When I began eating cultured foods in 2001, I just drank a cup of kefir a day. I started to feel better, so I began drinking a little more. Than I began researching it and started making kefir with raw milk and second fermenting it. I saw even more improvements and became curious about other cultured probiotic foods. One by one over a couple of years, I began eating and learning more of these cultured foods. Foods like cultured veggies to kombucha, lacto fermented soda and then sprouted grains and sourdough breads. The more I ate these foods, the more I cleaned up other areas of my diet. I felt so good it became and easy process wanting to eat better and better. Eliminating myself of processed foods and junk food. Ditching diet soda, which kombucha finally helped me eliminate. I began looking at food in a whole new way. These foods trained me little by little with the way they made me feel. There were times when I wouldn’t eat them. In the summer when I got lazy, I would forget to have kefir everyday. After about a week or two of no kefir, my knee would start to ache and my blood pressure would start going up. I would go back on kefir and the symptoms would go away. I probably did this a half a dozen times and every time I stop drinking kefir the old symptoms would return and I would have to return to my kefir again. Now it is more than a food, it is a friend who helps me be at my best everyday.

 

Kombucha had its own methods for training me. When I began drinking kombucha I noticed two things; first I was urinating like crazy and I smelled awful. Body odor that I could not seem to rid myself of for 3 or 4 days. You see kombucha is a huge liver detoxify-er and it pulls out plastics and heavy metals and eliminates them through the bowels and skin. It stopped after a couple of days and I also noticed it did this to my daughter and a friend. We were all needing some serious detoxing after years of eating rather poorly. There was one time when I stopped drinking kombucha for about a month, because I read somewhere that someone in the know didn’t recommend it. I remember that day quite vividly because I felt confused and concerned that I was doing the wrong thing. I had seem dramatic changes in my husband and family. I started researching the types of properties that kombucha made, and discover a myriad of good yeast, B vitamins and beneficial bacteria that kombucha made and delivered to the body. It was late one night and I had been up researching it and I got a call from a friend. She is someone who struggles with chronic diarrhea and I had told her about the good yeast in kombucha that helps with this. Saccharomyces boulardii is the powerful good yeast, abundant in kombucha. It is used as the number one pro biotic in hospitals, called florastor. She called me that night to tell me that as long as she drank a half a bottle of kombucha a day her diarrhea was under control. Something even drugs couldn’t stop. Her husband is a medical doctor and even he was surprised. The longer I didn’t drink kombucha the more phone calls I got from friends, that kombucha had been helping them. I began drinking it again and once again and I felt so much better that I was convinced of its benefits. It literally can make you feel better in 20 minutes with the amount of B vitamins it delivers to you adrenals.

 

Cultured veggies are such powerful little scrub brushes to the colon and deliver powerful anti-virus abilities, that it astonishes me that everybody doesn’t know about them. Over and over again I have seen these veggies knock out colds and flu and even work magic on food poisoning. The thing that most surprised me was how well they help with my daughters chickenpox.

My 10-year-old Holli was in a theater play where someone had chickenpox, and so everybody in the play who had not had the virus got it. I was actually relieved to see that she was exposed so her body would build up immunity to it. The body is actually made stronger after a virus because of its ability to make its own immunities to it. In the evening one night I started seeing spots on Holli. She is not one who gets sick, so she started to cry. She was afraid of what all this would mean. I checked her temperature and it was 101, so I knew she had chickenpox. I gave her a spoonful of cultured veggie juice and put her to bed. The next morning she had quite a few pox and kept getting more. I told her she wouldn’t have school for a while and so she thought having chickenpox was going to be ok. The funny thing was the only symptoms had been the fever that one night and the pox. The second day I called my husband into the living room to show him Holli doing hand stands in the living room. The 3rd day she asked me if she go out in the backyard for a little while. Looking out the window I see her twirling around in circles in her pajamas and jumping on the trampoline. I had given her cultured veggies about a spoonful every 6 hours but never expected this. I don’t know about you but when I had chickenpox I was sick as a dog that first week. Was it the veggies? I can not be entirely sure, but I have seen them do miraculous things; from curing food poisoning in an afternoon, to stopping severe vomiting, to killing candida, colds and flu.

 

 

These foods have guided me to living a healthier life. They gently pointed the way for me as I followed the bread trail they left for me. These are just a few of the many many stories I have witnessed, and of their ability to heal and make well all who consume them. Counting my blessing everyday that these foods made their way to me. How can I not share what has been so life changing for me and others? Don’t take my word for it, try them for yourself. Your own life experience is the best teacher. I wish you all a healthier and more joyful 2012.

These food speak for themselves I am just the messenger. ~ Donna