Here are some common signs you have a high acidic stomach (or higher than your usual), and where you can restore to a normal PH alkaline with your diet:
-Stomach discomfort especially where your GI tract meets the upper stomach intestinal wall.
-If you drink coffee and after you’ve eaten something light, food adds discomfort to your stomach. Btw, coffee on an empty stomach can “tear up the stomach.”
-If you burp more often, and especially if that’s not common for your body.
-You know you’ve been freely eating more of whatever you want, whenever you want, and maybe a usual food offender to your stomach. Our stomachs are naturally acidic and most of the foods we eat that we enjoy are acidic so maintaining a balance between joy and health will make the difference.
-And, if you have the taste of acid washing back up your throat (referred to as acid reflux), then that’s a sure sign. Many people pop antacids like candy after meals. But that’s masking an opportunity for a better and healthy solution of changing your eating lifestyle and habits.
Here are some quick fixes you can make to alleviate acidic stomach pain or discomfort:
Tip #1: Eliminate coffee for the time being (and especially all espresso).
If you can do only one thing, this would be the one. If don’t want to give this up, or you have to drink caffeine to keep you from falling asleep in the morning or day, try and only drink cold brew coffee (less acidic), or caffeinated tea, where green tea is milder on your stomach than black teas.
Depending on your severity of symptoms and how fast you want your symptoms to go away, then switching to non-caffeine beverages is going to be your best bet. If you drink water and herbal teas, you’ll get tired earlier at night if you don’t let yourself take a nap in the day.
Non-caffeine drinkers have the advantage of not relying on caffeine to keep them awake if they get enough natural, restorative sleep.
This may be a good time to re-strategize your caffeine ways. Coffee and tea are the better-caffeinated choices, so I don’t recommend you rid of your habit and preferences altogether if you like them (and especially if you would end up replacing them with high sugar sodas and coffee alternatives).
For a high acidic stomach situation, look at drinking less caffeine as a seasonal stomach cleanse.
When you get off your daily caffeine cycle, your body needs time to adjust. Expect to be more tired in the day and then fall asleep earlier in the evening when you’re tired. You naturally may wake up earlier when you’ve gotten enough sleep. Get up either earlier or no later than the time you would have on caffeine, to stay as regular as possible.
To stay awake in the day, you could do quick cardio exercises, take a quick walk outside if it’s cool (heat will make you more tired) or a swim if it’s hot, and splashing water on your face to make it through those first few days is the best way. These activities don’t require much cognitive thinking so they are easier to do when you’re tired and can replace your tired energy.
If you’re at work, super tired, and need to “be on,” you could consider chocolate espresso beans.
They work… but the caveat is, they’re not going to help your overall stomach acidity as chocolate and espresso are acidic. They are quick fixes to daytime sleepiness, and won’t add to your immediate stomach and GI tract lining pain/discomfort as they’re small, morsels of food (and not a meal or a drink that are most impactful). This I would say is the last resort option.
And if you end up drinking coffee, you’re better off making a coffee smoothie with a banana to soften the blow …but still, this should be after you’ve attempted eating some solid alkaline food.
Tip #2: ACV
If you feel discomfort in the upper part of your stomach or burping, a good natural medicine formula way to start to alleviate your symptoms is to take and dilute organic apple cider vinegar (don’t forget to shake up the milky substance called “the mother”), mixing it with water, about half and half.
Then consume gently. Don’t intake too much ACV in one sitting as that can be too harsh on the GI tract and stomach.
Gently here means drinking with additional water or ginger tea, avoiding drinking ACV alone.
I recommend taking an eyedropper, and adding 2-3 eyedrops full of the ACV mixture at the back of your throat (to protect your natural teeth). Do this every morning for the first few days, and then taper off with every other day until the discomfort starts to go away if the pain or discomfort is still there that can feel like bloating.
ACV is acidic but helps your stomach to recognize to naturally stop producing more acids and pumping into your stomach. The overall effect of consuming ACV is then less acid if you don’t overdo it.
Except for your eyes, your body is often blind to symptoms, so helping to direct efforts to a specific healthy cause helps you heal quicker. Your body also generates signs and symptoms to get you to change your habits and ways.
For a natural Vata body, a high acidic stomach can impact the body greatly as Vatas tend to report more stomach issues whether it’s from anxiety, nervousness, or being sensitive (feeling and impacted with every food and drink that enters your body) in a smaller body frame.
For Vatas, being restricted to eat certain foods can be a foreign concept because weight loss is usually not a concern and Vatas prefer variety in foods. You can consider getting off a high-acidic diet as more of a cleanse.
You can pause high sugar, salt, and heavy starchy carb intake that’s not good for you anyway. You also don’t want to have too much variety like a bird that pecks at everything, as one food consumed with another may not mix well in your stomach. Like, having yogurt and pizza sauce in your undigested stomach may have undesired effects.
Tip # 3: Go Alkaline
Switch to a temporary alkaline food meal plan until your temporary symptoms go away. I avoided the word “diet” because eating more or less isn’t the root problem, it’s the type of food. A good way to look at this is by doing a food cleanse. The more you stick to the alkaline cleanse, the sooner you get to go back to some of your regular favorite, healthy acidic foods.
Your stomach can stay full in a good way with alkaline proteins such as cooked eggs and tofu. The plain lean chicken breast could also be okay for you after the first day (nothing breaded or fried of course for your high acidic stomach symptoms).
Most other types of alkaline foods you can trust are healthy and natural, like leafy greens, vegetables, and fruits.
We can learn from Olympian athlete meal plans that are simple, quick and easy, and can include plenty of eggs and avocados that are alkaline. You also see them eating bananas if they’re hungry and on the field or practicing.
Here are some healthy alkaline meal plan examples that will help you achieve an alkaline or lower acidic stomach:
Breakfast:
Smart to start with ginger tea at room temperature or warm water to get the stomach juices flowing.
Sweet selections:
-Fruit Smoothie with banana, berries, almond milk, and your favorite seeds (chia, flaxseed)
-Avocado smoothie (you can add any fruits like bananas or vegetables and unsweetened almond milk and almonds)
-Green tea adding cut-up fruits to be added into your tea or on the side if you want a sweeter drink and taste.
Salty selections:
-Egg omelet with favorite veggies like mushrooms, onions, spinach, etc. On the side, add cut or whole fruit (tomatoes, grapes, cantaloupe, or berries, etc.), and capers or cornichons if you want to be fancy. ...who says alkaline foods have to be boring?
-Eggs any style-plain with your favorite spices (tarragon or turmeric)
Plain low-fat yogurt (look for probiotics) and favorite mixed berries
-Cottage cheese and peaches
Lunch and Dinner:
Light chicken breast and red quinoa. You can add curry spice and make a chicken salad with mustard and grapes, apples, or cucumbers… yum!
As mentioned, almost any fruits and veggies are beneficial. Apple or grapes can be good for lunch. Whole fruits and freshly squeezed juices without added sugar would be good and best before your meal.
Tomato salad (cheese is not recommended as most are highly acidic, but if you can’t stay away 😉 then opt for feta on a salad. If you use oils, use an extra virgin olive oil with higher standards for pressing and using high-quality olives that make a difference in the acidity. Like, the Bertolli brand is easy to find in grocery stores.
And finally, a good go-to is a tofu salad with leafy greens like spinach, and topped with sliced or slivered almonds for extra crunch. If the texture of tofu is the hangup, buy extra firm tofu and sautee with a few drops of EVOO until the tofu is more firm than a scrambled egg white. You could also try crumbling a softer tofu version and sprinkling it on your salad like feta cheese.
If you still don’t like tofu, then egg whites can be a substitute protein. Often we get tired of eating eggs because of the full egg with yolk, but egg whites are neutral tasting and I’d add, inexpensive to buy compared to most proteins. Imagine if you ate 6 cooked egg whites — that’s just a couple of dollars or less than most proteins. Just sayin’!
Snacks:
Many people prefer eating a heavy lunch so they don’t need to snack in the afternoon and then later into the evening. That’s not my preferred way, and maybe not for you either…
In our biodiversity, if you’re a lighter framed body especially, a heavy lunch can feel like lead in your stomach (as you have a smaller stomach), adding more friction to your higher acidic stomach.
So then if you have a good or normal metabolism, you want to eat high protein, but just enough to be hungry again for a mini-meal or snack every few hours before dinner to let your food digest.
…Caveat: this is not a branded diet, this is just my suggestion from 2 decades of maintaining the same ideal dress size, from all my years of living and trying different eating ways and foods and trying to maintain the healthiest balance including maintaining the ideal weight.
We all have different bodies, both external and internal. Men especially have different bodies, body goals, and health needs, so listening to a man on their eating habits and quantity is not overall the best way if you want to maintain a girlish figure (that’s who I’m talking to for this snack often diet).
These days the diet information out there is trying to steer you away from eating more meals, but with our more sedentary office work lifestyles, I’m saying eat more often. That’s good you get hungry in the afternoon. So then eat a snack like an avocado dip with tomatoes or carrots (hummus and most salt-based snacks like popcorn are acidic). And then have a nice plant-based meal dinner. If you need something you can eat edamame with sea salt or almonds.
If you do decide to eat adequate alkaline proteins and snacks often, you may find this works for you year-round.
You may also find you lose weight, but because of your food choices not because you’re eating less or just juicing or drinking water.
You can gradually add back acidic, healthy foods.
A high alkaline diet leans away from these healthier, acidic foods: low sugar bread, cereal, oatmeal, starches (pasta, potato, rice, etc.), and other rich sources of fiber…remember this is just temporary!
You can get your temporary daily fiber through vegetables like broccoli or supplements like psyllium husk.
If you’re missing something sweet, don’t worry this is my favorite part!
You can go for grapes, strawberries, fresh pineapple, kiwi, or your favorite whole fruit without the high sugar found in juices and canned fruits. And you can try nice, herbal fruity teas like rose hibiscus or blueberry tea.
And if you’re still craving sugar (hello…Vatas!), a small box of raisins would be another sweet alternate. This could also be a good time to do a sugar fast and cleanse.
And then soon, you’ll be back to your regular, balanced eating and appreciating your favorite foods (mostly healthy, but some not!) and joyfully seeing through the lens of your abundantly, rich life.