5 Fermented sauerkraut benefits

What Is Sauerkraut And Why Is It A Superfood

“Let Food Be Thy Medicine And Medicine Thy Food” This is a quote from Hippocrates 130 BC. In another quote he said, “All disease begin in the gut”.  Did you know that 80% of our immune system resides in our gut? Eating fermented sauerkraut benefits that even more.

He knew that thousands of years ago, but today we have lost it. How did gut health fall so low? How did we get so far out of balance?

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Some of the contributing factors are the evolution of the modern diet, fast foods giants, processed, faked, refined, denatured foods of commerce. The introduction of steroids, antibiotics, hormones, and GMO. 

Farming methods and refrigeration have negatively impacted our foods. Further removing fermented sauerkraut benefits from the dining table.

We no longer ferment our foods!

If you’re consuming organic vegetables, roots, and herbs, believe me some of those are some powerful superfoods

If you’re eating fermented foods, taking probiotics, raw organic cheese.

 

How Do You Benefit Form Sauerkraut And Other Fermented Foods?

Why Is Sauerkraut A Superfood?

Sauerkraut is the ancient art of fermenting and pickling vegetables, that dates back thousands of years. It is a naturally occurring process that is carried out without heat or pasteurization.

The idea of culturing vegetables actually first originated as a way to preserve food so it could be stored without the need for refrigeration.

Today this raw ferment is viewed as a superfood for the digestive system, and known for its effects at reestablishing a balanced inner ecology. Fermented sauerkraut benefits also packed with nutrients raw cultured vegetables help to rebuild the immune system, as well as detoxify the body.

When you make sauerkrauts, you are in fact concocting a vessel full of enzymes, lactobacilli and an alkaline reactive food source. A powerhouse of nutrition for your stomach, intestines, organs and entire body”, Sandor Katz.

Many health experts agree that a healthy life begins with a healthy digestive tract. Eating fermented foods like sauerkrauts, will create a balance to the good and bad bacteria in the gut.

When digestion is off track, it can affect many bodily functions, and hinder the efficiency of the vital organs and glands.

Our ability to digest the foods we eat keeps us in top shape for preventing acute and chronic illness and disease.

Eating Sauerkraut is the preventative approach to maintaining health at its root in the digestive system.

Knowing The Whole World Of Sauerkraut?

Basically, sauerkraut is shredded cabbage fermented in its own juice with or without a culture starter or a salt water brine.

Many other vegetables and spices can be added for extra flavor and variety. But cabbage is usually the main ingredient because the leaves contain high amounts of naturally occurring cultures that help it to ferment.

The process is accomplished in a glass or ceramic fermentation jar or crock of some kind. The chopped or shredded veggies are pressed down tight creating an oxygen free space.

Typically some sort of heavy weight is placed on top but it is not always needed. Over the fermentation time between 4 to 10 days or much longer depending on how you like them.

The vegetables become soft slightly pickled, tangy and very tasty. In some countries the jars are traditionally buried in the ground for many months or up to a year or more.

But stored to ferment in a cool dark environment, cultured vegetables are known to improve in quality, the longer they aged.

Raw Sauerkraut’s Benefits To Health: Packed With Enzymes.

Our digestive functions naturally provides saliva and digestive enzymes to break down our food into usable nutrients.

But over time, eating foods low in enzymes reduces one’s own digestive enzyme reserves. Raw sauerkraut is a food packed with enzymes because it is not heated or pasteurized like some commercial brands.

Enzyme rich foods help you to digest your meals so you get the maximum amount of nutrition and energy out of them.

“Our enzyme potential has a problem somewhat similar to a checking account which could become dangerously deficient if not continually replenished.  Either vitamins, minerals or hormones cannot do any work without enzymes.”  Enzyme Nutrition by Dr. Howell.

A jar of cultured vegetables is an enzyme Factory and only a small amount of sauerkraut provides more than enough for the proper digestion of the foods we eat. The fermented sauerkraut benefits can be an especially helpful condiment for diets high in cooked foods, dairy and animal proteins.

Those here in the West, eating the Standard American Diet, (a SAD one for sure), could definitely benefit from the consumption of these ferments that many people around the globe have used for literally thousands of years.

In fact we have never really needed the benefits of cultured sauerkraut more than we do today. With increased industrialization more and more of our food and drink is prepackaged with chemicals and artificial preservatives to maintain its shelf life, and there is nothing here to laugh about.

Fermented sauerkraut benefits
Fermented sauerkraut benefits

Fermented Foods Help Digestion

When you consume foods that cannot be efficiently broken down by the body, you are left with undigested waste material that gets trapped inside the gut, causing bloating, constipation, obesity, fatigue and lowered immune response.

Consuming fermented foods like fermented sauerkraut benefits can be a valuable asset to overall health. Which can be helpful for processing the leftover byproducts of an unhealthy enzyme less diet.

Contains Lactobacillus, The Friendly Bacteria.

In addition to enzymes the friendly microbial bacteria that exists inside your digestive tract are particularly helpful at converting more nutrients vitamins and minerals out of the foods you eat making them more bioavailable to the body to use as nourishment.

This is why it is very important to maintain a balanced body ecology.

Foods like fermented sauerkraut benefits will put your cells in the alkaline state.

And that is essential because you should have at least 80% alkaline friendly bacteria and 20% of the other acidic microorganisms like Candida albicans, which are actually helpful to the health in the intestinal tract in small amounts.

Fermented sauerkraut benefits food will help to synthesize vitamins in the entire B group. We have from 5 to 7 pounds of bacteria in our GUT, the large intestine. Eighty percent (80%) of our immune system is our gut flora (bacteria).

This is the terrain that is responsible for our perfected health.

The bacteria in the large intestine is responsible for all our B vitamins. Fermented foods help to balance the flora in the gut. And when the optimum bacteria is not present,  our health is seriously compromised.

Cultured vegetables are a true longevity food, an essential part of a super healthy diet plan to cleanse and re-establish a healthy intestinal ecosystem. There’s an incredible diverse array of beneficial bacteria found in cultured krauts and they are known to increase in volume, the longer they ferment.

The fermentation process involved in making sauerkraut creates an acidic environment in which these friendly flora can reproduce and proliferate. This is accomplished by transforming the lactose and other sugars in the  vegetables to lactic acid.

This lactic acid rich space gives birth to different strains of the bacteria called lactobacilli including leuconostoc lactobacillus and Pediococcus.

Nobel Prize winning scientists Elie Metchnikoff in his book “The Prolongation Of Life” – proposed that consuming high quantities of lactobacilli-rich foods would eliminate the dominance of unfriendly bacteria.

Reestablishes pH Levels And Control Yeast Overgrowth

So many conditions such as candida overgrowth, bone thinning and especially inflammation in the body, are a result of eating too many acidic type foods that build excess levels of acids in the digestive system.

These acids leak out into the blood and Limp. Cultured vegetables transform into an alkaline rich food when consumed. This helps to reestablish the proper balance of pH levels in the intestinal tract.

“That thrilling taste of homemade sauerkraut, the practice of fermentation is one of partnership with microscopic life. This partnership leads to a reverence for all the processes that contribute to the well-being of the human race.” Sally Fallon

“The History Of Cultured Vegetables”

The original version of sauerkraut or types of cultured cabbage are thought to have originated north of China as far back as 200 BC, and were later introduced in European countries by migrating tribes and Tartars of Genghis Khan and his armies.

The fermented sauerkraut benefits like fermented cabbage, which was used as a side dish with meals, was the perfect food for traveling soldiers because it never spoiled. It was also a well known food of Chinese laborers building the Great Wall of China over 2,000 years ago.

Eventually it made its way to Europe where it was discovered by the German and Austrian people.

The word sauerkraut originated here with the word sour meaning sour, and kraut meaning green leafy vegetables or plant material. In the old days usually in the fall season, Eastern European families prepared for winter by making several barrels of cultured cabbage enough for the entire family to eat  for many months.

Different from the Asian version which was fermented in rice wine, Germanic peoples cured cabbage with salt, caraway seeds spices  and other vegetables.

Raw cultured sauerkraut is a well-documented food of Dutch seaman because of its high vitamin C content which helps prevent scurvy. It was popularized by Captain James Cook who began taking many barrels of it along on long sea journeys, to provide this hard to find vitamin for his crew.

Today it is popular all across Europe as well as in Asian cuisine with the popular Korean version known as kimchi.

Why Learn How To Make Fermented Sauerkraut Benefits?

There is nothing quite like learning how to make sauerkraut from scratch, with the vegetables spices and seasonings you select for your own unique tastes and health goals.

Homemade raw cultured vegetables are very affordable to make with minimal kitchen tools. 

Once you get down the kraut making process, you can start making fermented sauerkraut benefits by the gallon which will help you to save money and time. Fermented sauerkraut benefits is one of our top favorite food condiments that we enjoy on a daily basis so we need plenty of it around in the fridge and cellar.

At first the idea of making it homemade, might seem a bit intimidating like you are performing some kind of laboratory experiment.

But rest assured as you familiarize yourself with this age-old way of preparing food, you will become more confident with each batch you make.

Long shelf life

Fermented sauerkraut benefits cultured vegetables stored for long periods of time in the refrigerator. It can also be kept in a cool cellar or basement where they will continue to age like fine wine. When they are kept below about 40 degrees Fahrenheit they tend to stop fermenting.

A Word About Store-Bought Brands

There are some high-quality organic cultured vegetables available at most health food stores, but they can be quite costly for just a small jar.

That is another bonus to making fermented sauerkraut benefits right in your kitchen.

This is important to be aware that many types of sauerkraut on the market are not cultured but pasteurized, which destroys a lot of its nutritional value. They are primarily designed to render the final product more uniform and thus more marketable.

You get taste perhaps, but none of the health benefits of real raw fermented sauerkraut benefits.

Note, at first cultured veggies, because they are cleansing to the body might trigger the elimination of toxins and undigested waste material in the colon, which is a type of detox program.

Therefore, you might have an increased amount of intestinal gas with frequent bowel movements.

Also as unfriendly yeast die-off you may also experience some intestinal bloating. These side effects however are usually short-lived and sometimes a necessary part of the detox process and eventually fermented sauerkraut benefits will actually help to prevent these symptoms.

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The Neurons Brain Circuit That Causes Insomina Linked To Stress And The Immune System

Your Immune System Can Be Weakened From Insomnia Caused By Chronic Stress

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It is a well known fact that psychosocial or environmental stress can negatively affect the body’s immune function.

Insomnia is also commonly associated with stress.

But the question now is, do these two stress-induced conditions share the same neural circuitry?

A new study, conducted by neuroscientists from Stanford University, at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have identified the circuit in the brain that is responsible for sleepless nights in times of stress—and it turns out that, that circuit does more than make count sheep.

Their study with mice, ties the same neuronal connections that trigger insomnia to stress-induced changes in the immune system, which weaken the body’s defenses against a host of threats.

In mice, they found that signals from the hormone-releasing brain cells have a strong effect on the insomnia-inducing neurons.

Interfering with that connection enabled mice to sleep peacefully even after being exposed to a stressful situation, whereas artificial simulation of the stress-sensitive cells instantly roused slumbering animals.

The study, reported on September 9, 2020, in the journal Science Advances, connects and explains two familiar problems, says CSHL Assistant Professor Jeremy Borniger.

“This sort of stress-induced insomnia is well known among anybody that’s tried to get to sleep with a looming deadline or something the next day,” he says.

“And in the clinical world, it’s been known for a long time that chronically stressed patients typically do worse on a variety of different treatments and across a variety of different diseases.”

“It seems like it’s a pretty sensitive switch, in that even very weak stimulation of the circuit can drive insomnia,” says Borniger.

Like many aspects of the body’s stress response, these effects are thought to be driven by the stress hormone cortisol.

Working in the Stanford lab of Luis de Lecea, where Borniger completed a postdoctoral fellowship prior to joining CSHL, the research team found a direct connection between stress-sensitive neurons in the brain that trigger cortisol’s release and nearby neurons that promote insomnia.

The same connection, they found, also has a potent effect on the immune system. Stress significantly disrupts the abundance of certain immune cells in the blood, as well signaling pathways inside them, and the team was able to recreate these changes simply by stimulating the same neurons that link stress to insomnia.

Understanding this circuitry opens the door to a deeper understanding of the consequences of stress, not just in healthy individuals but also in persons with certain types of disease.

Borniger says understanding how stress triggers both insomnia and immunosuppression helps researchers look to novel treatments for a number of autoimmune diseases.

Interfering with this brain circuit could offer new ways to treat disease. And, of course, new ways to potentially reduce the negative effects of stress on our sleep.

He continues: “I’m really interested in how we can manipulate distinct circuits in the brain to control not just the immune system at baseline, but in disease states like inflammatory bowel disease or in cancer or in psoriasis–things that are associated with systemic inflammation.”

“Because if we can understand and manipulate the immune system using the natural circuitry in the body rather than using a drug that hits certain targets within the system, I think that would be much more effective in the long run, because it just co-opts the natural circuits in the body.”

Very interesting and informative!

What do you think about these new discoveries, especially pertaining to the chronic stressors in your daily life, and your immune system? You must give serious considerations to these matters, as a matter of top priority in putting yourself in the best position to combat the Coronavirus.

The new study was published in the journal Science Advances.

Vitamin D Deficiency And Coronavirus Infection

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A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine found possible connection between vitamin D deficiency and contracting the coronavirus.

The Association of Vitamin D Status and Other Clinical Characteristics With COVID-19 Test Results, was published September 3 in JAMA Network Open.

The researchers looked at 489 University of Chicago Medicine patients and found those who had a deficiency in vitamin D that went untreated were nearly twice as likely to contract COVID-19 when compared to patients with normal levels of vitamin D.

Vitamin D is important to the function of the immune system, and vitamin D supplements have previously been shown to lower the risk of viral respiratory tract infections,” said David Meltzer, MD, PhD, Chief of Hospital Medicine at University of Chicago Medicine and lead author of the study.

“Our statistical analysis suggests this may be true for the COVID-19 infection,” he said.

The patients that were involved in the study had their vitamin D levels measured within a year prior to getting a COVID-19 test.

According to the study, almost half of Americans are deficient in vitamin D, with much higher rates seen in African Americans, Hispanics and individuals living in areas like Chicago where sunlight is limited all year-round, and makes it difficult to get enough sun exposure especially in the winter season.

“Understanding whether treating Vitamin D deficiency changes COVID-19 risk could be of great importance locally, nationally and globally,” said Meltzer.

According to researchers, shelter-in-place orders to reduce the spread of COVID-19 may also decrease sun exposure, and in turn, potentially increase the need for vitamin D supplementation which should not exceed 4000 IU per day.

Vitamin D is inexpensive, generally very safe to take, and can be widely scaled,”  Meltzer said.

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