I would like to share with you a note that I received today.  This has a little bit to do with me, but it is also some incredible science about what leafy greens do for you.  Thank you Dr. Perry Chinn for sharing.  This means so much to me.

Hi Sarahlee,

 

I was pleased to run across your book the other day in a second hand book shop.  I am a bit of a voracious reader, love the outdoors and it (your book River House) caught my eye.

 

 I thought I would write as I thought you might be interested in the interesting parallel between your running of the rivers, the passion you have for “keeping the earth’s arteries clean” and your current mission of providing organic produce to the central Oregon area.

 

One of my passions is nutrition, particularly involving the science of nitric oxide.  I have been formulating nutritional products for a few years and the central focus of my product work and my books is the nitric oxide science.  You may be aware of it (Nobel Prize for physiology in 1998), hopefully you are, however it is simply the ongoing study of how this simple molecule (normally produced primarily by the one cell layer thick lining of our blood vessels) is necessary to preserve not only our heart and circulatory health, but also the health of our immune response…and actually a vast number of physiological processes in the human body.

 

OK…I’ll get to my point.  We get a tremendous amount of the substrates or nutritional precursors for the production of nitric oxide (NO) in the body by consuming green leafy vegetables.  We as humans cannot readily metabolize the nitrates (in things like kale, spinach, arugula, bok choy, etc…) of these foods so we rely on the bacteria in our mouths to symbiotically break the nitrates into nitrites which when subjected to the normal amount of acid in our stomach further break down into NO via nitrous oxide.  What we do not readily use is recycled into nitrites and nitrites and pooled in our blood, muscles, interstitial fluid, skin, etc. to maintain NO levels and healthy cardiovascular system, nerve function, immune response, etc…

 

Stay with me for a minute…it gets (more) interesting here….and this is the analogy that matches your life and life work.  The primary factory for production within the blood vessel walls needs a healthy system to work with…AND it needs something called shear effect. 

 

“Shear effect” is simply the fluid (blood) in our blood vessels rushing past the vessel wall stimulating the production of nitric oxide.  Like a river rushing to the sea to keep our internal “planet” healthy….If we dam the rivers, our ecosystems stagnate, the community sickens and can eventually die.  In a holographic universe sort of way, it works just the same in the tiny tributaries with us…. When we exercise the blood gets flowing faster…and if the nutrition is there, the NO gets produced.  This is how exercise (in a large part) keeps our heart healthy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You have moved from a passion of running rivers, advocating the health of the circulation of our planet….to doing the same thing…but from the inside!  The organic green leafies that you advocate for and grow…when consumed by people who will exercise to any degree…create an effect that restores our internal nutritional dependent ecosystem…

Anyway…hope I didn’t bore or lose you here….I was just struck with the incredibly fascinating parallel between what you and I do and even more so…the irony/synchronistic, maybe partly unconsciously-intentional path of your life in serving the health of our planet….inside and out…by keeping the life-blood of the planet moving, inside and out.

Thanks for reading my ramblings….I’ll get back to your book….

In service and wellness,

 

Dr. Perry Chinn, D.C.