begins to "stew" in it's own acid poisonous wastes. Without warning, acid wastes begin to silently corrode the veins and arteries, destroying cell walls, and the entire organs. the damage caused is compounded daily, becoming more aggressive and deadly over time. Indeed, and acid pH is so corrosively and insidiously destructive that it's considered the seed-bed of most, if not all, degenerative diseases, including; stroke, heart attack and other cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and obesity, cancer, immune deficiencies, and neurological dysfunction's such as MS and MD. thus the imbalance of body pH causing toxic acid wastes or acidosis, is the real killer, the silent killer, because it's progenitor, the beginning of so many deadly diseases.