The following information has been gathered and compiled through personal experience while traveling, teaching T’ai Chi, Qi Gong, Chinese Herbal medicine, martial arts and other health related subjects. The article also contains feedback from students and anecdotal information from readers of my columns. The following are my opinions and deductions from those sources..
If you own a juicer you have the tool(s) necessary for ridding yourself of chronic bladder and kidney infections. Healthy kidneys are necessary for skin health and a clear complexion and if that’s your objective, a juicer may be your answer.
One of my alternative healer friends uses the following techniques to help her patients. Juice enough raw carrots to make one pint of juice and combine that with one pint of raw spinach juice. Each quart must be consumed that day. The juice has to be fresh daily.
To juice spinach, roll a few leaves up like you would roll up pieces of paper. Then stick the leaves, stem and all and stem first, into the juicer. The stems contain lots of vitamins, minerals and have a high water content.
We make our juices using a blender, it’s just more time consuming. First, cut the leaves into small pieces using a good pair of scissors and chop the carrots into small pieces also. Add a small amount to the blender along with just enough reverse osmosis or distilled water to blend. Add more spinach and carrots as the blender liquifies the ingredients. After blending, strain the liquid and drink immediately.
If you suffer from frequent night trips to the bathroom, you may be getting a message that you have a bladder infection or it may be that you aren’t drinking enough water. “Not enough!”, you say, “My problem is too much water. That’s why I end up spending so much time walking down the hall in the dark.” Let me explain.
If you drink less than eight glasses of water a day, you increase the acid pH factor in the urine. In children, it’s usually the opposite. Without enough water the waste products and urine from the kidneys becomes too concentrated and irritates the bladder. When that happens you feel the urge to urinate. One sign of excessive acidity in the urine can be a burning sensation upon urination. Fried and starchy foods, white bread, sugars, carbonated beverages, fresh meat and especially processed meats, all raise the body’s acid levels.
Eating most fruits, melons, beans, potatoes and milk, many milk based processed foods raise acid levels, can help alkalinize the body. One of the latest fads for alkalinizing the body is to dissolve baking soda in a glass of water and drinking it once a day. If you have a problem digesting your food because of low hydrochloric acid, this process will really cause problems.
An overly alkaline pH can lead to bladder infections and creates a friendly environment for E coli bacteria. The majority of information I’ve found indicates the baking soda everyday fad can lead to a serious imbalance in the body’s pH. Either way, too acidic or too alkaline, an imbalance in pH isn’t beneficial for long-term health.
An exercise known as Kegels can help with bladder control. Tighten the muscle you use to control urination, the pubococcygeus, and hold it under tension for the count of five. Relax and repeat fifteen times, three times a day. Next, tighten, and release the same muscle as quickly as possible fifteen times, three times a day. Then, bear down on the muscle without using the stomach muscles, ten times, three times a day.
