As you've probably guessed by now, plant-based green foods add a huge amount of alkalinity to the reserves of your body. Barley grass, chlorella, spirulina, vegetables such as carrot, cauliflower, broccoli, spinach, parsley and kale, along with fruits like blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, plum, pear and many others flood our bodies with chlorophyll, enzymes, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, and oxygen. Healthy alkaline cells thrive on an alkaline, oxygen-rich, plant-based diet, while unhealthy cells or viruses, bacteria and cancer hate oxygen. Pathogens prefer an acidic diet high in animal products, processed and refined foods, and synthetic chemicals.

When you eat a plant-based diet or supplement with an alkaline green drink, you assist the body in maintaining an alkaline aerobic environment. The more oxygen we get in our food, the more health we experience. Excessively acidic food creates an unhealthy cellular environment, which increases the chance of pathogen growth.

Green drinks and living foods from fruits and vegetables are the most alkaline, oxygen-rich foods you can eat. They are the prescription for optimum health because they still contain their life force.

Patient Protocols: The Basics

Since the majority of injuries in your office are muscle and joint-pain related and are chronic in nature, often attributable to improperly managed inflammation and acid / alkaline imbalances, it's best to assume that the tissues surrounding the area of main complaint are acidic and loaded with free radicals. As part of your routine treatment of inflamed tissues, it makes sense to recommend a change in dietary and lifestyle habits that favor alkalinity. Knowing that most patients are more interested in "getting out of pain" than changing their lifestyle habits in the initial phase of care, it seems most prudent and beneficial to consider offering them an easy and simple way to alkalize their body and quench free radicals as part of their initial treatment program.

Recommending on their first visit that patients begin taking a phytonutrient-rich "alkalizing" green drink powder supplement, one that contains 40-50 different superfoods and all three food groups - complex carbohydrates (fruits and vegetables), alkaline protein (pea and brown rice) and vegetable-based healthy omega oils (flax and olive oil powder) - will provide them with a substantial amount of daily antioxidants and an abundance of free electrons to help quench free radicals, decrease inflammation, alkalize surrounding tissues, provide acid / alkaline balance. Ultimately, it will help improve their health and your care outcomes.

When to Measure pH

It's typically not necessary for you to measure saliva pH in your office on the first visit to determine the need for a free radical-quenching, whole-food green drink supplement. Simply conducting the typical patient workup that includes their main complaint, history and examination should be enough for you to make the determination to add the antioxidant-rich supplement.

Patients can be sent home with the green drink supplement on that first visit along with a saliva pH test kit to record their pH over the next few weeks to monitor improvement or demonstrate the need for additional lifestyle changes. At follow-up, you can discuss results and make any protocol changes as necessary.

Supplementing With Green Drinks: Protocols

First-Visit Acute Care

Protocols: 1 scoop of green drink powder and 1 scoop of alkaline protein with powdered omega oils and vitamins and minerals, mixed together in 8 ounces of cold water and consumed within 30 minutes of rising. Consider adding a second alkaline shake in the afternoon, as well as recommending an additional pH-balancing mineral powder blend.

Ongoing Protocols: After the initial acute phase of care has been managed and the patient's saliva pH (as recorded by them) analyzed, adjust their daily alkaline-drink dosage as follows:

Saliva pH < 7.0: Two alkaline green drinks and one alkalizing mineral drink per day.

Saliva pH 7.0-7.2: One to two alkaline green drinks and one alkalizing mineral drink per day.

Saliva pH > 7.2: One alkaline green drink per day to maintain the alkalinity. Some patients might also benefit from one alkalizing mineral drink per day.

Patients with a pH that remains below 7.0, based on their saliva pH reading may need the additional help of dietary and lifestyle changes. Provide them resources to improve three critical areas of an alkaline lifestyle: how to eat, drink and exercise in a more alkaline fashion. There are alkaline lifestyle books and free e-books available for you to recommend. Help patients realize that alkalizing the tissues of the body should be an ongoing, daily event if they want to maintain health. With the onslaught of acid foods and lifestyles, the body struggles on a daily basis to maintain its delicate acid / alkaline balance; a simple whole-food antioxidant green drink can help.

Help More Patients

In chronic muscle and joint disorders, the presence of chronic inflammation, acid / alkaline imbalance and oxidative stress in the myofascial tissues are inseparable; you cannot have one without the others. Therefore, to correctly heal chronic muscle and joint problems, you should monitor a patient's saliva pH and offer an antioxidant-rich, alkalizing green drink supplement that manages the metabolic factors of chronic inflammation and free-radical damage.

Dr. Donald L. Hayes, DC is a clinician, educator and author of several books, including Lifestyle Wellness and, along with Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Nutritionist: Why Most Healthcare Practices Don't Work and What to Do About It. He is founder and president of the Greens First line of nutritional products and the Lifestyle Wellness Total Health Improvement Program. He can be reached at 866-410-1818 or through www.greensfirst.com.