Many people often experience muscle soreness, joint aches, and mental fatigue after physical exercise. To relieve fatigue as quickly as possible, they tend to have a large meal of chicken, fish, meat, eggs, etc., believing that this can replenish nutrients and meet the body's needs. In fact, consuming these foods at this time not only fails to alleviate fatigue but can also have adverse effects on the body.
Human food can be divided into acidic and alkaline foods. The determination of a food's acidity or alkalinity is not based on people's sense of taste or its chemical properties when dissolved in water, but rather on the acidity or alkalinity of the final metabolic products it produces after entering the human body.
Acidic foods are typically rich in protein, fat, and carbohydrates, and contain elements like potassium, sodium, calcium, and magnesium. When metabolized in the body, they produce alkaline substances that can prevent the blood from becoming too acidic.
Therefore, sour-tasting fruits are generally alkaline foods, not acidic foods. Although chicken, fish, meat, eggs, and sugar are not sour, they are acidic foods.
A U.S. pathologist, after long-term research, pointed out that only when the body's fluids are slightly alkaline can human health be maintained. The fluids of a healthy person are slightly alkaline. After physical exercise, the feeling of muscle and joint soreness and mental fatigue is mainly caused by the extensive breakdown of sugars, fats, and proteins in the body. During this breakdown process, acidic substances such as lactic acid and phosphoric acid are produced.
These acidic substances stimulate the body's tissues and organs, causing a person to feel muscle and joint soreness and mental fatigue. If one consumes only foods rich in acidic substances like meat, eggs, and fish at this time, it will make the body fluids more acidic, which is not conducive to relieving fatigue. On the other hand, consuming vegetables, sweet potatoes, citrus fruits, and apples, due to their alkalinizing effect, can eliminate excess acids in the body, reduce the acidity of urine, increase the solubility of uric acid, and decrease the possibility of acid forming stones in the bladder.
Therefore, after physical exercise, one should eat more alkaline-rich foods, such as fruits, vegetables, and soy products, to help maintain the basic acid-base balance in the body, preserve health, and quickly eliminate fatigue caused by exercise.