Homemade Probiotics

[IThinkImTurningJapanese]

Sandor Katz has been somewhat of a Probiotics guru, and in the process has spurred a lot of interest in Wild Fermentation.

It is somewhat expensive for me, here in Japan, to acquire soil-born organisms like Prescript Assist, but Sandor's simple idea of making and consuming sauerkraut is "dirt" cheap.

The University of Alaska has a .pdf on preparation that is helpful in ensuring that the salt content is sufficient for safety.

Ph-strips can also be used to ensure that you've produced lactic acid.

 

[MeSci]

Sandor Katz has been somewhat of a Probiotics guru, and in the process has spurred a lot of interest in Wild Fermentation.

It is somewhat expensive for me, here in Japan, to acquire soil-born organisms like Prescript Assist, but Sandor's simple idea of making and consuming sauerkraut is "dirt" cheap.

The University of Alaska has a .pdf on preparation that is helpful in ensuring that the salt content is sufficient for safety.

Ph-strips can also be used to ensure that you've produced lactic acid.

Surely too much lactic acid is bad, especially if you have M.E.?

 

[joeblow604]

I've never made a large batch but have made smaller ones in mason jars. Its easy once you have the right amount of salt. The batches vary. I didn't feel good from cabbage but do well on the fermented carrots or broccoli. Plus they are less work to prepare than the cabbage. Along with the vegetable I add in the jar garlic, ginger, juniper berries and mustard seed. You can do with dill and will taste like pickles. Takes about 5 days.

As far as the lactic acid effect, I don't get it from these. I take Prescript Assist and S. Boulardii fine also. Yogurt or all other probiotics I can't take at all.

 

[IThinkImTurningJapanese]

Surely too much lactic acid is bad, especially if you have M.E.?

That's a good point, lactosis is an issue in ME/CFS and many people report problems with lactobacilli supplementation.

I've been taking Miyarisan however, which simultaneously supports lactobacilli and bifidobacterium, while converting their lactic acid into butyric acid.

It's truly a win-win situation.

 

[Basilico]

I have the book Wild Fermentation and my husband and I have made many of the things he describes...sourdough bread, sauerkraut, kombucha, yogurt, rejuvelac, and I'm sure some others that I'm forgetting now. No problems with lactic acid at all.

I think eating fermented foods is really important, not really for the probiotics, but mainly because the fermentation process often makes the food/beverage much more nutritious. The sourdough process, for example, creates b vitamins from the flour. And the sauerkraut process actually destroys and eliminates any chemical residue on the cabbage such as pesticides, fungicides, etc... So I see it as a way of improving the quality of what I'm eating.

From a probiotic standpoint, it's not a bad thing to eat fermented stuff, and for some issues it might help. But the main issue with lactofermented foods/drinks is that the probiotics they contain are not human, they are transitory. So, they may exert some positive effects, but once you poop them out, they are gone, and you must continually replenish them. Certain probiotics like Miyarisin, Mutaflor, Reuteri, (and I think PrescriptAssist) are human strains, which means they should take up permanent residence in the gut, and once there, they can influence neurotransmitters and produce vitamins. I'm pretty sure the transitory probiotics can't do these types of things, they can at best kill of some pathogenic stuff on their way out.

Being in Japan, you should be able to at least get Miyarisin really easily, which is also quite cheap. I think you probably can't go wrong with some more fermented stuff in your diet, but I wouldn't expect the same results as with the human strains.

 

[Carl]

The probiotics you mention are very different to Soil Based Organisms.

If things like prescription assist are expensive, why do you not try culturing the prescription assist bacteria using a suitable food source and temperature? Once you have some capsules you can then culture your own and it needn't cost you anything more. The ideal temperatures for SBO do tend to be lower than that for most probiotics, 30C is more ideal. If your ambient temperature is around this temperature then you might not even need any heat source. After checking, it looks like it is close to this temperature but you still might need a little heat with a temperature controller. Check the names of the bacteria and their ideal temperature and suitable food sources.

Be aware that sauerkraut temperatures should be lower than mid to high 20'sC to culture properly. The initial stage needs to be a lot lower at around 14C. I used to hang out on the wild fermentation forum but have not been in in a long time.

 

[Richard7]

@Basilico the bifidos are mostly of human origin and l. casei shirota (yakult) is of human origin.

@IThinkImTurningJapanese I have been doing wild fermentationabout 4 or 5 years now. I am a little different to sandor in that I favour using jars with a one way valve for vegetable ferments, I use wecks and la parfaits (http://www.leparfait.com/le-parfait-super-jars) I prefer the latter.

The advantage of these jars is that the CO2 produced by fermentation forces out the air in the top of the jar and provides a better protection against oxidation than water alone.

@MeSci I think it is really a try it and see thing. we never really know what bacteria we are going to have. I have seen some papers on kimchi for example where the principal bacterial species produced by each recipe were very different.

The veges do not always have the same bacteria on them, so each batch will be a unique mix and then the growth of species will depend on how the temperature favours and disadvantages each species and then it will depend when in the process you eat the ferment.

Ken lessesen at https://cfsremission.com/ has argued against yoghurt and sauerkraut because of issues with the expected typical bacteria. But I know that I am very particular about my yoghurt and sometimes it's exactly what I seem to need, and I the same is certainly true of the vege ferments though they are much harder to predict.

re lactic acid I understand that the concern in the gut was with d lactate. L lactate itself is a useful as a source of energy and yakult (l casei shirota) which is an l lactate producer was shown to be beneficial to people with beck scale anxiety in a small canadian study (I think n= 20 or so) about 8 years ago.

 

[Carl]

When I was making yoghurt, I often used various probiotic capsules as starters. The first batch took a very long time to finish fermenting, sometimes 12 to 16 hours but when using some of a previous batch of the yoghurt it would finish in around 3 hours. You can do a similar thing with most bacteria. Some of the SBO can ferment well on potato. It does pay to check what food sources the bacteria you wish to culture can use and their ideal temperature range.

 

[IreneF]

Japan! You can probably get natto or make your own. I think it's the best probiotic. Very good for the gut, high in vitamin K, and may help prevent osteoporosis.

 

[erin]

I make my own kefir. I love it. I should say I loved it. I now think it gives me severe vertigo. I ended up A&E 2 days ago. I got better and last night I had a cup of kefir, vertigo came back.

 

[IThinkImTurningJapanese]

Japan! You can probably get natto or make your own. I think it's the best probiotic. Very good for the gut, high in vitamin K, and may help prevent osteoporosis.

I can't believe I'm gonna say this, but it is one of the things I miss most when away from Japan.

I can get it very affordably at any 7-11 or "conbini" (convenience store), ¥100, a bit less than a dollar. So, making it is somewhat pointless.

I consume it regularly for heart health, but I hate to recommend it because there is such a "steep curve" to acquiring a taste for it.

 

[Richard7]

I find it hard to find a balance between listening to my body and theory. I would hope that I would be drawn to the right fermented foods. There are certainly times when I really want natto, doenjang, or yoghurt or some such thing. It should work like food should work, with our sense of need/hunger matching our actual needs. But I am not sure it does.

And our ideas about the microbiome are, as I have said in other threads, essentially cargo cult science. We look at the healthy people, measure what we can measure and then try to copy their measurements. It seems the best we can do at the moment, so I am strongly drawn to Ken's blog and the probiotics suggested by the research.

So I am a hybrid. Yesterday I had some c.butricum tablets and some l.casei shirota, b. longum and symbioflor 2 grown on soy milk (things that are theoretically good) and some curd. I have no idea what microbes are in the curd. I made it from A2 milk and the last two jalapenos growing in a pot against the nothern wall of my flat. I understand that chillies and tamarind are traditional starters for curd, and I know that this batch is nice and hope that it is providing something useful but do not know this to be so.

Anyway I hope you have fun with the lacto-fermented veggies.