The benefits of apple
cider vinegar (ACV) have been recognized for a long time. For more than 10,000
years, people have used vinegar in one form or another as both a food and a
medicine for themselves and their animals. It's intriguing to think that in
today's computerized, sophisticated world, we're still using one product that
was discovered – quite by chance – so many millennia ago, when it was discovered
that a cask of wine gone past its time had turned into a wonderful new product.
The ancients were quick to explore the remarkable versatility of vinegar. In 5,000 B.C. the Babylonians were fermenting – in commercial production – the fruit of date palms to make date vinegar, and besides consuming it also used it as a preservative. The Ancient Egyptians sang the praises of vinegar as far back as 3,000 B.C. One Egyptian jar dating back to 8,000 B.C. was used to contain vinegar. Records show that the Egyptians were using ACV not just as an antiseptic, but as a weight loss agent as well. In later times, Cleopatra demonstrated vinegar's solvent property by dissolving precious pearls in it to win a wager that she could consume a fortune in a single meal.
In ancient Greece, Hippocrates strongly advocated drinking vinegar for his patients as an energizing tonic and a healing elixir. Oxymel, a medicine he often prescribed, was a combination of honey and vinegar; he instructed his students that they would find the drink very useful for expelling phlegm and promoting freedom of breathing. Hippocrates also used vinegar externally, for cleaning ulcerations and treating swellings, inflammations and burns. Meanwhile, the Romans made vinegar from grapes, dates, figs and rye. (The word vinegar comes from the French vin aigre; it was actually called aceto, meaning "acid," by the Romans.) Caesar's armies used sweetened, diluted vinegar called posca (poor man's wine) as a preventative medicine (much as we take vitamins today), to cook with, for its antiseptic properties against insect and snakebites and to clean their wounds after battle (a life-saving practice emulated as recently as World War I). In the second century A.D., the great physician Galen prescribed the combination of honey and vinegar for coughs. It's also recorded that Hannibal used vinegar to remove boulders in his path across the Alps by heating the boulders, then dousing them with cold vinegar, which cracked them into smaller moveable stones; and when faced with slippery snow, he used vinegar to dissolve it.
Vinegar was a common food preservation method – for vegetables as well as for fruits and meats – since ancient times. Salting, pickling and dehydrating were the only ways to preserve food for thousands of years, and a number of such recipes were developed by trial and error.
It's suggested that ACV has such curative abilities because it causes the pH (acidity) levels to become more alkaline or, in the case of too much alkalinity, more acidic. Urinalysis studies done in the 1950s by D. C. Jarvis (author of Folk Medicine) showed that pH levels in the body become highly alkaline before and during an allergy attack (contrary to what you would normally read on the subject). If you're going to try ACV for allergies, or even to prevent sickness, we suggest you do some investigation of your own by buying a pH test kit at a local pharmacy, garden nursery or even a pool supply store. You can use these kits or pH strips to test your urine to see if you are more alkaline or acid during an allergy attack, virus or bacterial infection. Once you ascertain your pH levels, you can adjust your dosage of ACV accordingly. Experiment to find the pH balance at which your body functions optimally.
ACV in itself is alkaline because of its ash content; this means if the ACV is burned, what's left over becomes ash. When you check for the pH of that ash and dissolve it with water, the content is alkaline. Whenever our body digests anything, it undergoes oxidation, which is similar to burning. The end result is that you can determine whether the end product is alkaline or acid.
ACV has anti-fungal, anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties, primarily coming from the malic acid and acetic acid portion of the vinegar. ACV acts as a buffer in the body because the acetic acid reacts with base or acid compounds to form acetate, therefore rendering them chemically bioavailable for the body's utilization. Additionally, ACV can reduce the toxicity of certain compounds by converting the toxin into an acetate compound, which is less toxic. This is why ACV works so well for insect bites and certain skin allergies.Scientists have measured 90 different bioactive substances in ACV, such as 13 types of carbolic acids, four aldehydes, 20 ketones, 18 types of alcohols and eight ethyl acetates. ACV provides enzymes and important minerals and trace elements such as potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, chlorine, sodium, sulfur, copper, iron, silicon, fluorine and other trace minerals. ACV's vitamin content includes vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin A, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, vitamin B6, beta-carotene and vitamin P (bioflavonoids). ACV also contains malic acid, acetic acid, tartaric acid, propionic acid, lactic acid, numerous enzymes and amino acids, as well as roughage in the form of potash and apple pectin.
The secret of ACV's amazing nutritional value goes beyond the nutritious apples that form its basis and comes from the fermentation of apple juice to hard apple cider, followed by a second fermentation to ACV itself. This natural product retains all the nutritional goodness of the apples from which it was made, and it's also fortified with the extra acids and enzymes produced during the two fermentation steps. It's the sum of all these ingredients that give ACV its amazing health benefits. Be aware that if you choose to buy white distilled vinegar, it has none of these beneficial constituents.