Spinach has lots of essentialvitaminsand it’s low in calories, making it a popular food forweight loss.
It can be easily added to a multitude of dishes; you cancook with spinachor simply eat it raw.
It works for any meal of the day (hello, green juice).
It’s obviously a versatile food, so what’s not to love?
Is too much spinach actually bad for your health?
And in what ways does it benefit your body?
Keep reading to find out what happens to your body when you eat spinach every day.
You might be surprised at what you find out.
And that’s where antioxidants come in.
They fight those free radicals before they can bind to your skin cells and do damage.
Shapealso noted the antioxidants in spinach, calling it a “superfood” that is good for your skin.
So, eating spinach may help protect your skin from thesun.
According toWebMD, collagen prevents wrinkles and promotes skin’s elasticity, which essentially means younger-looking skin.
The vitamin C in spinach can help collagen do its job and keep your skin youthful.
Spinach contains chlorophyll, which makes it green (remember learning that in elementary school?).
Chlorophyll was found to bond to carcinogens and help the body expel them.
In addition to chlorophyll, spinach contains carotenoids, which give plants ared, orange, or yellow tint.
Either way, eating phytochemicals through spinach every day won’t hurt your health!
Another way spinach strengthens muscles is through the hormoneecdysterone.
They were also able to lift more weight after the ten weeks of the study were up.
Harvard Healthnames spinach in their list of “stone-forming” foods.
The stones continue to get bigger and then move into the urinary tract.
That’s when things get painful as the stone can lodge there and cause the urine to back up.
Harvard Healthexplained that stones happen when calcium mixes with another chemical.
Oxalate, like that found in spinach, is a common culprit.
The good news is that it usually takes a large amount of it to cause this uncomfortable side effect.
The publication also recommended drinking citrus juices like orange juice, which can aid in preventing kidney stones.
This is thanks to theglycolipidsfound in spinach because they help the body make nitric oxide,a natural vasodilator.
Blood then moves through the body easier and blood pressure is lowered, as stated by theMayo Clinic.
The nitric oxide in spinach also means you’ll have a decreased risk of developing atherosclerosis.
According to theMayo Clinic, this condition happens when cholesterol and other materials accumulate in arteries.
Sometimes, this plaque can become a blood clot.
This is obviously a serious condition, but it’s possible to prevent.
A good way to do this is by eating a healthy diet, including spinach.
According toToday, magnesium keeps blood sugar regulated, which is important to reduce your risk of developing diabetes.
According toEveryday Health, “1 cup of spinach contains 6 percent of your daily value of magnesium.”
That’s pretty significant for such a small amount of food.
That’s just another reason to choose spinach!
Fiber does this by slowing down the body’s digestion of food.
Chan School of Public Health.
Well, AsGood Foodexplained, spinach contains carotenoids, a “health promoting” phytochemical, whichact as antioxidants.
Talk about a superfood!
The lutein found in spinach also plays a role in preventing high cholesterol.
But that’s not lutein’s only role in fighting cholesterol.
It also hasanti-inflammatory properties, equipping it to battle your body’s inflammation.
And, according toHealth, high cholesterol causes an “inflammatory response” in the body.
This response makes cholesterol build up even quicker a truly vicious cycle.
Eating spinach, and therefore consuming lutein, however fights that inflammation and cholesterol cycle.
Doing so provides your body with plenty of nutrients, of course.
However, consuming too much spinach can actuallystop your body from absorbing all those good nutrients.
A little something found in spinach called oxalate.
The study asserted that high levels of oxalate prevent the body from absorbing nutritious minerals.
Can eating spinach every day prevent dementia?
A key to preventingdementia, a condition that’s resulting from damage to brain cells, is consuming antioxidants.
The researchers hypothesized that lutein was part of the reason that spinach had this positive effect on the brain.
It also happens to be a very easy solution.
Regulating blood pressure is also how potassium prevents stroke.
Eating too much sodium overwhelms the kidneys so they can’t filter it all out, according toHarvard T.H.
Chan School of Public Health.
However, more water means more blood in the body, forcing the heart to work harder.
In addition to potassium, nitrates in spinach can also work to prevent strokes, according toHarvard Health.
As it turns out, eating spinach every day can indeed helpmake you happier.
The study asserted that nutrition is closely linked to the health of the brain.
Specifically, magnesium, which can be found in spinach, helps stave off depression.
According toPsychology Today, boiled spinach has a significant amount about 160 milligrams of magnesium per cup.
