probiotics

Latta Love

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I’m not shy about my adoration of bacteria.   The “good” kind stole my heart about three years ago when I was recovering from an illness that landed me in the hospital (in China!) and on 3 different antibiotics.

I’d flirted with the lil guys before, been a big yogurt fan most of my life and started drinking kombucha way before it was a household name.   My dad taught me about miso soup (“add the miso at the end and don’t boil, it will kill off the good stuff”) and lacto-fermented pickles back in the ’90s when he was on a macrobiotic diet.

But it wasn’t until that fateful summer of 2010, when my poor body was wrecked from 18 months of third world countries (so much bacteria! not all bad but very foreign!), a possibly life threatening kidney infection, and a good dose of antibiotics that I truly started to admire and respect bacteria.

I started making kimchi, saurkraut, kombucha, kefir soda, and eating more miso.  And of course eating lots of yogurt, even started making it too to save money and use the best quality (grass-fed) milk I could get.

I’ve noticed a HUGE improvement in my health since I started eating cultured/fermented/good-bacteria filled foods.

One of the few cultured foods I never really got into was the yogurt-like dairy kefir.  I like my yogurt thick and substantial, the kefir I’d had in the past was always too thick to enjoy as a drink and too thin to eat with a spoon.   And honestly, I just didn’t get it, I thought it was completely interchangeable with yogurt.

But I have an open mind and have become much more adventurous and accepting with my eating habits lately.   Latta, a company making traditional Russian kefir, offered to send me some samples right as I was dealing with Lyme disease last month and in turn on antibiotics*.

*As you probably know, antibiotics kill ALL bacteria in the stomach, as they eradicate the “bad” ones the good ones get taken out as well.   Our health, as in our immune system, relies on the “good” bacteria of the stomach to be flourishing and balanced, when it’s less than stellar all kinds of nasty can occur, including most commonly yeast infections, elimination issues. And, turns out, skin break outs!  My skin was horrible for 2-3 weeks after my 10 days on doxycycline.

I lika Latta a lotta!

Awesome things about this company; their kefir is thick and creamy with a similar consistency to yogurt and they offer kefir in both organic and grass fed categories and all their kefir is certified gluten free.

So now that I was a kefir convert I still didn’t understand why it was different than yogurt in terms of nutrition.

Here’s the deal.

While yogurt and kefir both contain probiotics, or helpful bacteria, the types of bacteria are different, with kefir having many times more total bacteria than yogurt.   In this case more+different=better.

The fantastic all-things-fermented company Cultures for Health has some interesting information if you want to learn more on kefir vs. yogurt.

Do you have a preference between yogurt and kefir?

Running on Pride

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This morning was gorgeous and perfect for my long run.

Tate and I did 7.04 miles along this course in 64 minutes.  The sun was shining, the air smelled deliciously like fall, and my body felt great.  I am especially proud of myself considering that I took most of June and July off from running and only started again in August.

June started in Tibet at crazy altitude (running at 12,000 feet? hell no, my yoga routine left me breathless), continued in China with severe downpours and moved onto a week in bed in Beijing with a SERIOUS kidney infection.  July was spent recovering from my illness and getting another kidney infection that landed me back in bed for a week or so (luckily I was back in the U.S by then!).

It was great to have Tate along with me today, he ran about a half of a block in front of me the whole time and it motivated me to run just a little faster than my comfortable “jog” pace.  I WILL make my PR time goal of under 55 minutes for the Fall Classic 10K on October 23rd!

If you are just getting into running or just starting to think about longer distances, have no fear!  If you would have told me a few years ago that I would run a marathon in 2009 I would have looked at you something like this

In fact, when I started running when I was 16 or 17 I never thought I would get through 3 whole miles without stopping.  But then my love affair with running blossomed and in my early 20’s I started running 5k’s, which led to 10k’s, which led to a half marathon in fall 2006, which led to a marathon in spring 2009.  I am not fast and I was never that consistent with running until January 2009 when I moved to Peru and no longer had a gym, a yoga studio, dance rehearsals, or 8 classes to teach a week.  So take heart, if running more than 20 minutes (or 1 minute!) at a time seems insane to you, take it slow and let it progress naturally.

(One of my favorite things to do as a Personal Trainer is to get people running so feel free to e-mail me with any questions)

Lunch today was all about leftover roasted veg.  I was on a bit of a mad kick yesterday and threw practically all the veggies I could get my hands on into the oven.

There was acorn squash and garlic

Onions and celery

Carrots, parsnips, and sweet potato dusted with cinnamon and cayenne

And green beans

By the time the green beans came out of the oven I was done eating but I purposefully made loads of everything and it all made awesome leftovers.

I added a fried egg with hot sauce for protein and some homemade sauerkraut for raw food and a dose of probiotics.  My first batch of sauerkraut is delicious by the way!  I have never been one to eat sauerkraut regularly but after hearing so many praises about the health benefits of fermented foods I am happy to eat a couple spoonfuls with lunch (and it really is quite tasty).

The sauerkraut got me excited to make more fermented veggies so last night I whipped up a batch of kimchi.

Kimchi is a spicy fermented salad or condiment from Korea made with Napa cabbage, garlic, ginger, salt (which is what ferments it), and some form of hot pepper.  I also added carrots and daikon radish to this batch.  This jar is sitting on my pantry shelf fermenting as I type but on Friday it will be ready to taste and from then on it will live in the fridge until it’s all gobbled up.

Here’s a good article explaining the health benefits of kimchi.

Time to get a little more sunshine on this blue sky day!