then, plays an important part in our health. Because every part of the body has a pH—that is, an acidity or an alkalinity, a hydrogen-ion concentration—it is important to keep the body in its normal acid-alkaline balance. This is probably no easier to accomplish constantly than it is to keep harmony all the time in a family of ten or twelve children, for all parts of the body have their own electrical and acid-alkaline nature and their own consciousness.
When food is metabolized it creates within the functioning parts of the life support system a reaction that is acid or alkaline—or, we might say, a specific pH (hydrogen-ion concentration) that is either high (alkaline) or low (acid).
Cayce saw foods having their effect on portions of the body because of their acid-alkaline balance or because the foods did not combine well within the body and caused drosses or acids or poisons in the body. Thus his comments about the proper diet were to a large extent associated with these two qualities—the acid-alkaline balance and food combinations. The following readings exemplify the manner in which he treats these questions:
(Q) Any advice regarding the diet?
(A) As indicated, keep to those that are more alkaline than acid. Those that are naturally easily assimilated, and that make for increase in the lymph and the blood flow . . .
642-1
The conditions then to be met are those about the portion where the lesion exists, and the effect same has upon the system—especially producing the fermentation, or acidity and fermentation, in an improper proportion and manner.
There has been taken recently properties that have started the secretions from the liver. This adding to the system under the existent conditions, produces or causes the extra or over amount or condition of acidity . . .
The lower portion of the intestinal system should be kept, then, nearer in the state of non-acidity, or alkaline. Keep those food values, those medicinal properties, that tend to produce for the system a nearer equalized condition in this respect. Foods entering should be alkaline in reaction. When acted upon by gastric juices they become acid, but should be alkaline reaction in the lower digestion.
294-113
Vegetables and fruits, with few exceptions, are alkaline-reacting, while meats, starches, and sugars are generally acid-reacting.
And, for a fifty-one-year-old woman who was having problems with dermatitis, obesity, and pelvic disorders, Cayce had this to say about combinations in dietary practices:
As to the matter of the diets, these become naturally—with the general conditions of the body—a necessary element or influence. Do not ever take cereals and grapefruit or citrus fruits or pineapple juices at the same meal. Have the cereal one day and the fruit the next; never the two at the same meal. For they form in the system, together, that which is not beneficial—and especially not helpful for this body, forming an acid that fattens the body. Coffee or tea should preferably be without milk or cream, for again we find that the combination of the acids—or the tannic forces, the chicory, or the properties that are the food values to the digestive forces—becomes disturbing, when combined outside of the body. However, if milk and coffee are taken at the same meal—but not combined before they are taken—the gastric juices flowing from even the salivary glands in the mouth so taking these change the activity so that the food values of both are taken by the system, in the activity through the alimentary canal . . .
Wines, or such natures, may be taken more preferably as food; not as those that would be taken with food. Hence red wine—that is, Sherry or Port, or such natures—taken with sour bread, or black bread, in the late afternoon—rather than coffee or tea—is much more preferable; and it doesn’t put on weight, it doesn’t make for souring in the stomach—if taken in that manner; but not with other foods!
1073-1
Defending the Body with Food
In the eighties a new specialty was born in the field of medicine called psychoneuroimmunology—the study and application of the information linking the mind, the nervous system, and the immune system together. For it is well understood in this field that the mind and all that encompasses the mind, attitudes, and emotions work directly or indirectly with the thymus system (the lymphatic-immune system) to either aid or harass the body and its ability to stay healthy—or to overcome a disease process.
The nervous system is always intricately involved in this procedure, for it registers input through the senses that “make” one angry or sad, happy or fearful, according to the habit patterns of emotion that have been stored up, as in a computer, within the unconscious mind of the perceiver.
It is understood in physiology that the lymphatic stream is normally alkaline. Thus, the defenses of the body are usually up to par when the immune system is balanced in regard to the acid-alkaline ratio within the body. It is then that the lymphocytes, monocytes, and neutrophils are at their best in fighting off invaders—and in rebuilding the body.
Foods play a key role in protecting the body from illness, in that they can either aid in rebuilding the body, or they can create acids, drosses, and poisons as they enter the body, thus creating more of a problem than solving the existing difficulty.
In researching the Cayce readings, one comes to the same conclusion, however, that is reached in practicing medicine or simply living life: All problems cannot be solved with food or by special diets. In the same manner, a positive frame of mind—positive thinking—cannot be a cure-all.
In my own discipline, the field of medicine, it has long been the approach to illness that not much really can be done until the diagnosis is made. Then the proper medication can be given and the individual can be healed. Next to nothing is said currently in our medical schools about how attitudes and emotional problems, poor diet practices, and long-standing belief patterns, along with lifestyles and environmental difficulties, really form the basic causative factors for most diseases. These realities must be addressed more definitively in order to gain what might be called true healing of the human body.
No matter what the cause of a problem or what the training of a therapist might be, there is always aid that can be brought to the healing process by the adoption of a properly designed diet. The diet, then, becomes the first line of defense.
How do we use diet, then, as an aid?
Most importantly, according to the information in the Cayce readings, one should avoid poor combinations of foods and then adopt a proper balance of 80 percent alkaline to 20 percent acid content in the foods.
From the readings, the understanding of why these two factors are so important can only be gleaned in bits and pieces. Cayce never gave a discourse on the subject, but he told a little here, a little there—and the picture starts to unfold.
The next selections help us out in this regard, for they seem to indicate that proper conditions of acidity or alkalinity existing in the small intestine and the proper food combinations have a great deal to do with the first steps in assimilating of foodstuffs. And those foods, broken down properly, then need to be carried through the blood and lymph vessels to reach all those areas where rebuilding of cells comes about. This is happening all the time in our bodies—it becomes the essence of regeneration of all the tissues of our bodies:
(Q) What would be the most appropriate vegetables or foods to build up my blood supply so as to maintain the same pressure throughout?
(A) As indicated, those that make for the keeping of a normal balance in the acids and alkalines of the system.
Study just a bit the vegetables and the general food values of all foods; as to how they react to the body . . .
. . . for we would find at times there are various conditions and various foods that produce, under the stress and strain of activity, a varied effect . . .
When the body is under stress or strain by