Leafy greens get a little bit of attention in health circles, but for most people, they are not ever given a thought. If anything, the focus is on vegetables and rarely leafy greens. Whichever diet you subscribe to—vegan, paleo, vegetarian, keto or just a standard American diet—if you’re not getting enough leafy greens, the future of your health is in jeopardy. That might seem like a strong statement, but it’s the truth. If you’re not consuming enough raw leafy greens regularly, you will eventually experience some health challenges. Raw leafy greens, such as lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, mâche, watercress, collard greens, purslane and kale, are that critical for our wellbeing. 

Source of Elevated Biotics & Enemy To Bad Bacteria

Still undiscovered by research and science, elevated biotics are a type of microorganism found on raw leafy greens that I brought to light in Medical Medium: Secrets Behind Chronic and Mystery Illness and How to Finally Heal. These microorganisms are responsible for producing the ultimate methylated form of B12 that absorbs into the channels of your body and finds its way back to your liver when called for. As I share in Medical Medium Liver Rescue: Answers to Eczema, Psoriasis, Diabetes, Strep, Acne, Gout, Bloating, Gallstones, Adrenal Stress, Fatigue, Fatty Liver, Weight Issues, SIBO & Autoimmune Disease, “this B12 is the liver’s number-one most important mortar to hold together all the bricks that build the castle of your health. When there’s enough of it, the liver stores ample amounts to send into the bloodstream as an assistant to almost every vitamin, mineral, and other nutrient that it releases to aid your body in any way. It’s the B12 that makes everything go right”. To understand where to find these elevated biotics and exactly how they work in the body to perform critical functions, you can read Life-Changing Foods and Liver Rescue. These elevated biotics on unwashed (or very lightly washed), organic, raw leafy greens also help to repopulate your intestinal tract with good bacteria. 

Additionally, raw leafy greens sweep the walls of the intestines, gently massaging your duodenum, small intestine, and colon, clearing away bad bacteria and rancid fats and proteins that have gone undigested for years. This build up is part of the reason someone can experience bloating or gastritis—and simply taking a probiotic isn’t going to fix it. Probiotics don’t kill bad bacteria. They don’t kill streptococcus or E.coli. A high quality probiotic definitely has a place in health, but they don’t do even a fraction of the healing work that elevated biotics do. The trace minerals found in leafy greens are prebiotics that feed good bacteria and kill off bad bacteria. 

If your stomach feels uncomfortable when you eat raw leafy greens, it means you have colonies of bad bacteria that have been building up in your gut, elevating levels of inflammation, and over sensitizing the nerves of your intestinal lining. This translates to intestinal discomfort whenever you eat anything that’s not soft, smooth and fiberless, like a piece of white bread, an egg or plain chicken. These foods sit in the stomach and become gooey, making you feel you’re digesting them well, when, in truth, you’re actually not digesting them well because these particular foods don’t digest well in general. They are sticky foods and hang around in the intestines. 

Due to this sensitivity, when you eat something that isn’t totally soft and smooth and contains fiber, such as lettuce or kale, and you experience some discomfort or symptoms, the leafy green appears to be the problem food. But in reality it’s just because you have sensitive nerves that you feel these foods moving through your intestines. Raw leafy greens and other healing foods are actually helping to clean away the build-up of bad bacteria and rancid fats and proteins that are causing you to be sensitive in the first place. Eating foods like grass fed butter, eggs, and cheese, while soft and smooth feeling, only propagate the bad bacteria causing these issues. You can understand more of the reasons why these foods are best avoided if you have any chronic symptom or illness in Liver Rescue. 

Another element is that when you’re stressed, your adrenals purge and flood your body with adrenaline. That adrenaline gets into the intestinal tract and destroys good bacteria and microorganisms in the gut, creating a playground for bad bacteria.

Mineral Salts, Electrolytes, and Vitamins

Leafy greens hold precious and vital mineral salts that are critical for our health. As I share in Life-Changing Foods, “for our bodies to function optimally, we need to have enough mineral salts in our diets. Leafy greens such as spinach provide bioavailable forms of potassium, sodium, and chloride that mean everything when it comes to keeping our systems strong so we can fight off the Unforgiving Four (see Life-Changing Foods to learn about these four factors that cause illness and symptoms today) and other invaders. Leafy greens are also rich in trace mineral salts that contain particularly bioavailable forms of the minerals that the body craves (and that science has not yet discovered).

Mineral salts allow information to travel throughout the body so it can keep itself in balance no matter what’s occurring. They are instrumental in the electricity created by the heart and brain that governs all the other organs in the body. Mineral salts keep the heart pumping and create the neurotransmitters needed to take information from point A to point B in the brain—that is, from neuron to neuron. Mineral salts keep the kidneys and adrenals functioning and create hydrochloric acid in the gut so that your body can break down and assimilate what you eat.

Mineral salts are also temperature-regulating for the entire body; they stop us from overheating and prevent us from getting cold. Without mineral salts, we would be constantly susceptible to dehydration, severe edema, and unproductive diuretic conditions. They are that integral to keeping you alive and well so that you’re in the best place to deal with whatever comes your way. 

The sodium cluster salts in celery juice, which are a subgroup of sodium, are a special and powerful example of how healing mineral salts are. Sixteen ounces of celery juice on an empty stomach in the morning specifically targets bad bacteria, destroying it so the dead bad bacteria can then become a food source for good bacteria to feed off of. While celery is an herb, it warrants mentioning here because it is such a powerful healing food. To ensure you receive its benefits, you have to know how to drink it in the right way, which is what I describe in Medical Medium Celery Juice: The Most Powerful Medicine of Our Time Healing Millions Worldwide. Raw leafy greens contain their own types of mineral salts and different leafy greens can contain different minerals. For example, spinach contains trace bioavailable iodine, chromium, sulfur, magnesium, calcium, potassium, and manganese, all critical for neuron support. Even if you drink celery juice, you still need your leafy greens.

Leafy greens are critical forms of electrolytes. Vitamin A, B, folic acid, healing alkaloids, disease fighting compounds, and micronutrients for restoring the endocrine system can all be found in leafy greens. These powerful foods provide a unique group of nutrients that feed all organ systems. Without leafy greens, the rest of your diet just won’t be enough to keep you healthy, especially considering the types of viruses and bacteria we face today, which cause symptoms such as headaches, tingles and numbness, body aches and pains, fatigue, brain fog, and many more. 

Bioavailable Protein

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 take up. Leafy greens help reverse all protein-related diseases, such as gout, kidney disease, kidney stones, gallstones, gallbladder disease, osteopenia, osteoporosis, and heart disease. Protein not breaking down can contribute to these diseases and cause deterioration of the body.

Juicing Leafy Greens

One fantastic way to get the benefits of leafy greens is to juice them. Try juicing some celery and/or cucumber with leafy greens like spinach, kale or romaine, and some apple, lemon and ginger if you like. If you’re wondering why you should juice your greens when your ancestors were simply picking them from the garden and eating them, the answer is simple—we are living in a different world now. The toxins, pollutants, viruses and bacteria that we are up against now are so much worse than they’ve ever been. Bad bacteria are building up in our digestive tracts by the millions. Streptococcus, E.coli, C. diff, staph, and even bad fungus; they sit inside our intestinal tracts, thriving and taking up space, making it harder to absorb the nutrients we need. We also have sluggish and stagnant livers that are overburdened by toxins and pathogens, which means they aren’t functioning optimally. Plus we are loaded with toxic heavy metals and viruses. 

Juicing increases the potency and the quantity of the critical nutrients we receive from raw leafy greens and helps to replenish deficiencies. It also takes out some of the work for your digestive system. Freshly made juice with raw leafy greens is essentially pre-digested, making it a liquid infusion for your cells that’s easily absorbed. 

If you’re afraid of raw vegetables and salads because you find them irritating to the gut, that probably means you have a hypersensitive intestinal tract. Juicing is a wonderful remedy for anyone with digestive sensitivities. Plus you can also get larger quantities of raw leafy greens into your diet with a juice than if you ate them whole or even blended them (blending is another healing way to include raw leafy greens, such as in the Medical Medium Spinach Soup). 

None of this means you shouldn’t eat your greens, but juicing can be a vital key to recovering your health and healing deficiencies. 

Cooking and Leafy Greens

Oftentimes people like to cook leafy greens, such as collard greens, spinach, bok choy, swiss chard, and kale. While these greens are incredibly healing in their raw form, it’s best to avoid cooking them. When leafy greens are steamed, sauteed, fried, roasted or cooked in any other way, it alters the naturally occurring oxalic acid (which is not at all harmful when leafy greens are raw) and makes it into a form that becomes less usable by the body. This is one reason leafy greens are best consumed raw. 

Raw Leafy Greens

Butter lettuce, arugula, mache, watercress, swiss chard, red and green leaf lettuce, romaine, spinach and kale are all alkalizing greens that make great salads. They can also be added into smoothies. Most people will find spinach is a mild addition to smoothies, sauces, dressings and raw soups. 

Most people have never eaten enough raw leafy greens, so they’re already deficient in the mineral salts and nutrients these special foods can provide. Now that you know how important leafy greens are, you can start including plenty of them every day. At a minimum, every adult should consume at least two and a half cups of chopped raw leafy greens per day. For someone with a chronic illness or symptom, much more per day would be helpful to bring back their health, along with the other healing information I share in the Medical Medium book series. A pound a day of leafy greens could be very helpful for someone in this situation. If you can’t manage it every day, take baby steps. Can you have a big green salad or my spinach soup twice a week? Can you add 2 cups of spinach into your favorite fruit smoothie? Can you have a green juice a few times per week? Start there and take it one day at a time. 

It’s also important to include certain green powder supplements for their specific healing properties and concentration of nutrients, including spirulina and barley grass juice powder. These two green powders are very special and when both are taken daily, they act as a multi-vitamin and multi-mineral that is helpful for healing and as one powerful step to assist in the prevention of future deficiencies and symptoms. My Heavy Metal Detox Smoothie is an ideal way to get these powders into your diet daily and also includes the herb cilantro and the sea leaf vegetable dulse. While these foods aren’t leafy greens, they are also vitally important. 

To understand more about how leafy greens can help you, I recommend reading Life-Changing Foods. Leafy greens help with depression, infertility, anxiety, adrenal fatigue, insomnia, skin disorders, hormone imbalances, heart palpitations, brain fog, dizziness—the list goes on. Leafy greens also help rebuild your body’s hydrochloric acid, strengthen digestion, limit pancreatic issues, and help prevent diabetes in the future. If your current diet regimen or health professional isn’t telling you to eat leafy greens, that diet is falling short. It’s important to become your own health expert and empower yourself with the information you need to heal and take care of your health in the future. Leafy greens is one great way to do that.

This item posted: 07-Jan-2020