Probiotics are everywhere in the news. The little critters living in your gut have a huge amount to do with your health. The latest article I came across says that it may be a messed up gut bacteria problem that is the basic cause behind fibromyalgia. These same critters are found to be our main defense against just about every disease you can think of. So having the right good guy bacteria living inside us is crucial to our health.
The more information that comes out about these health promoting bacteria, the more the marketing engines get rolling to sell us bottles full of capsules of these good bacteria. While this is a good idea in concept, we have to look at a few facts. There are 100 trillion of these critters inside us on average. The most powerful pills full of good guy bacteria might have 50 billion bacteria in them. Taking a pill adds a tiny fraction of one percent to the existing population, so if you think you are going to change anything by popping a few pills, you are fooling yourself. To have a significant impact you would have to take hundreds of pills a day for weeks. It is a good idea, but we need to up the ante.
When scientists study populations of people loaded with good bacteria, they are studying people who have naturally fermented foods in their diet supplying these good guy bacteria several times a day in very high concentrations. Examples are cultures that eat fermented vegetables like sauerkraut, pickles, and kimchi or those that serve dairy products like yogurt and kefir or fermented drinks like cider vinegar, kombucha, and kvass – all of which are full of good cultures. The number of good guy critters in these situations is many times higher than you get from a pill.
Several years ago I visited my son Mason in Japan while he was going to school there. It was interesting that at every meal we were served several fermented vegetables of all different sorts. In this country we scarcely ever eat bacterially fermented foods. Even our yogurt usually has no live cultures in it. We are obsessed with sterilization and killing germs, because we have not figured out that our best defense against bad bacteria is good bacteria. As a consequence we have bred antibiotic resistant bacteria that nothing can kill. In fact the over use of antibiotics was recently identified by the WHO as the major threat of the next 20 years.
Our general lifestyle of over-cleanliness is hitting us in other ways as well. It has been known for many years that children raised on farms and around many pets are much less likely to suffer from asthma and allergies than kids raised in clean hygienic environments. Just last week a paper came out showing that nail biting and thumb sucking kids are less likely to suffer from allergies than their cleaner counterparts.
So the big idea here is that we need to take in lots of helpful bacteria every day in the foods and beverages we ingest. How can we do that? I have written previous posts about making your own sauerkraut as well as my recipes for almond-coconut yogurt. Ellen is fond of kimchi, but it’s too spicy for me. Plus we take several probiotic capsules every day. But how can we amp that level of probiotic consumption up even more? My latest idea – probiotic version 2.0.
A couple months ago I was looking into getting kefir grains for making water kefir, instead of kefir made with milk, since milk is off my list with the whole auto-immune thing. What held me back is that kefir does not contain the specific helpful bacteria I was looking for to heal the gut. I did some research and came to understand that if you really want to change the kinds of gut bacteria you have, you need to change what you are feeding the bacteria. A gut full of bad bacteria from eating the typical American diet full of sugar, starches, and seed oils can rapidly be changed to a whole different culture by switching to just eating vegetables and small amounts of healthy meats.
The good guy bacteria live on certain plant fibers. That is the major benefit to eating a diet high in fiber. About 30 to 50 grams of fiber a day is recommended to support a healthy gut. The average American is lucky if they get 5 grams of fiber a day. I went deeper into the research to find out exactly what fibers work the best, because 30 to 50 grams of fiber is a real challenge to get down each day and tends to create a lot of gas. I found some excellent research that told me just what I was looking for with unexpected results. The fibers most promoted currently are not the best choices.
The most potent fiber for promoting the kinds of bacteria we want in our guts is fruit pectin, such as apple pectin or citrus pectin. The second most powerful is guar gum. Down the list are fibers like inulin, resistant starch, and glucomannan. Whole grain fibers don’t even show up on the useful fiber list – so much for the FDA suggestions.
So what is Probiotic version 2.0? I have been making my non-dairy yogurt for years, so I thought what would happen if I made a water yogurt based on the potent fibers, instead of almond and coconut milk? I got the concept from water based cultures such water kefir and a Russian beverage called kvass. I searched the Internet for a good source of pectin – not an easy find for the type I needed. I already had guar gum and inulin. I also already had lots of different kinds of capsules of probiotics good for healing the gut. So I just mixed them all together with filtered water and a bit of brewers sugar for the lactobacilli culture and put it into the Mason jars I usually make my yogurt in. I shook it all up and put it into a warm water bath at 105 degrees for 12 hours, then I gave it a try!
I was very pleasantly surprised. I expected a sour flavor like vinegar, but instead got a nice, lightly sweet taste due to the stevia I had mixed into my brewer’s sugar. I could see the layer of good guy bacteria that had settled to the bottom of the jar. I expect that the amount of good guy bacteria I added at the start probably increased at least 10 fold. If nothing else Probiotic v.2.0 will save me a fortune in bottles of probiotic I buy. I just turned 1 capsule into 10 capsules worth of good bacteria. I can probably even use the last inch of my present batch to grow my next batch, just like I used to do with regular yogurt.
More importantly I now can increase my dose of good bacteria ten fold, plus add in the most potent fibers in the fermented solution that are not typically eaten by our culture to feed the good guys already in my gut. A big note here: no amount of good probiotics you take will compensate for a bad diet. To get any benefit from this you have to stop feeding the bad guys with bad food choices.
Since my first batch I have played with adding spray dried pomegranate juice for a delightful flavor as well as making a batch with the cold brew coffee I make for Ellen. We put a cup of the Probiotic v.2.0 and add a cup of water in the blender then add in some collagen based Clearvite food supplement, L-glutamine, aloe vera, our new Arthroben anti-inflammatory product, and a bit of baicalin (skullcap extract for brain inflammation). This serves us as our breakfast smoothie and holds us over until about 11:00 when we have a bowl of our vegetable stew as a snack.
I am thinking about making up some Probiotic v.2.0 kits for patients to use to make their own probiotic beverage – a jar, the fibers and bacteria food, and possibly even a starter of probiotic bacteria. All you would need to do is add water and keep it in a warm place for a day – easy to do since it is summer. It shouldn’t cost too much, and if there is interest I could then make up replacement fiber food packets to keep your Probiotic v. 2.0 going. If you are interested, email me at david@fairoakshealth.com – and if enough of you want some, I will make it up.