The internal terrain is the environment in which your cells live

No matter what disease you are experiencing, the best place to begin your healing is by addressing this extracellular space. We need our cells to be healthy, but they have to have a healthy place to reside in.

My favorite analogy is that of the lake and the fish. If there are dead fish in the lake and you just remove them and replace them with other fish those fish are going to die too. You must look at the conditions of the lake and change those so that the fish have a healthy place to live. Your cells are the fish and the lake your Internal Terrain. If your terrain is not properly balanced, then cellular debris will not be able to be released from cells and good nutrition will not be able to get in

This way of thinking is very different from other schools of medicine and is one of the reasons why European Biological Medicine is so effective. As a Naturopathic Physician, who has been trained to think like this, I can assure you that for true healing to occur, this is the best place to start.

You may be taking all the best vitamins, exercising and eating a “healthy” diet but if your internal terrain is out of balance, you will not reap the benefits of what you are doing and you will not experience foundational wellness.

The internal terrain is made up of proteoglycans, water, minerals and fibrous proteins. The first place to start then is to make sure you are staying hydrated with pure filtered water!! I recommend three liters of water daily for optimal metabolic function.

What affects the internal terrain?

The internal terrain is affected by many things including toxicity, stress, heavy metals, a surplus of protein in the diet, dysbiosis, lymphatic congestion, stuck emotions/trauma, trace mineral deficiencies, electromagnetic stress and the Acid-Alkaline Balance which I want to focus on here.

The pH level of the internal terrain has a profound affect on every cell in our body. If we are too acidic, then not only will oxygen and nutrient delivery to our cells slow down but so will all enzyme reactions.

A state of chronic acidity here will be a lovely place for viruses, yeast, molds, fungus, parasites and bacteria to want to move in and set up their permanent residence. It is as attractive to them as an oceanfront home is to me! These organisms all grow and flourish in an acidic environment and have detrimental effects on our immune system which is why chronic acidity is related to disease states from allergies to fatigue and digestive issues to cancer.

Should my entire body be alkaline?

While we know we don’t want to be acidic in our internal terrain there still are places in the body that need to be acidic for proper balance.

Many of you have probably heard about getting alkaline to enjoy good health and there is a lot of truth to that but what’s most important is to understand the rhythms and regulation of the body and exactly where you need to alkaline and when.

For example, the skin, the vaginal canal and the stomach do not need to be alkaline. For good health you actually want these areas to be acidic.

Should my entire body be alkaline?

The optimal pH of the stomach is 2-3.5 which is quite acidic. This is important because hydrochloric acid is needed to break down food and would not be able to do that if the conditions were too alkaline. In addition, it is the acidic bolus of food that triggers the release of alkaline pancreatic digestive enzymes and cholecystokinin from the gall bladder further enabling proper digestion of food. In addition, an acidic stomach helps protect against bacteria and viruses protecting your body from infection and supports absorption of many nutrients such as B12, Iron and Calcium.

One of the greatest mishaps of mainstream medicine is handing out Antacids like they are candy. Large amounts of patients, especially in the age range of 40 and older, are deficient in stomach acid and condition known as hypochondria and actually need supplement stomach acid to contribute to an overall alkaline body. Please check with your Naturopathic Physician to see if this is something you need as part of your healing plan.

Please also remember that when we are talking about becoming acidic, we are not talking about your blood

The blood must remain slightly alkaline with a normal pH of about 7.35-7.45. The body will take active measures to maintain this, otherwise death can occur.

So, this is some serious business here! We cannot specifically do things to affect the pH of the blood because that is handled innately by the kidneys and lungs.

What we can do is take good measures in our lives to stay alkaline where we should be through our daily choices so that the body does not get stressed trying to compensate.

Let’s look at the daily rhythm of acid-base balance

Friedrich Sander named this rhythm the Base/Alkaline Flood and Base/Alkaline Tide. Since the blood cannot become too acidic if there is excess acidity, then these acids will be stored in the internal terrain.

These stored acids are mobilized from this space while we sleep. This means in the wee early morning hours of around 2 am, the urine should be most acidic. This is actually a good thing to see acidic urine at this time because it means you are excreting the detrimental acids. Who knew? But hooray for acidity!

The alkaline tide, however, occurs about two hours after breakfast and lunch. This means the pH’s of the urine between meals should be alkaline 7.0-8.5. This is because while we eat although we are secreting stomach acid we are also making an equivalent amount of sodium bicarb in the parietal cells that is picked up by the blood stream and delivered to the alkaline glands of the body, the saliva, the pancreas and the liver. Therefore the maximum account of alkali in the blood, and therefore in the urine, occurs one to two hours after you eat.

The ideal pH numbers depend on the time of day. When plotted out it looksl ike two humps on a camel.

The two times of the day that the urine should be alkaline are at 10am and 2pm and correspond to the top of the humps.

During the rest of the day the pH should be more acidic between 6.6-6.8. this is optimal urine.

The first urine in the morning will be more acidic because of the deacidification that takes place during the night. So you can see if you wake up with alkaline urine and think it is good that you are alkaline you are actually mistaken and it means your body is not riddig itself of acids like it should be.