PH Testing

What pH Testing Actually Taught Me

It wasn’t what I expected — and honestly, it left me with more peace, not less.

It was late, and I’d just come home from a health coaching class with my head full of a brand-new idea: pH. The teacher talked about acid and alkaline balance in the body, about minerals that supposedly can’t be absorbed when we get “too acidic,” and she suggested picking up some pH testing strips at the health food store. So of course I did.

We made a whole event out of it — a little family night AND a family morning, everyone lining up to test their pH. (My kids thought this was the funniest thing we’d ever done for “family time.”) And I’ll be honest with you: I was BLOWN AWAY by the numbers. One of my children read very acidic. So did my husband. So did I. I started studying my diet like a detective, sure I’d find the culprit — and my eyes landed right on fruit and fruit juice.

When I actually dug into the science — the kind with real studies behind it — I learned the story was more nuanced than the class made it sound. And what I found didn’t scare me. It settled me.

What those strips are really measuring

Here’s the piece that changed everything for me: the strips measure the pH of your urine (or your saliva) — not your body. And urine pH is supposed to swing around all day. It shifts after a meal, after a workout, first thing in the morning. That’s not a warning light. That’s your kidneys quietly doing their job, clearing out whatever your body doesn’t need.

Your blood is a completely different story. It stays locked in a very narrow range — right around 7.35 to 7.45, just barely on the alkaline side — no matter what’s on your plate. Your lungs and kidneys work every single second to hold it there. On the rare occasion blood pH actually leaves that range, it’s a medical emergency caused by serious illness, not by a glass of orange juice. So a “high” reading on a little paper strip isn’t a sign that your body is failing you. If anything, it’s a sign your body is doing EXACTLY what it was designed to do.

Your body works hard, every second of every day, to keep your blood right where it needs to be. That’s not something to fear. That’s something to be grateful for.

So was I wrong about the juice?

Yes and no — and this is the part I love. Cutting back on fruit juice turned out to be a GOOD call. I’d just pinned it on the wrong reason. Juice is basically fruit with the fiber stripped out and the sugar concentrated. It spikes your blood sugar, it’s rough on teeth, and it is SO easy to drink a lot of it without ever feeling full. Soda, of course, is worse. So my instinct to stop buying juice by the jug was right on the money — the “acid” explanation just wasn’t the real why.

(And here’s a fun twist that made me laugh at my old self: many fruits — even sour ones like lemons — are actually considered alkaline-forming once your body processes them. Taste really doesn’t tell you much!)

The bones, the teeth, and the iodine

The class also taught that the body pulls minerals out of your bones and teeth to stay alkaline, and that iodine is one of the first things you stop absorbing when you’re “too acidic” — which was supposed to explain thyroid trouble. I believed all of it at the time. But researchers have actually put the bone idea to the test (it has a name — the “acid-ash hypothesis”), and it simply did not hold up. Careful reviews of the studies found no evidence that a normal diet’s acid load causes your body to leach calcium from your bones or leads to osteoporosis.

And that iodine-and-thyroid claim? I went looking for the science behind it and came up empty. Thyroid issues are real, and they’re worth taking seriously with someone who knows what they’re doing — but “your body is too acidic” isn’t the reason.

What I actually took away

Here’s what stuck with me, and it’s the same thing I keep circling back to: eat real food. Whole food. The kind of food people ate before the boxes and the bottles took over the kitchen. That was never really a pH strategy. It’s just wisdom.

Dr. Weston Price, a dentist back in the 1930s, traveled the world studying communities that still ate their traditional diets. What he found was that when those communities traded their real, whole foods for sugar and white flour and the processed “foods of modern commerce,” their teeth and their health went downhill. THAT is the takeaway I’d put my name on.

So no, I still don’t buy fruit juice the way I used to — only once in a while, and in moderation. Not because of a number on a strip, but because less sugar and more real food is simply a good way to live. My body is doing its job. Yours is too. And to me, that’s a reason to be grateful, not afraid.

Happy (real-food) living!

With much love,

Steffanie

A note on sources: The science here draws on registered-dietitian and university reviews of the alkaline diet (Columbia Surgery; UT MD Anderson; Texas A&M) and on peer-reviewed meta-analyses of the acid-ash hypothesis of osteoporosis (Fenton et al., Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, 2009; and follow-up systematic reviews). The short version they all share: diet can shift your urine pH, but not your tightly-regulated blood pH — and there’s no good evidence that a normal diet leaches minerals from your bones.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This content is for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Always talk with a qualified healthcare provider about your own health, especially concerning thyroid, bone, or nutritional questions.