SUMMARY: Bone Broth is a traditional food that has been on dinner tables for ages, and yet it has nearly disappeared from the American table. I spent years researching what’s in Bone Broth, and why I should make it for my family. After all, it seemed to be loaded with hidden dangers like the potential for lead leaching into the Bone Broth from the slow cooker vessel and the animal bones themselves, histamine reactions due to its long cook, and even contrary to what other bloggers write, the TRUTH is that the evidence finds there’s NOT a huge mineral load in Bone Broth. After reading loads of studies, I decided to post this BRIEF FREE summary of what I found because the evidence proved to me that there are many components in Bone Broth that makes it worthwhile to make. I now do so as do leading functional medicine doctors like Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials, Dr. Mark Hyman, and Dr. Kara Fitzgerald. You can also read here how bone broth is being used during fast just prior to cancer immunotherapy to improve outcomes for insulin resistant related type cancers (breast, colorectal cancer, endometrial cancer, pancreatic cancer, glioblastoma multiforme).
Summary: It is NOT calories in, calories out. This Intervention Diet Weight Loss Study is looking to show just that. It is being conducted by five prestigious universities: Framingham State University, Boston Children’s Hospital, Indiana University Bloomington, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Baylor University! The study evaluates the effect of dietary carbohydrate and sugar consumption independent of energy content on body fatness and metabolism in a rigorous feeding study. The study looks at WHY diets high in total carbohydrate, with or without added sugar, acts through increased insulin secretion, all during substrate partitioning towards storage and body fat, leading to increased hunger, slower metabolism, and accumulation of body fat.This is a randomized controlled feeding study involving 128 adults with BMI between 27 to 40. The test diets include very low carbohydrate (about 70% fat), High carbohydrate low sugar (25% fat, 0% added sugar), and high carbohydrate high sugar (about 25% fat, 20% added sugars).
SUMMARY: I’m sharing two weeks of FREE access to theTown Hall MedicineMicrobiome Talks from twenty-one key microbiome researchers and includes clinicians integrating microbiome into therapeutics! This educational series is presented by University of Toronto’sHeather BoonPhD, Dean of Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacyand Stewart Brown, Founder & CEO, Genuine Health, a science based natural health company. These talks are short and to the point, AND you can download the transcripts for later reading. There has been a ton going on in the ivory towers of academia and science research uncovering just how important the gut microbiome is to health and well-being and its impact on the immune system. Microbiome associations are now known for hypertension(34 percent population prevalence ), atherosclerosis (39 percent), anxiety and depression (10 percent), weight gain, obesity (29+ percent), autoimmune diseases (20 percent — mostly women), Type 1 and 2 Diabetes (36 percent), metabolic syndrome(34 percent), IBD (10 to 15 percent), asthma allergy, autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, stress-induced and progressive neuropsychiatric diseases, ANDprolonged low-grade inflammation which is behind most all disease (51% of adults have at least one chronic disease, 27% of kids have one or more chronic diseases). Yet none of microbiome — disease impact is pouring down to us mere mortals none the less doctors — I would know;I teach Microbiome CME. Whentwins having 100% identical human DNA only have 40 percent of the same gut microbiota, imagine how different your microbiota is from everyone else. Spoiler alert: Your gut microbiota is 99 percent different from everyone else and our microbiota explains why each and every one of our bodies (and minds) behave so differently! Knowledge is power, and these talks share how microbiome understanding is being put on the forefront of therapeutic integration to reverse and prevent disease. Now that is aggressive preventative medicine especially since 70 to 80 percent of our immune cellsreside in the health of our gut microbiome. Enjoy the listen, and Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, early!
Background on Town Hall Medicine Microbiome Talks
This science based initiative shares my vision that knowledge is power. They believe that through access to credible science-backed information, you can have the knowledge you need to take steps to live a healthier life. To give you that knowledge, they gathered top scientists, researchers, clinicians and thought leaders from around the world – some of the best of the best from such respected institutions as Harvard, UCLA, University of Western Australia, University of British Columbia and University of Toronto – to share their research findings directly with you. These experts are highly respected in their fields, and I’ve followed them for years. Their work is changing how we think about our health and that diet and lifestyle can alter gene expression, and reverse and prevent chronic disease. For more on that, this post simply explains How Diet Pierces the Disease Epigenetics Process.The goal of Town Hall Medicine is to elevate the conversation on current health topics by providing information that is accurate, credible, proven and trusted.
Town Hall Medicine Microbiome Talks_FREE 2 week pass
Here are just some of the talks you may find interesting…
Stress and aging is talked about under “The New Path to Health”. Noodle around these recent studies in this area:
[Kimball et al 2017] found that in women, skingene expression progressively changes from the 20s to the 70s in pathways related to oxidative stress, energy metabolism, senescence, and epidermal barrier and that these changes accelerated in the 60s and 70s. The gene expression patterns from the subset of women who were younger-appearing were similar to those in women who were actually younger!Here’s a good ScienceDaily article on this study,and this post simply explains How Diet Pierces the Disease Epigenetics Process. Suffice it to say, these skin epigenetic findings makes all the sense in the world — Eating a diet that supports your gut microbiota does GREAT things both inside our bodies and on the outside — I see these “side effect facelift” transformations everyday!
SUMMARY: Our food choices are fundamental for health. The next Integrated Functional Medicine Grand Rounds installment with Cleveland Clinic is coming up on Tuesday, December 13, 2016. Listen, for FREE as Dr. Alessio FASANO, MD speaks on How Early Nutrition Influences Microbiome, Disease. This is an incredible opportunity officially titled: “How Early Nutrition Influences Gut Microbiome and Metabolic Profiles in Health and Disease: Shifting From a Disease-Centered Approach to Patient-Oriented Functional Medicine.”For background, I have followed Dr. Fasano’s work for ages. He is a leading gut inflammation light who put Celiac Disease, and Non Celiac Gluten Sensitivity, on the map in the US when all US health agencies literally told him those were “across the pond”. When that happens, you know you are about to make a major break thru that will ruffle lots of feathers. He persevered, and his findings will re-write the medical books. Those findings opened the doors for what is now understood as: Gut permeability ⇒ immune stimulation ⇒ inflammation ⇒ gut and systemic ramifications ⇒ autoimmune and chronic disease. Listen in to Dr. Fasano, FREE, Early Nutrition Influences Microbiome, Disease!
Your doc wasn’t taught this nor are they likely talking to you about microbiome and inflammation andhow to move off the spectrum of inflammation, autoimmune and chronic disease.That is sad because many are learning about microbiome and changing diet and lifestyle to reduce that inflammatory microbiome disease tone. You can too by restoring and optimizing your microbiome. Contact me for the EASY How-To — that doesn’t break the bank either.
Listen in to Dr. Fasano, FREE, Early Nutrition Influences Microbiome, Disease!
REGISTER HERE, “How Early Nutrition Influences Gut Microbiome and Metabolic Profiles in Health and Disease: Shifting From a Disease-Centered Approach to Patient-Oriented Functional Medicine.”
SUMMARY: Roundup on your yard means runoff in your garden, from you or your neighbors use. It’s ubiquitous in the restaurant and grocery food chain hidden in ingredients: corn, soybeans, canola, and cottonseed oil, and meat from alfalfa-corn-soy eating animals and their other byproducts. It’s found in our urine and breast-milk and cattle’s tissues: intestine, liver, muscle, spleen, kidney, and bone .
What’s the harm of eating ubiquitous glyphosate? Dr. Stephanie Seneff asserts that the glyphosate and disease link is: autism, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and the gmo intestinal gut having related digestive system disorders leading to disease… In simpleton, glyphosate exposure impairs detox pathways through the microbiome including the liver’s P450 enzymes. Toxins taken onboard are not sufficiently eliminated from the body. Gyphosate kills beneficial gut bacteria allowing pathogens to grow; it interferes with the synthesis of amino acids including methionine which leads to shortages in critical neurotransmitters and folate; it chelates (removes) important minerals like iron, cobalt, manganese, and much more.
SUMMARY (updated Aug 2018):Dr. Rob Knight’s talk, Saturday, October 18, 2014, listed eleven factors that optimize the gut microbiome based on the American Gut Data cautioning all is preliminary. These are listed below along with an interesting article =&1=&Can We Eat Our Way To A Healthier Microbiome? It’s Complicated=&2=&” in which Dr. Knight and Jeff Leach (founders of crowd sourcing project“American Gut”) discuss the microbiome diet. A KEY finding was that themore vegs consumed (30 different each week is BEST), the more diverse the microbiome, and that is thought to be associated with health and improved immune status since MANY chronic diseases (see the below Table) have changes in microbiome diversity AND composition, [Cantinean et al 2018]. A 2018 update on the American Gut data just published, [McDonald et al 2018], and it still says to eat 30 different vegs each week!This post also provides insight into what the microbiome experts are saying about translation of microbiome research into clinical practice. And last, my synopsis of Dr. Knight’s talk is provided (see below the light bulb) along with my listing of fav microbiome researcher labs whose work is discussed in this post! Use them and PUBMED for your own disease prevention or mitigation research. Always. Stick with the evidence for answers as this blog does.
Source: [Catinean et al 2018] An overview on the interplay between nutraceuticals and gut microbiota, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5855885/
Table 1, lists links between several diseases and changes of microbiota:
Disease
Changes in microbiota’s diversity and composition
Consequences
Reference
Inflammatory bowel disease
Less bacterial diversity ↓ the number of Bacteroides and Firmicutes
↓Firmicutes↓Faecalibacterium and Anaerosporobacter (order Clostridiales)↑Parabacteroides and Allisonella (order Aeromonadales)
increase in luminal gut ethanol production metabolism of dietary choline release of lipopolysaccharides increasing small intestinal bacterial overgrowth increasing endotoxemia increasing lipopolysaccharide →↑ insulin resistance and ↑ TNF alpha
trimethylamine is formed by gut microbiota from nutrients which contain l-carnitine, choline, phosphatidylcholine followed by the formation of trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) by hepatic enzymes increasing the plasmatic level of TMAO–increasing the risk of myocardial infarction and stroke
Dr. Rob Knight’s eleven point punch list of things that seem to be beneficial to the microbiome are:
Source: Dr. Rob Knight_11 Factors Affect Microbiome from American Gut Data, biomeonboardawareness.com/
Eat lots of plants: 5 to 30 different varieties each week preferably. This finding is so profound that“American Gut” will soon change participant food journal requirements to “only ask forfrequency on consumption of holistic food within the past month, instead of the three week food journal. This change is warranted since the long term diet, especially meat and fiber consumption, has been shown to have the largest effect on the microbiome.”
Aging increases microbiome diversity: Microbiomes are more diverse at age 50 to 60 then populations in their twenties (see above slides).
Having an IBD diagnosis means your microbiome is altered. NOTE: Many chronic and autoimmune diseases are also following suit.
The time of year alters the microbiome with a more diverse microbiome being with sun and outdoor exposure.
Antibiotics wipe the microbiome with some folks recovering relatively soon whereas others do not recover the pre-antibiotic microbiome even one year later.
Males vs females: The sex for a given microbiome can now be accurately predicted.
Sleep 8 hours for a more diverse microbiome. Less than 6 hours yields a less diverse microbiome.
BMIbut it only subtly affects the microbiome.
Plants: eating 6 to 10 each week is good, but eating 30 plus different varieties is best. (See further discussion below.)
Alcohol: one drink is helpful, more than one reduces diversity.
Frequent exercisers have a more diverse microbiome and it is best if exercise is outdoors rather than indoors.
What’s up with plants and the microbiome?
Here is a great read where Dr. Knight and Jeff Leach talk about plants (and their fiber):Can We Eat Our Way To A Healthier Microbiome? It’s Complicated. In sum, “eating too little fiber could starve the bacteria we want around. “When we starve our bacteria they eat us,” Leach says. “They eat the mucus lining – the mucin in our large intestine.” Knight adds that when we do keep our bacteria well fed, they, in turn, give off nutrients that nourish the cells that line our guts. Fiber, Knight says, “is thought to be good for your gut health over all.” You can read the post, Fiber Additives Starve Gut Microbes. They Eat Mucus Lining for more on all that! Bottom line: Harness this information to positively nudge your microbiome towards health. Note too that everyone is uniquely different so the right diet depends a lot on the individual’s lifestyle AND that individual’s microbes. More tips from the article are:
There are a lot of different ways to get fiber. Leach recommends getting it from vegetables. Eat a variety of veggies, and eat the whole thing, he recommends. “If you’re going to eat asparagus, eat the whole plant, not just the tips,” he says.
Fiber was also central to Leach’s suggestion to Stein to eat more garlic and leek. Those vegetables contain high levels of a type of fiber called inulin, which feeds actinobacteria in our guts. In fact, inulin is considered a prebiotic, since it feeds the good bacteria, or probiotics, that live inside us.
Garlic actually has antimicrobial properties, which paradoxically, could also be good thing for our microbiomes.One studyshows that garlic hurts some of the bad bacteria in our guts while leaving the good guys intact. [Filocamo et al 2012]
Eat fermented foods which contain probiotics along with foods that feed those probiotics. Fermented foods like kimchi, sauerkraut and yogurt might be surer sources of probiotics. Researchers are unclear about whether these have any lasting effect on the composition of our microbiome, but in some cases they do seem to help. “Epidemiologically there seems to be some evidence that eating fermented food is beneficial rather than harmful,” Knight says. But researchers are still trying to figure out why.
⇒ A key benefit of fiber beyond regularity, is that when the microbiome ferments it, short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) are produced.
This study, from Nutrition & Diabetes, summarizes SCFA nicely: “Colonic fermentation is a complex process that occurs through the interactions of many microbial species and involves the anaerobic breakdown of dietary fibre, protein and peptides.1, 2, 3The principal end products of colonic fermentation are the short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) acetate, propionate and butyrate, the gases hydrogen, carbon dioxide and methane4, 5, 6and energy, which is used by the microbiota for growth and maintenance of cellular functions.7Small amounts of branched chain fatty acids (iso-butyrate, valerate and iso-valerate) are also formed from protein and amino acid degradation. The amount and type of dietary fibre are among the major determinants of gut microbial composition and SCFA production patterns.8In humans, the SCFA produced account for 5–10% of total dietary energy.9) [Fernandes et al 2014]
UPDATE: You’ve missed the talk but can definitely catch the synopsis at“Optimal Microbiome Diet From American Gut Data.“ Dr. Knight gave an “Eleven Point” punch list of factors that hugely affect the microbiome. Totally intriguing and insightful data is now being generated!
There’s a fellow health researcher that I respect; his name is Paul Jaminet, creator and blogger over at “The Perfect Health Diet” site. Jaminet has no hidden agenda. He had a health problem, and used his science background to research. What he found is nearly in line with everything that I speak of, which is SCD/GAPS/PALEO/ MEDITERANEAN… and so many other wonderful healing diets:
“When you’re doing things the right way, usually you see results very quickly, so it’s well worth taking a little bit of time to read and think about these things and to do a personal experiment and see how they affect you.“
SUMMARY: SCD yogurt is lactose-free due to its processing. It can be grassfed if you choose to make it using grassfed milk. You can also use a milk from A2 casein cows to make the casein less inflammatory. Some use a milk alternative such as goat, coconut, or almond milk. Last, there is growing concerns about the MAP suriviving dairy processing. [Grant et al 2017] is study that published Dec, 2017 that raises growing concerns about MAP and the safety of dairy products. To ensure 100% kill of MAP, heat the milk to 194F (90C) for 60 seconds according to the author of the study. The classic SCD yogurt recipe required heating to 180F with a two minute hold. I’ve revised the recipe to require heating to 194F for two minutes to ensure MAP and other bacteria are killed. Below the recipe find details for: MAP implications for SCD yogurt processing temperature, What is the probiotic load of SCD yogurt, what probiotics can be in the starter and Lets talk about milk options, can I reuse my SCD yogurt as starter for another batch, and RECENT STUDIES FINDING PROBIOTIC YOGURT BENEFITS AND IT’S ANTI-INFLAMMATORY IMMUNE MODULATING PROPERTIES! It is no wonder that SCD yogurt is the foundation of the healing diets: SCD/GAPS and some PALEO camps, if tolerated.
Use a grass-fed milk if you aren't using an alternative milk such as goat, coconut, or almond. Fermenting such, 24 to 30 hours, turns this product into a “raw milk” type beneficial whole food that is lactose-free, and loaded with probiotics. 1 cup has ~708 Billion beneficial bacteria and that’s about 50 times more than that claimed for a typical 15 billion capsule, and nutrition (proteins vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fats, and others yet to be discovered). Another study found less than this amount of probiotics but still well above that in commercial yogurt. Best thought… Making SCD yogurt is EASY. “It gets easier each time I make it”… “It tastes so much better than any store bought yogurt”… “I really miss this when I travel,” sentiments from MM, RC, JM, and MP.
This recipe has been updated to heat the milk to 194F to ensure 100% MAP kill since recent studies [see blog post SCD yogurt safety concerns – considering new MAP research |http://gutharmony.net/index.php/2017/12/04/scd-yogurt-safety-concerns-considering-new-map-research/#more-2026] have found viable MAP survives in a product fed calves. See my post for additional details. The classic SCD yogurt heat temperature was 180F held for two minutes.
Yogurt made using goat milk does not set like ordinary cows milk. Most just consume it in it's more natural liquid state though some do add gelatin.
Simply by dripping SCD yogurt, you can make delicious mild tasting Greek yogurt. This can even be used in place of sour cream and cream cheese! Note: you can not drip goat milk.
MAP implications for SCD yogurt processing temperature
MAP findings[Grant et al 2017] means the classic temperature heat for SCD yogurt should be increased to 194F to ensure 100% kill of MAP.
I don’t know a lot about Mycobacterium avium ssp. paratuberculosis (MAP), but there is a lot of literature on this and efforts are underway to come up with a human vaccine. MAP has been implicated in IBD. In sum, MAP can be transmitted in milk but until now, it has been difficult to prove. MAP is the cause ofJohne’s disease(JD),bovine viral diarrheavirus, bovineleukosisvirus, Pasteurella multocida, Salmonella sp., and Mycoplasma bovis. MAP can be transmitted from cow to calf through feedingunpasteurized milk (Costello, 2012). JD control programs worldwide (Doré et al., 2012; Garcia and Shalloo, 2015; Pieper et al., 2015) recommend avoiding feeding waste milk and feeding calf milk replacer (CMR). As stated by Cooper and Watson (2013), the assumption has always been that the risk of viable MAP organisms in commercial CMR powders is negligible because CMR is invariably pasteurized and often highly processed.
The[Grant et al 2017] study found viable MAP is still detectable in CMR. Feeding CMR, as an alternative to feeding waste unpasteurized milk or farm-pasteurized milk, is a common practice in the United States. The latest statistics from the National Herd Monitoring Scheme indicate that 49.9% of all US dairy operations (of all sizes) fed some kind of CMR to pre-weaned heifers during 2014; 16.4% of operations fed nonmedicated CMR and 37.6% fed medicated CMR (USDA, 2016).
The source of the viable MAP detected cannot be verified, whether pre- or postprocessing contamination. It is unknown if the quantity of MAP detected in CMR would be sufficient to cause infection of a calf. However, the prospect that MAP has survived the manufacture of dried milk and whey-based products, which are destined for consumption by food animals could have far-reaching potential consequences; further testing of CMR collected directly at manufacturing sites using the PMSand liquid culture approach described above is warranted to verify our findings. The broader food safety implications of detecting viable MAP in this type of dried dairy product are not insignificant given that powderedinfant formulaeis consumed by young babies with immature immune systems.
One important conclusion for SCD dieters has to do with safe yogurt preparation. The classic SCD recipe calls for heating the milk to 180F when preparing yogurt.
Professor Collins replied to our question on the subject: “The best data available suggests that the 90C (194F) for 60 seconds assures 100% MAP kill. So, simply recommending boiling will be the safest way to go. There is nothing else about yogurt making that will impact MAP viability much.
SCD yogurt is fermented 24 to 30 hours. This turns the product into a “raw milk” type beneficial whole food that is lactose-free, and loaded with probiotics and nutrients. The best part though…it’s EASY to make. “It gets easier each time I make it”… “It tastes so much better than any store bought yogurt”… “I really miss this when I travel,” sentiments from MM, RC, JM, and MP.
According to the BTVC website,1 cup has ~708 Billion beneficial bacteria and that’s about 50 times more than that claimed for a typical 15 billion capsule), and nutrition (proteins vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fats, and others yet to be discovered).
But the actual probiotic load in SCD yogurt is controversial. Recent labs have reported the quantity of probiotics in SCD yogurt to be less that that cited on the BTVC website but well above quantities found in commercial yogurt. This testing is reported in the post, The power of SCD yogurt,dated Jan 9, 2017, which looked at the quantity of probiotics in SCD cow, sheep, and coconut milk yogurts. Cow and sheep milk yogurts were fermented at 40 degree Celsius for 26-28 hours. Coconut yogurt was fermented for 22 hours. The lab used,SQTS (Swiss Quality Testing Services),also tests commercial yogurts. Testing omitted Streptococcus thermophiluswhich means if the starter contained this probiotic, the probiotic quantities would be higher than reported below. Also,Dannon All Natural Plain Yogurtas starter was not used. The report found:
SCD yogurt samples are between 2 to 30 times more potent than most commercial yogurt values. Commercial yogurt normally contains around 5,000 000-10,000 000 CFU/gram Lactobacilli and around 20,000,000 CFU/gram Streptococcus (according to SQTS).
SCD Cow and Sheep Milk. The post notes the GIProhealth starter was difficult to dissolve meaning the fermentation may be less effective.
Yogourmet starter with cow milk: over 300,000,000 CFU/gram.
Yogourmet starter with sheep milk: 200,000,000 CFU/gram.
GIpro Start starter with cow milk: 20,000,000 CFU/gram.
GIpro Start starter with sheep milk: 100,000,000 CFU/gram.
SCD Coconut milk.The post discusses contamination issues likely from the honey used and optimal ferment times being 12 hours instead of the 8 to 10 hours typically recommended.
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