Stay Alkaline Eating Green Leafy Vegetables

Green leafy vegetables are a natural very concentrated source of vitamins and minerals. They have a huge ROI in terms of calories ingested for maximum nutrition.  They are worth almost zero calories.

Leafy greens are also a rich source of minerals including calcium, potassium and magnesium. In terms of vitamins they include K, C, E and many of the B vitamins. They provide a variety of phytonutrients including beta-carotene, lutein, and zeaxanthin, which protect our cells from damage and our eyes from age-related degenerative diseases.

Eating Leafy Greens Prevents Eye Problems

Lettuce

In fact green leafy vegetables may be the best medicine when it comes to slowing down the progress of age related macular degeneration.  Leafy greens are an abundant source of  lutein which  is found in the macula of the eye. This is not a substance that is produced naturally by the body but it is found in all leafy greens.  The highest sources of lutein include kale, spinach, collard, mustard greens, Swiss chard, chicory, escarole, and turnip greens. Eye experts say that eating five or more servings of these per week with at least half a cup per serving at every meal can slow the progression of many age related eye diseases.

First of all the darker the greens are, the more lutein and vitamins the vegetable is likely to contain. So if you don’t like eating salad keep in mind that the darker the green, the better it is for you.

Leafy Greens Are a Rich Source of Vitamin K

Dark leafy greens are also an abundant source of Vitamin K which performs a plethora of miracles inside the body including

Protecting bones from osteoporosis

Reducing calcium and arterial plaque in arteries

Reducing the inflammation of arthritis

Preventing diabetes

Vitamin K also plays a vital role when it comes to regulating blood clotting so wounds may heal faster if your body is well stocked with it.

Are you on a diet that requires that you spare pouring on the salad dressing?  Ironically you must eat your greens with salad dressing or a little bit of oil or you will not reap the benefits of vitamin K. That is because it is a fat-soluble vitamin.

However despite the fact that you have to eat them with a bit of oil leafy green vegetables are the perfect diet food. They are counted among the foods that are low glycolic and low carbohydrate. One of the benefits of eating leafy greens is that they have very little effect on blood sugar because they take so long to digest.

Adding Greens to Your Diet

It’s easier then you think to add the benefits of leafy greens to your diet.

You can eat leafy green vegetables as part of salad but you can also fry it in a bit of oil or steam it.  You can also drop a few leaves of spinach or kale into any kind of soup that you are making – this is one way to make canned soup more nutritious. Just remember that if you do eat your leafy greens raw or steamed to add a touch oil so your body will be able to absorb the Vitamin K.

For more information about the Healthy & Active Program please visit our website at www.healthy-active.com. You may also call us in Toronto at (41) 440-2217 and ask for Adrienne Wright Bulow or Dr. Michael Rahman or email us at adrienne@healthy-active.com.

You Body Is Naturally Meant to Be Alkaline!

A huge component of the Healthy & Active Program is all about keeping your body’s pH in balance.  The term pH stands for the word “potent” and the H is the chemical symbol for hydrogen and how hydrogen behaves in your body is absolutely essential to hyour health.

Your Body is More Alkaline Than Acid

In order for the body to remain healthy and alive, your body keeps a delicate and precise balance of blood pH at 7.365, which is slightly alkaline. The body does whatever it has to in order to maintain this balance, including making us seriously ill in order to help us dispel the acid.

The problem is that most people have what can only be described as incredibly acid lifestyles. Acid is produced in your body whenever you have stress, upset emotions and when the food you eat is acid forming. The acid is only neutralized by alkaline substances.  The exces acid is stored in your fat cells and in order to try and control this your body will leach calcium, an alkaline substance,  from your bones in an attempt to stabilize your overall pH level..

The typical North American lifestyle diet is very acidic which puts a strain on all of your systems and organs and causes a lot of disease.

The Goldfish In Dirty Water Analogy

The author, Dr. Robert O. Young who wrote The pH Miracle: Balance Your Diet. Reclaim Your Health and who is at the forefront of research on the effects of the acid/alkaline balance in the human body, uses a “goldfish in the aquarium” anaology to describe how Imbalanced blood pH ruins our health. 

“Pretend you had a goldfish in a bowl, and one day you saw the goldfish was beginning to look very unhealthy. You also notice that the water is a little dirty.

Chances are it's the water that's making the fish unhealthy, not the fish itself. When you change the water, the fish will get healthier. The fact that the goldfish is unhealthy is actually a symptom of the unhealthy environment. Not the problem. “[1]

Our bodies are more than seventy percent Water! And most of the time because of our diets, emotions and lifestyles, the "water" in our body is over-acidic, and to put it simply: toxic. Yet, even knowing this, modern day establishment medicine puts much more attention on fighting the symptoms, and not recognizing the root of the problem.

Acidity Is An Epidemic

It is a real challenge in these hectic times to keep our bodies in the proper pH balance and the result is that we often blow our metabolisms out so they do not function properly any more. This does not happen over night but rather, over a period of years.

Our bodies produce acid all of the time. During the digestion process (though to a lesser degree on an alkaline diet), respiration, normal metabolism, and cellular break-down.

Before you even account for what happens while you breathe, digestion and metabolism add enough acid to your body to significantly affect its pH, potentially decreasing it by as much as 2 points. That means that unless we help our bodies cope productively with these acid by-products, and/or if we overwhelm the body's ability to do so by piling on acidic food, drink, and behaviour, we are fated to be fat, sick and tired.

This is where a change in diet and lifestyle can be enormously helpful. It is possible to reverse your pH from acidic to alkaline. For more information about the Healthy & Active Program please visit our website atwww.healthy-active.com. You may also call us in Toronto at (41) 440-2217 and ask for Adrienne Wright Bulow or Dr. Michael Rahman or email us at adrienne@healthy-active.com.

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[1]  Sourced fom Robert O. Young, Shelly Redford Young. The pH Miracle: Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health. Grand Central Life and Style. 2010