Kefir: 101
LifeDr.com Topic: Natural Gourmet & Nutrition
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Here is why Kefir is an Essential Food for Keeping You Healthy and Helping You Shed Pounds
It's a well-publicized and sobering fact that over 60% of Americans are overweight, and childhood obesity is reaching epidemic proportions. As a result, obesity related diseases like diabetes and heart disease are on the rise. Why is this happening? Most people would agree that weight gain and chronic disease are often a product of lifestyle.
Here are the major poor-lifestyle contributors to weight gain:
- Chronic stress
- Environmental toxins
- A diet full of sugar and processed foods
While the World Health Organization says that obesity is on the rise worldwide due to processed foods, there is more to this picture.
It’s your inner ecosystem.
Your inner ecosystem is the healthy microflora (good bacteria and yeast) that live in your intestines and keep you healthy and strong. They keep you in balance, including your weight. And yet, all of the above mentioned items: processed foods, sugar, stress and environmental toxins kill your healthy microflora.
This creates an imbalanced inner ecosystem that can lead to weight gain and other states of illness or disease.
The Key to a Healthy Inner Ecosystem
If you really want an easy way to boost the health of your inner ecosystem, fermented foods and drinks are tops on the list of healthy foods.
Fermented foods and drinks are full of healthy microflora (also called probiotics). In fact, the RIGHT probiotics can actually help re-colonize your inner ecosystem with the good bacteria and yeast you need to stay healthy and maintain a healthy weight.
The right probiotics are those that are: (1) native to your intestines and (2) work in harmony with one another. A great way to get the right probiotics for your inner ecosystem health is by drinking kefir.
While kefir has been around for thousands of years, it's actually one of the best kept weight loss secrets -- but most people don't realize that there are two types of kefir and when you drink each depends on the state of your digestive health. The two types of kefir are:
Milk Kefir – calming, soothing milk kefir has been shown in recent studies to help with weight loss and maintenance, however, we don't recommend that you add milk kefir to your diet until you’ve completed the initial, healing stages of the Body Ecology program (called “stage 1”), so that you can build up beneficial dairy-loving bacteria first.
Young Coconut Kefir – You can start drinking young coconut kefir right away to get the benefits of healthy probiotics. In addition, this will help re-populate your intestines with dairy-loving bacteria. Then add the milk kefir a little bit each day to “train” your microflora to the new dairy food and your chances of digesting it will be much better. With Milk Kefir and Young Coconut Kefir, you get the beneficial bacteria and yeast that researchers are finding so crucial to immunity, weight loss and maintenance. And just for a fringe benefit, both milk kefir and young coconut kefir have beauty and anti-aging benefits too!.
A Craving for Balance
Your body craves balance, above all else. When it is NOT getting the proper nutrition, your entire system falls out of balance, and pathogenic bacteria and yeast, like candida begin to dominate your gut.
These pathogenic microflora thrive on processed foods and sugar, and can create powerful cravings for more food. Your stomach may be full, but your body is hungry, because it isn’t getting and absorbing the nutrients it desperately needs.
A vicious cycle of cravings, eating, more pathogen overgrowth, and weight gain ensues.
Making Your Own Milk Kefir and Young Coconut Kefir
You’d be surprised at how easy it is to make your own delicious milk kefir and begin to experience the amazing benefits of this ancient superfood.
The bad news: commercial probiotic products, including milk kefir and yogurt are inferior products when it comes to getting the right probitoics to build your inner ecosystem.
The good news: there is a Kefir Starter with the best probiotics to build a healthy inner ecosystem that is perfect for your budget because you can make it at home!
Whether you do it yourself or go for convenience, you owe it to yourself to stop dieting and start building your inner ecosystem....with good, healing foods and the beneficial bacteria and yeast that will help keep you in balance.
Sources:
BBC News. Eat less processed food, say experts.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2814253.stm
FOCUS ON DAIRY RESEARCH.
http://www.foodnavigator.com/news/listnews.asp?m=10&y=2006
Propionic acid beverage could boost satiety, by Jess Halliday
http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/news/ng.asp?id=84051-propionic-acid-satiety-dairy
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