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Letter Re: Intestinal Flora and Health
Hi Jim,
I have gotten a lot of information from SurvivalBlog and thought maybe
I could contribute something in return. I recently also became a Ten
Cent Challenge subscriber and urge all of your readers to do
so.
I am not a big believer in doctors or drugs, except only when absolutely
necessary. After all, doctors are the #3 cause of deaths in the U.S.!
There has been a lot of talk in SurvivalBlog about maintaining good
health and nutrition and making sure to stock lots of vitamins and
other supplements,
and I heartily agree with this.
One thing that I have not seen mentioned a lot on your blog is how
to maintain good intestinal flora. I am no expert in this, but have
found a number of low-cost ways to do this. I am in my late 50s and
over the last few years started experiencing a lot of heartburn and
acid reflux and started looking for natural ways to handle this. What
some people do not realize is that using antacids to handle heart-burn
actually has the opposite effect in that the antacids neutralize
the acids in the stomach, but also cause the stomach to produce even
more acids to counteract their effect.
One thing that I have found that is very good for heart burn is garlic.
There is a product called Kyolic that works very well and as garlic
has many other benefits, it should be taken in some form, on a daily
basis.
However, I found for the long term, the best thing to do is to take
small amounts of raw fermented foods every day. I'm sure that one of
your readers can tell us the physiology behind this, but I only concerned
that it is workable. The following are a few suggestions:
The least expensive and easiest thing to do [to promote good intestinal
flora] is to make naturally cured sauerkraut. I found a very simple
recipe at
this
site.
This makes naturally fermented sauerkraut in about 3 days and it is
excellent. My wife is German and she says it is as good as what she
used to eat at home. In order to benefit from all of the beneficial
enzymes and bacteria, I eat it raw.
There is another variation on sauerkraut called cabbage rejuvelac,
which was developed by Dr. Gray many years ago. The recipe can be found
at
this site. Instead of eating the
fermented cabbage, you drink the liquid that it was made in.
There are also a number of sites that have recipes for Ann Wigmore's
wheat rejuvelac and I have not tried any of these yet, but I suspect
they give similar benefits.
I also regularly make kefir [cheese], as this is easily made from cow
or goat milk and does not require any special equipment. Kefir grains
can be
purchased from Marilyn
the Kefir Lady. Kefir grains last pretty much forever,
in fact they keep growing and I have to periodically give some away.
Marilyn also has recipes on her site for making kefir cheese.
I also make fresh yogurt and buy the starter from Cheesemaking.com.
My favorite product of theirs is the kefir culture. This sets up like
yogurt, but I much prefer the flavor to the
other yogurt cultures that they sell. It also doesn't require any special
equipment and can be cultured at room temperature. This differs from
the kefir made with kefir grains in that the kefir
made with kefir grains is much more liquid than that made with kefir
culture.
I also recently found an interesting site: http://bodyecology.com/
where there are recipes for raw cultured vegetables. While I have not
tried any of the recipes yet, I plan to quite soon.
BTW, I do not have any affiliation with any of the above web site.
I'm just a satisfied customer. I hope this is of interest. Best Regards,
-
Kurt
