Spinach

Greens When we hear the advice, “Eat your veggies,” we often think of classic dinnertime side dishes like carrots, broccoli, peas, and green beans. Meanwhile, salad greens, including spinach and medicinal lettuces in particular, deserve accolades for the power they hold to restore your health. Far from blasé, salad greens are vegetable and leafy green royalty. Some of the other leafy greens and leafy reds used in salads include Swiss chard, mâche, arugula, mustard greens, watercress, kale, radicchio, endive, frisée, red cabbage, sprouts, microgreens, and leafy green herbs such as parsley, cilantro, and dandelion greens. You’ll find more information about numerous leafy greens throughout this book: For kale, collard greens, broccoli greens, brussels sprouts, arugula, cabbage, and more and “Cruciferous Vegetables” For radish greens, see “Radishes” For sprouts and microgreens Find dandelion greens, parsley, and cilantro, plus more leafy green herbs in the “Herbs and Spices” and “Wild Foods” sections. One common misunderstanding is that eaten raw, salad greens, labeled “roughage,” are difficult to digest. Some people don’t think “roughage” is digesting because whenever they eat a leafy green, they feel it in their gut. They think that because they’re feeling it, the green hasn’t digested. On the contrary, spinach and lettuce are practically predigested and therefore require very little work on the part of your digestive system. Lettuce can be digesting fine and feel like it’s not digesting because it’s touching the linings of a sensitive, inflamed intestinal tract. The leaves of medicinal lettuces and other salad greens scrub and massage the linings of your stomach, small intestine, and colon, loosening old, trapped bad bacteria and toxic yeast, mold, and other types of unproductive fungus, along with debris and pockets of waste matter so they can be carried out, making elimination very productive. Discomfort from eating raw salads with lots of lettuce and other leafy greens is usually due to sensitive nerves lining the digestive tract, sensitive vagus nerves, or inflammation in the intestinal tract; or the simple sensation of fiber doing its job to “sweep out the chimney.” Or discomfort after eating a salad could come from salad ingredients to which someone is sensitive because the ingredients are highly inflammatory—for example, canola oil or mayonnaise in the salad dressing or an aged cheese shaved on top of a salad. If salad discomfort describes you, add butter leaf lettuce, red leaf lettuce, and/or spinach to your daily diet in small amounts and experiment with cycling out inflammatory salad ingredients. Instead of causing digestive difficulty, leafy greens are wonderful healers of intestinal disorders over time. Leafy greens help to feed good microorganisms inside the gut. They also increase beneficial hydrochloric acid levels that make the stomach composition more alkaline, which in turn kills off unproductive bacteria someone may have just been exposed to through food or another exposure source. Hydrochloric acid levels increased in this way keep bad bacteria that is living in the small intestinal tract from proliferating and growing out of control. When this unproductive, bad bacteria multiplies, on the other hand, bad acids responsible for GERD and other forms of acid reflux can occur. Types of bacteria that leafy greens help to reduce are H. pylori, E. coli, Streptococcus, Staphylococcus, and C. difficile, which are often responsible for inflammation, scar tissue, and stomach ulcers. Leafy greens create true alkalinity in our body systems, especially the lymphatic, which can become the most acidic body system due to a barrage of chemicals, acids, microplastics, plastics, fragrances, air fresheners, cologne, perfume, scented candles, gasoline, smog, chem trails, fungicides, pesticides, toxic heavy metals, and pathogens constantly entering the lymphatic passages. Medical communities are unaware that alkalinity of the blood, organs, endocrine system, reproductive system, and central nervous system hinges completely on the lymphatic system being alkaline. Leafy greens help to expel, purge, and drain the lymphatic system of these toxins so that it can remain alkaline. This is where these greens really have a critical role in our healing process. At the same time that greens are expelling, purging, and draining the lymphatic system of these toxins, the leafy greens are also helping to purge the liver. Leafy greens also hold precious and vital mineral salts, partially composed of a group of cofactors associated with sodium in plants, such as trace bioavailable iodine, chromium, sulfur, magnesium, calcium, potassium, silica, manganese, and molybdenum, which are critical for neurotransmitter and neuron support, and are also some of the fundamental basis of building electrolytes. On top of which, leafy greens are high in plant amino acids, enzymes, vitamin A, B vitamins such as folic acid, healing alkaloids (plant compounds that repel disease), micronutrients for restoring the endocrine system, and different forms of chlorophyll and carotenes that are specific to these edible plant leaves. This unique group of nutrients works together to feed all organs and body systems, making leafy greens a foundation of our health. Leafy greens are antiviral, antibacterial, and anti-mold—and great for staving off every toxin, poison, and pathogen in the Unforgiving Six and also supporting us against adrenaline triggers and civilization sabotage. While they don’t have enough carbohydrates to sustain our energy, leafy greens cover the other side of the equation necessary to keep us alive, and to fend off disease and chronic illness. If you worry about getting enough protein, fret no more. Leafy greens have the most bioavailable and assimilable proteins you can find, readily available for your body to absorb and utilize. Leafy greens help reverse all protein-related diseases, such as gout, kidney disease, kidney stones and gallstones, gallbladder disease, hepatitis C, lymphedema, connective tissue damage, osteopenia, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, heart disease, and more. At some point in time, these issues get partially triggered from protein sources that are not breaking down or assimilating and instead sit in the gut rotting and putrefying, feeding disease-causing bacteria, which then leads to additional health problems. The next time you hear someone refer to a salad as “rabbit food,” remember what you’ve just read. Leafy greens are anything but a joke. A leafy green that stands apart from the rest is spinach. Spinach is a thick-body green, where most varieties of spinach have wide plant cells that hold more mineral-rich hydrobioactive water. Some spinach varieties are so thick and juicy, they practically melt in the mouth in their raw state. With higher water content than most other greens saturating spinach’s plant cells, spinach breaks down easily and can be blended into a rich base, as it is in Spinach Soup. Medical Medium Spinach Soup is a healing tool that has been given to thousands of people for well over 35 years. Since Spinach Soup was included in the first book in this series, Medical Medium, it has reached the chronically ill in the wider world. In these last 10 years, Medical Medium Spinach Soup has become a foundational missing piece that has changed lives around the globe and helped people rise out of the ashes of sickness. You may be a reader who is familiar with this Spinach Soup. If you’re not familiar, you can give it a try with the recipe in the pages to come. Most varieties of spinach have less fiber than cruciferous greens and even some lettuces. Less fiber is not a shortcoming for spinach. It still has plenty of rich, nutrient-filled fiber—an amount that means spinach is even easier to break down, assimilate, absorb, and digest than most all other greens. Replacing some of spinach’s fiber is a higher level of proteins—proteins that require very little digestion. The protein in spinach still has the great chance of being utilized and distributed throughout the body. This allows someone with a weak digestive system and problems with low gastric juices, a weakened liver, and an inflamed intestinal tract to break down and benefit from spinach’s protein, amino acids, and many other nutrients. Spinach is far from a shrinking violet when it comes to nutrition. It’s one of the greens that carries a high antioxidant count. Spinach contains well over a dozen varieties of antioxidants and a high amino acid count, with vitamins, various other nutrients, phytochemical compounds, omega-3s, and one of the most important aspects of spinach’s healing repertoire: trace mineral salts. Spinach is one of the top trace mineral salt–containing foods in the world. These trace mineral salts in spinach help restore burnt-out gastric glands, help raise hydrochloric acid (HCl), and have the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier. Spinach’s trace mineral salts enter the brain with ease, helping to restore neurons and replace some missing neurotransmitter chemicals. Spinach is high in plant hormones, and the combination of these plant hormones with trace mineral salts can create a foundation for a depleted or missing neurotransmitter chemical, essentially becoming a building block for these neurotransmitter chemicals to rebirth. Just like any beautiful, healing, life-saving tool on Planet Earth, spinach usually gets attacked because some dark force somewhere misunderstands it and wants to take it from the people who need it the most. This is the case with the oxalic acid (oxalate) scare. To begin with, oxalate fear developed as a theory because there were no answers for chronic illness. Oxalates are in all foods, plant and animal kingdom alike. All vegetables have oxalates. No one would know if they’re oxalate-sensitive because no formal, true understanding, study, or test has ever determined how it’s even possible. People do not eat enough spinach in a lifetime—even if they eat Spinach Soup every day—to pose a problem as far as what this theory dictates. If you’re someone who has heard you’re not supposed to eat spinach raw because of oxalates and instead you’re supposed to cook spinach if there are oxalic sensitivities, this is incorrect information. The truth is, if anyone were sensitive to oxalic acid, it would be from the cooking process of any food, because the oxalic acid’s chemistry has been altered from cooking. Even though still harmless, this would be the more plausible theory— although still only a theory. Oxalic acid is a phytochemical compound that, in its raw, natural state contributes to healing the body. Eating your spinach raw, even if it’s just one spinach leaf a day, is going to be highly beneficial for healing. Spinach is a leafy green that allows us to consume larger quantities than any other Healing food that is very important to get more into us for healing