Showing posts with label Weston A. Price Foundation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Weston A. Price Foundation. Show all posts

Monday, December 16, 2013

Bone Broth—One of Your Most Healing Diet Staples

Broth
Broth (Photo credit: beautyredefined)



By Dr. Mercola
According to an old South American proverb, "good broth will resurrect the dead." While that’s undoubtedly an exaggeration, it speaks to the value placed on this wholesome food, going back through the annals of time.
The featured article by Dr. Amy Myers1 lists 10 health benefits of bone broth. Sally Fallon with the Weston A. Price Foundation2 has previously published information about this healing food as well.
First and foremost, homemade bone broth is excellent for speeding healing and recuperation from illness. You’ve undoubtedly heard the old adage that chicken soup will help cure a cold, and there’s scientific support for such a statement.
For starters, chicken contains a natural amino acid called cysteine, which can thin the mucus in your lungs and make it less sticky so you can expel it more easily. Processed, canned soups will not work as well as the homemade version made from slow-cooked bone broth.
For best results, you really need to make up a fresh batch yourself (or ask a friend or family member to do so). If combating a cold, make the soup hot and spicy with plenty of pepper. The spices will trigger a sudden release of watery fluids in your mouth, throat, and lungs, which will help thin down the respiratory mucus so it's easier to expel.
But the benefits of broth don’t end there. As explained by Sally Fallon:3
“Stock contains minerals in a form the body can absorb easily—not just calcium but also magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulfur and trace minerals. It contains the broken down material from cartilage and tendons--stuff like chondroitin sulphates and glucosamine, now sold as expensive supplements for arthritis and joint pain.”

The Healing Influence of Broth on Your Gut

In later years, medical scientists have discovered that your health is in large part dependent on the health of your intestinal tract. Many of our modern diseases appear to be rooted in an unbalanced mix of microorganisms in your digestive system, courtesy of an inappropriate and unbalanced diet that is too high in sugars and too low in healthful fats and beneficial bacteria.
Bone broth is excellent for “healing and sealing” your gut, to use Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride term. Dr. Campbell’s GAPS Nutritional Protocol, described in her book, Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS), centers around the concept of “healing and sealing” your gut through your diet.
Broth or “stock” plays an important role as it’s easily digestible, helps heal the lining of your gut, and contains valuable nutrients. Abnormalities in your immune system are a common outcome of GAPS, and such immune abnormalities can then allow for the development of virtually any degenerative disease...

The Healing Benefits of Bone Broth

As the featured article states, there are many reasons for incorporating good-old-fashioned bone broth into your diet. The following health benefits attest to its status as “good medicine.”
Helps heal and seal your gut, and promotes healthy digestion: The gelatin found in bone broth is a hydrophilic colloid. It attracts and holds liquids, including digestive juices, thereby supporting proper digestion.Inhibits infection caused by cold and flu viruses, etc.: A study4published over a decade ago found that chicken soup indeed has medicinal qualities, significantly mitigating infection
Reduces joint pain and inflammation, courtesy of chondroitin sulphates, glucosamine, and other compounds extracted from the boiled down cartilageFights inflammation: Amino acids such as glycine, proline, and arginine all have anti-inflammatory effects. Arginine, for example, has been found to be particularly beneficial for the treatment of sepsis5 (whole-body inflammation).

Glycine also has calming effects, which may help you sleep better
Promotes strong, healthy bones: As mentioned above, bone broth contains high amounts of calcium, magnesium, and other nutrients that play an important role in healthy bone formationPromotes healthy hair and nail growth, thanks to the gelatin in the broth

Making your own bone broth is extremely cost effective, as you can make use of left over carcass bones that would otherwise be thrown away. And while the thought of making your own broth may seem intimidating at first, it’s actually quite easy. It can also save you money by reducing your need for dietary supplements. As mentioned above, bone broth provides you with a variety of important nutrients—such as calcium, magnesium, chondroitin, glucosamine, and arginine—that you may otherwise be spending a good deal of money on in the form of supplements.

Easy Chicken Broth Recipe

Both featured articles include a sample recipe for homemade chicken broth. The following recipe was provided by Sally Fallon, writing for the Weston A. Price Foundation.6 Her article also contains a recipe for beef and fish broth. (You could also use turkey, duck, or lamb, following the same basic directions.) For Dr. Myers’ chicken broth recipe, please see the original article.7
Perhaps the most important caveat when making broth, whether you’re using chicken or beef, is to make sure they’re from organically-raised, pastured or grass-fed animals. As noted by Fallon, chickens raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) tend to produce stock that doesn’t gel, and this gelatin has long been valued for its therapeutic properties.8 As explained by Fallon:
“Gelatin was universally acclaimed as a most nutritious foodstuff particularly by the French, who were seeking ways to feed their armies and vast numbers of homeless in Paris and other cities. Although gelatin is not a complete protein, containing only the amino acids arginine and glycine in large amounts, it acts as a protein sparer, helping the poor stretch a few morsels of meat into a complete meal.”
Besides that, CAFO animals are fed an unnatural diet that is not beneficial for their intestinal makeup, and they’re also given a variety of veterinary drugs and growth promoters. You don’t want any of these potentially harmful additives in your broth, so make sure to start off with an organically-raised product.
Ingredients for homemade chicken broth9
1 whole free-range chicken or 2 to 3 pounds of bony chicken parts, such as necks, backs, breastbones, and wings
Gizzards from one chicken (optional)
2-4 chicken feet (optional)
4 quarts cold filtered water
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
2 carrots, peeled and coarsely chopped
3 celery stalks, coarsely chopped
1 bunch parsley
Please note the addition of vinegar. Not only are fats are ideally combined with acids like vinegar, but when it comes to making broth, the vinegar helps leech all those valuable minerals from the bones into the stockpot water, which is ultimately what you’ll be eating. The goal is to extract as many minerals as possible out of the bones into the broth water. Bragg’s raw apple cider vinegar is a good choice as it’s unfiltered and unpasteurized.

Cooking Directions

There are lots of different ways to make bone broth, and there really isn’t a wrong way. You can find different variations online. Here, I’ll offer some basic directions. If you’re starting out with a whole chicken, you’ll of course have plenty of meat as well, which can be added back into the broth later with extra herbs and spices to make a chicken soup. I also use it on my salad.
  1. Fill up a large stockpot (or large crockpot) with pure, filtered water. (A crockpot is recommended for safety reasons if you have to leave home while it’s cooking.)
  2. Add vinegar and all vegetables except parsley to the water.
  3. Place the whole chicken or chicken carcass into the pot.
  4. Bring to a boil, and remove any scum that rises to the top.
  5. Reduce the heat to the lowest setting and let simmer.
  6. If cooking a whole chicken, the meat should start separating from the bone after about 2 hours. Simply remove the chicken from the pot and separate the meat from the bones. Place the carcass back into the pot and continue simmering the bones for another 12-24 hours and follow with step 8 and 9.
  7. If cooking bones only, simply let them simmer for about 24 hours.
  8. Fallon suggests adding the fresh parsley about 10 minutes before finishing the stock, as this will add healthy mineral ions to your broth.
  9. Remove remaining bones from the broth with a slotted spoon and strain the rest through a strainer to remove any bone fragments.

Bone Broth—A Medicinal ‘Soul Food’

Simmering bones over low heat for an entire day will create one of the most nutritious and healing foods there is. You can use this broth for soups, stews, or drink it straight. The broth can also be frozen for future use. Keep in mind that the "skin" that forms on the top is the best part. It contains valuable nutrients, such as sulfur, along with healthful fats, so just stir it back into the broth.
Bone broth used to be a dietary staple, as were fermented foods, and the elimination of these foods from our modern diet is largely to blame for our increasingly poor health, and the need for dietary supplements.
Both broth and fermented foods, such as fermented veggies, are simple and inexpensive to make at home, and both also allow you to make use of a wide variety of leftovers. When you add all the benefits together, it’s hard to imagine a food that will give you more bang for your buck.
Enhanced by Zemanta

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Bad Diet Causes Bad Behavior?

Man suffering from pellagra.
Man suffering from pellagra. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By Dr. Mercola
Your gut is quite literally your second brain, with the ability to significantly influence your mind, mood and behavior. Again and again, researchers find that depression and a wide variety of behavioral problems appear to stem from nutritional deficiencies and/or an imbalance of bacteria in your gut.
At this point, there’s simply no denying the powerful influence of the gut on both your physical and mental health. This is great news, since this places you in a distinct position of power over your and your children’s psychological health.
A recent article by the Weston A. Price Foundation,1 titled: "Violent Behavior: A Solution in Plain Sight", highlighted the impact of nutrition on brain health and behavior, reviewing the importance of a number of dietary factors, such as:
  • Fat-soluble vitamins, such as vitamins A, D3 and K2
  • Water-soluble vitamins like B1, B6 and B12
  • Minerals such as iodine, potassium, iron, magnesium, zinc, chromium, manganese
  • Specific brain nutrients like choline, ARA and DHA
The article is quite extensive and well worth reading in its entirety as it covers the nutrition-behavior connection from several different angles. In short, however, the evidence is overwhelmingly clear that our current problems with violence and other behavioral problems are rooted in our diet...
As stated by Sylvia Onusic, PhD, CNS, LDN in her article:
“[T]he fact is that a large number of Americans, living mostly on devitalized processed food, are suffering from malnutrition. In many cases, this means their brains are starving...
Making things worse are excitotoxins so prevalent in the food supply, such as MSG and aspartame. People who live on processed food and who drink diet sodas are exposed to these mind-altering chemicals at very high levels.
... Modern commentators are blind to the solution, a solution that is in plain sight: clearly defining good nutrition and putting it back into the mouths of our children, starting before they are even conceived... because food is information and that information directly affects your emotions, nervous system, brain and behavior.”

How Chronic Niacin Deficiency Can Cause Violent Behavior

Few people realize just how potent a factor nutritional deficiencies can be when it comes to behavioral difficulties and violence. Last year, I interviewed Dr. Andrew W. Saul on the topic of niacin and psychiatric health.
He has over 35 years of experience in natural health education and is currently serving as editor-in-chief of the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service. He's authored over 175 publications and 11 books, and has been named as one of the seven health pioneers by Psychology Today. He's also featured in the movieFood Matters, which I'm sure many of you have seen.
Dr. Saul is co-author of the excellent book, Niacin: The Real Story, along with one of the leading niacin researchers in the world, Dr. Abram Hoffer. Niacin, Dr. Hoffer found, may in fact be a "secret" treatment for psychological disorders, including schizophrenia, which can be notoriously difficult to address.
He performed the first double-blind, placebo-controlled nutrition studies in the history of psychiatry in the mid-1950s. Giving patients extremely high doses of niacin—as much as 3,000 mg per day—his cure rate for schizophrenia was 80 percent! At that point, the American Psychiatric Association blacklisted him, which may in part be why you’ve probably never heard of him, or his invaluable research...
A key point Dr. Saul brings up in the full interview is that certain people have what Dr. Hoffer referred to as niacin dependency, meaning they need more niacin on a regular basis. Essentially, they're beyond deficient—they're dependent on high-doses of niacin in order to remain well.

This particularly appears to be the case with mental disorders. Other researchers have since confirmed Dr. Hoffer's findings, and found that niacin can also be successfully used in the treatment of other mental disorders, such as:
Attention deficit disorderAnxietyObsessive-compulsive disorder
General psychosisDepressionBipolar disorder

Might Fermented Foods Help Prevent Memory Loss in the Elderly?

Fermented foods have been a staple in virtually all native diets, and the more I learn about fermented foods and the importance of gut health, the more convinced I get that many of our “age-related” health problems stem from lack of protective intestinal microbiota.

We have, en masse in the Western world, abandoned traditionally fermented foods and replaced them with processed foods high in sugar and grains—which feed harmful bacteria instead and promote chronic inflammation.
The effects of this dietary trade-off can be seen in our worsening rates of behavior problems in children, depression, and mental decline in the elderly. It’s worth reiterating that memory loss is NOT a “normal” part of aging at all. It used to bequite normal for seniors to be “sharp as tacks.”
In a recent study, polyamines, found in foods such as wheat germ, fermented soy, and matured cheeses,2 were shown to stave off memory decline in fruit flies.3 The researchers are now embarking on studies to see whether a polyamine-rich diet might have the same effect on humans. I believe chances are, they’ll find that this is indeed the case... Polyamines are aliphatic amines4 believed to be essential components of all living cells. Your body gets polyamines from three sources:
  1. Endogenous biosynthesis
  2. Intestinal microorganisms, and
  3. Through your diet
 As described in a 2011 report5 on polyamines in food:
“[P]olyamines are involved in the differentiation of immune cells as well as in regulation of inflammatory reactions, and they exert a suppressor effect on pulmonary immunologic and intestinal immunoallergic responses. In children, high polyamine intake during the first year has been significantly correlated to food allergy prevention...
Diet can to a certain extent regulate biosynthesis of polyamines. Thus, dietary polyamines have several important roles to play in this regard; supporting a normal metabolism and maintaining optimal health as well as regulating the intracellular polyamine synthesis. These seem to be of importance for maintaining the normal growth, maturation of the intestinal tract. Since the level of polyamines decreases with age in animal organs (brain, kidney, spleen, and pancreas), it has been suggested that maintenance of polyamine level from the diet is important to keep the functioning of various organs in the elderly.”

At Least One-Quarter of Population Have Too Little Gut Bacteria

According to recent research6, 7 from Denmark, in which they analyzed the human gut microbial composition on 292 people (169 of them obese and 123 of healthy weight), a quarter of the participants were found to have 40 percent fewer gut bacteria than the average needed for optimal health. Obese participants were particularly at risk of having too little beneficial bacteria to maintain health. Oluf Pedersen, professor and scientific director at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen told Medical News Today:8
"Not only has this quarter fewer intestinal bacteria, but they also have reduced bacterial diversity and they harbor more bacteria causing a low-grade inflammation of the body...
Our study shows that people having few and less diverse intestinal bacteria are more obese than the rest. They have a preponderance of bacteria which exhibit the potential to cause mild inflammation in the digestive tract and in the entire body, which is reflected in blood samples that reveal a state of chronic inflammation, which we know from other studies to affect metabolism and increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.
...Our intestinal bacteria are actually to be considered an organ just like our heart and brain, and the presence of health-promoting bacteria must therefore be cared for in the best way possible.”
Recent studies have repeatedly demonstrated that the makeup of your intestinal flora can have a powerful impact on your weight, and your propensity to gain or lose weight. For example, lean people tend to have higher amounts of various healthy bacteria compared to obese people. One 2011 animal study9 even suggested that daily intake of a specific form of lactic acid bacteria could help prevent obesity and reduce low-level inflammation. Probiotics have also been found to benefit metabolic syndrome, which often goes hand-in-hand with obesity. This makes sense since both are caused by a diet high in sugars, which leads to insulin resistance, fuels the growth of unhealthy bacteria and promotes chronic inflammation, and packs on excess weight.

Diet and Environmental Factors Affect Your Gut Flora

I have long been convinced of the value of regular probiotic supplementation. For nearly 20 years, I took a daily probiotic supplement but now I eat about four ounces of fermented vegetables a day that are started with our new high vitamin K2 starter culture, which will soon be available for sale. I sincerely believe that it is a profoundly wise health habit to either regularly supplement with a high quality probiotic or eat non-pasteurized, traditionally fermented foods such as:
Ideally, you want to eat a variety of fermented foods to maximize the variety of bacteria. Keep in mind that eating fermented foods may not be enough if the rest of your diet is really poor. Your gut bacteria are an active and integrated part of your body, and as such are vulnerable to your overall lifestyle. If you eat a lot of processed foods for instance, your gut bacteria are going to be compromised because processed foods in general will destroy healthy microflora and feed bad bacteria and yeast. Your gut bacteria are also very sensitive to:
  • Antibiotics
  • Chlorinated water
  • Antibacterial soap
  • Agricultural chemicals
  • Pollution

Are You Getting Enough "Brain Food"?

One nutrient in particular that is essential for optimal brain functioning is omega-3 fat. Along with probiotics for those who refuse to eat fermented foods, an omega-3 supplement is one of the few supplements I had recommended to all the patients at my clinic.
In terms of brain health, omega-3 deficiency is known to change the levels and functioning of both serotonin and dopamine (which plays a role in feelings of pleasure), as well as compromise the blood-brain barrier, which normally protects your brain from unwanted matter gaining access. Omega-3 deficiency can also decrease normal blood flow to your brain, an interesting finding given that studies show people with depression have compromised blood flow to a number of brain regions.
Could rampant omega-3 deficiency be a contributing factor to deteriorating mental health? I believe so—along with vitamin Ddeficiency, which also plays an important role.
Making matters worse, a number of foods that contain critical nutrients for optimal brain function and mood control have been "demonized" in our culture. B3- and protein-rich foods such as raw dairy products, eggs and meat have been more or less blacklisted, accused of being too high in cholesterol and fat...
I couldn’t agree more with the Weston A. Price Foundation's sentiment that the answer to so many of our health problems, both physical and psychological, are right in front of our noses—in our fridge and pantry. In addition to consuming fermented foods, eliminating most sugars and grains from your diet is also of critical importance as these will increase your risk of insulin resistance, which is also linked to psychological problems such as depression and violent behavior.



http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/09/19/bad-diet-bad-behavior.aspx  Link back to Mercola.com where the article originated.  Video from YouTube.



Enhanced by Zemanta