Saliva pH versus Urine pH

by Cee
(New York City)

Hello,

I just want to first say thank you for your very informative site. My question is this - If my saliva pH is telling me 7.0 and my urine pH is telling me 5.5, and I tested them both at nearly the same time, what does this mean? It's confusing because on one hand I would think that my saliva pH result is pretty normal but on the other hand my urine pH result is very acidic. Thanks for your help.


ANSWER


Hi Cee,

This is a common question. Your urine pH and saliva pH tell you different things about what is going on in your body.

For the sake of simplicity, let's say you are testing both your urine and saliva first thing in the morning.

Your saliva pH, if it is at 7.0, is telling you that your body has enough alkaline mineral reserves to properly digest your food.

That is exactly where you want it to be.

Your first urine of the day will almost definitely be acidic. Just how acidic will depend on the acidity/alkalinity of the food you had to eat the day before.

So don't rely too heavily on that first number.

What you want to see is your second urine reading come back up close to 7.0. That means that your kidneys are adequately flushing out the acids from the day before.

If your second urine is still quite acidic (like 5.5 would be), that means you are holding on to excess acid.

When I first started testing my pH many years ago when I was doing very poorly, my saliva would be around 5.5-6.0 and my urine wouldn't even change the color of the pH strip (which went down to 4.5!).

As I got better my saliva was the first to normalize. It took quite a bit longer for my urine pH to get to the healthy range.

This makes sense. It is much easier to replenish your mineral reserves by eating the right kind of alkaline forming foods.

Your kidneys can only process a certain amount of acid a day - you can't speed up the process that easily (see kidney functions for more info). That's because the kidneys deal with very strong acids that need to be diluted quite a bit before they can release them.

Your lungs are tasked with the easier weaker acids (which we exhale as carbon dioxide).

So if you want to help your kidneys process those acids more efficiently, you'll need to drink lots of purified water (64 oz a day minimum).

Yes, you'll pee a lot at first, but after a few days you should notice your bathroom visits going back down to normal.

Hope this helps.

Wishing you the best of health,

Melissa
Approach Wellness