Alkaline FAQ: Alkaline Diet and Mucous

alkaline-diet-mucous

Hi guys

After reading my Ultimate Acid/Alkaline Food Charts one of the questions I had was with regards to allergies & mucous from foods. I thought it would be good to share my in-depth answer with you all!

Hello Ross,

I am guessing that you must be very busy and probably get lots of emails, so am not sure if you are able to reply or not. However, thought I would give it a go.

I have a family (5 young children) and one of my sons has a lot of mucous.

It is evident in his sinuses and face is quite flushed and I can literally feel it when I massage his face (which I do from time to time as it affects his eyes and makes them painful). He also has a lot of pain in various parts of his body – inflammation is my guess as we have been unable to pin it down to anything else. My other children show some signs of mucous and acid elimination as well (e.g. skin rashes). I have been at a loss to know what is causing the excess mucous as they are quite active and relatively “healthy” eaters (that is they consume quite a bit of fruit, raw and cooked veggies, etc.).

However, it recently came to my attention that “acid foods” are contributors to excess mucous and they certainly have some of this in their diet as well (e.g. bread – although its generally home made from wholemeal flour, biscuits and slices, cereals, eggs, meat)…

I proposed to my wife recently that we should adopt an alkalising diet for my son’s sake (for 3 months, say) and then transition to something quite sustainable like 80:20 (alkaline to acid). My wife is quite supportive but sees it as a big hurdle. All she can think of is that we will be hungry and wanting something more substantial…

I think it would help us if we were confident that we’ll see a change in my son’s (and our own) health by adopting alkaline food. My wife is a chef and likes to cook. If she is confident that alkaline food will make a significant difference, she’s more likely to experiment and have a good time doing this, rather than seeing it as a difficult process.

In your experience, have you seen / heard of significant process in reducing mucous and associated problems when people adopt alkaline foods? Do you think it is advisable to go the full hog for a period of time, then transition to something a bit more sustainable (e.g. a small amount of meat, whole wheat foods, etc.)?

Sorry about the lengthy email. I’d appreciate any advice that you can provide. I recognise that you “don’t provide professional / medical advice, etc., etc.” but I have generally found that kind of advice is not helpful anyway.

My Answer:

No worries on emailing and, while you guessed right I do get a LOT of emails, I am passionate about helping.

Your son’s mucous issue, I believe, will be significantly helped by following a more alkaline diet. Of course, I legally cannot promise anything or give anything that could be considered a diagnosis, but my experience and the experience of lots of people I have worked with, supported and who have been on my course have all had great results with mucous, inflammation and sinus issues.

There are several potential underlying causes – but the bottom line is this – the alkaline diet will significantly reduce such intolerance as none of the most common foods that cause these reactions are alkaline!

So speaking not from an allergy perspective, but from an alkaline diet and nutrition perspective – dairy is a massive cause of excess mucous.
You seem very knowledgeable about nutrition so I don’t want to seem like I am telling you stuff you already know – but the body eliminates acids and toxins as best it can through different methods, the skin (sweat and dead cells), urine, feces, our breath and our nose (by binding up toxins in mucous and eliminating it). With dairy the primary way is through mucous and the response time is very short. Have you ever had a big dairy meal for dinner and woken up needing to blow your nose? This used to happen to me all the time (back before I started alkalising) and I always wondered why. The correlation was very clear when I stopped eating crap and drinking wine until 1am most nights. As if by magic I stopped waking up feeling like I had a cold.

But I digress…

I don’t think the point of this email is to educate you further about the alkaline diet as such, more to reassure you that you can do it, that you won’t go hungry and that it won’t be too shocking on yours or your family’s lifestyle.

Here are my suggestions, but please do not think I am just trying to push a heap of products on you, it’s not my intention:

1. Start slowly. You mentioned in your email that you wanted to live alkaline and then maybe step back to 80/20. This will be very, very hard to sustain.

The alkaline diet is 80/20 and often 70/30 works best for some people. I would start out by just sticking to the four key principles I set out on my beginners guide page here: https://liveenergized.com/alkaline-diet-guidelines.php

2. For recipes, there are heaps on my blog here – Alkaline Recipe Centre

But I really do recommend you look into getting my Alkaline Diet Recipe System. If your wife loves to cook and wants hearty, filling meals (that are also alkaline) then this is a great buy

3. On top of the suggestions on the first link up there, try to eliminate dairy for a couple of weeks to see the effect. If you work on just eliminating this for now, it won’t be too much of a shock to your lifestyle but it could make a big difference.

4. Water: hydration is hugely important, and I recommend you check out my hydration cheat sheet here which will show you how to easily get enough each day.

I hope this is all useful to you. Let me know how you get on!
Ross

Related Resources

Definitive List of Alkaline Foods
The Five Biggest Myths of the Alkaline Diet
The Alkaline Diet Simplified


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  1. Marjoi Reply

    Hello,
    I have recently started a alkaline diet and I have noticed I have been draining so much mucus from my nose to the point where my nose is in pain from constantly pushing out the mucus. I am unclear if this is just a cold or because I started an alkaline diet and my body is removing mucus. I have been like this for almost a week and a half, and have been eating alkaline meals for three weeks. Is this A result of eating alkaline meals ?

    • ross Reply

      Your body is definitely letting go of the mucus. This can be exacerbated if you’ve previously been consuming a lot of dairy, gluten and sugar.

  2. anci Reply

    Interesting article, thank you for sharing with us.

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