In this post, we will examine the necessity of adding two key foods to our diets: bone broth and cultured or fermented foods. These miraculous foods work in harmony to achieve much greater healing together than either of them could produce alone.
As explained, inflammation occurs when the gut barrier is breached, and foreign particles get through the intestinal lining into the bloodstream, alerting the immune system to mobilize. The resulting diseases include digestive disorders, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, lupus, allergies and asthma.
Typical treatment is to suppress the immune response and dampen inflammation. This seems, to me, like trying to shoot the border patrol when the Great Wall is breached. That might work for the present, but wouldn't it be better in the long run to fix the rifts in the wall?
It is in the repair of the gut lining that bone broth and fermented foods are so brilliant. Broth made from real bones - not just water flavored by MSG - is rich in glutamine and chondroitin sulfate, the very raw ingredients needed for a thick, healthy mucus. These raw building blocks are like the lime and clay in cement, and therefore indispensible in making a concrete barrier.
It is in the "cement" of the broth-produced gut lining that probiotic "gravel" lodges. Probiotics, of course, not only are an integral part of the immune system, they are a vital part of digestion itself, actually helping to break down food and transport it across the gut membrane, like convoys importing essential nutrients across the border.
These probiotics come from cultured dairy products such as yogurt, kefir and buttermilk. They are also abundant in traditionally fermented or pickled foods.
Probiotics lose their home when the gut lining is compromised by stress or disease. But they, like the membrane, are nourished by glutamine and chondroitin sulfate. As they are fed, these helpful bacteria continue stimulate the production of a healthy mucosal layer so that even more probiotics can colonize the digestive system. Thus, the more broth and ferments we eat, the healthier we will be.
We can, as a matter of fact, just buy supplements containing glutamine, chondroitin sulfate and probiotics. But I, personally, would rather eat foods than take them in capsule form. I believe in a divine creator who provided for our needs in such a way that even pre-industrial man could be healthy. Rather than re-invent the wheel, I want to return to it.
Coming next: easy recipes for bone broth and home-pickled vegetables.
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