In part 1 and part 2 of this article I talked about the numerous health problems I experienced from my early childhood years right into adulthood and how following an ‘Alkalizing Diet’ took me to a whole new level of health.

In the third and final part, I’m going to share with you all a few tips that have really made a difference to my health.

All of what is written below is completely based on my own experiences. An alkalizing diet may not suit everyone, and I’d always recommend that anyone should seek the advice of a qualified doctor and/or nutritionist before following these tips.

1. Eat Raw Vegetables

- Aim to incorporate raw vegetables or salad with every meal to keep your body alkaline.

- Personally, if I have a cooked meal, I will also have vegetables and hummus or lemon/lime juice in water

– I find this aids digestion as the enzymes in raw food help the break down of food, and also helps to give me more energy.

- I like to keep as much of my diet as raw as possible (which in the summer months is much easier). Raw food is how nature intended us to eat, it’s also full of enzymes and is packed with nutrients.

- After visiting New York last January and going to the amazing raw food restaurant Pure Food and Wine, I was amazed at how exciting raw food could be and got myself on a raw food course. In England we are slowly catching on to the raw food thing, but it doesn’t have to be complicated like some recipes you can find on line, keep it simple – for example, for lunch I always have a large salad with a source of protein, fresh herbs and some lime juice. When I can be bothered to clean my juicer I also love vegetable juice!

2. Balance the Bad with the Good

- If I want to eat something I know is not too ‘healthy’ I will increase my good quality raw food to balance the acid-alkaline ratio of meal so that I have a ratio of approximately 1:4 (acid:alkaline).

- I find follow this tip can also help reduce the amount of the less-healthy food I actually eat – having a salad before a cheat meal makes me less likely to over eat.

3. Stay Hydrated with ‘Alkalizing’ Fluids

– Drink good quality, filtered water.

- I usually add lemon/lime juice to a pint of water before breakfast as this aids digestion, is alkalising and very cleansing, and also wakes me up!

- I also add a teaspoon of ‘green powder’ to my lemon/lime juice and water. If you read anything on being alkaline these green drinks will pop up everywhere. They are full of nutrients, but don’t always taste so great, not for the faint hearted! I use ‘Kiki’s Nature’s Living Superfood’, on its own it tastes like swamp water, but mixed with the lemon/lime juice its nearly enjoyable to drink…I keep doing it though because I feel so good on it!

- Throughout the day I drink water with liquid chlorophyll. This is a lovely minty drink that you dilute, and it’s great if you want fresh minty breath without all the harmful chemicals in chewing gum. Liquid chlorophyll is also purported to have numerous health benefits, plus I have found that it helps my clients to drink more liquids throughout the day.

I was really convinced by the benefits of drinking alkalizing fluids (liquid chlorophyll; lemon/lime juice in water) one day when my fiancé and I were stuck in Milan Airport for 15 hours on our way home from a holiday. Within a couple of hours of getting stuck at the airport I started to get UTI (urinary tract infection) symptoms. Given that the last UTI I had ended up progressing into a kidney infection I was really worried that I would end up in hospital again. However, using my understanding of how to alkalize my body, I grabbed my little, travel sized bottle of chlorophyll and put all of the contents into 2 litres of water and drank pretty quickly. I then continued using slices of lemon in other bottles of water. The symptoms disappeared in about an hour, and this is when I was really convinced this worked!

4. Control Bacterial Growth in the Mouth

- The mouth has a temperature of approximately 95º F (35º C), making it a playground for bacteria, both good and bad (we have between 500-1000 different bacteria living in our mouths; http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/explain/docs/mouth.asp).

- If you think about all the places bacteria can live in our mouths compared with where we actually brush, plus, having slept over night for around 8 hours for it to multiply (morning breath), we then go and eat breakfast, letting the bacteria travel down into the digestive system.

- I now always start the day by brushing my teeth with an organic, chemical free toothpaste, then as I prepare breakfast I use an oil as a mouth wash for anything up to 5 minutes (I started using coconut oil and now use olive oil)…it isn’t as bad as it sounds and the bacteria in the mouth get attached to the oil then and are removed when you spit it out. You could even just start with water.

On another aside here, when my fiancés mum travelled to Nepal, they were given strict instructions not to feed the children any pre-packaged foods or sweets as they do not have toothbrushes, and the high-sugar foods would rot their teeth. It seems that with a natural, un-tampered diet, these children in Nepal have managed without the oral care that most of us in developed countries need to rely on.

5. Eat Seasonal

- As we live in the northern hemisphere and have different seasons and temperatures, we should try to eat accordingly by buying locally-produced, in-season fruits and vegetables.

- Imported food will have been shipped in, loosing nutrients daily as it sits in a warehouse, then in a supermarket until we buy it and take it home (possibly to sit in our fridge!).

- Local food on the other hand will be fresher (and hopefully higher in nutrients). www.eattheseasons.co.uk makes this tip really easy to follow as it lists what is in season and even gives you recipes to follow.

6. Spice It Up!

- Herbs, spices and garlic are all great to lessen candida symptoms.

- Tumeric supposedly helps to reduce inflammation, and cinnamon might help increase insulin sensitivity.

- Adding these natural ‘falvourings’ to your regular meals might help improve your health and they taste amazing too!

I hope these tips are of some use to people. There are tons of other points I would like to include, but for the sake of brevity I’ll leave it at these 6. Basically, if we eat as naturally as possible and try to decrease the chemicals we use on and put into our bodies and our homes, I believe we can all live happier, healthier lives!

Thanks again for reading!

PS – When I started researching things to put into this article something really interesting popped up on Wikipedia – bicarbonate of soda has been used by athletes to slow down the effects of lactic acid build up, thereby increasing their performance. The downside of bicarb is that it can be slightly toxic. However, maybe following the above 5 tips and adding more alkalizing foods and drinks into our diet could not only improve general health but maybe it could also aid athletic ability?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_bicarbonate