Red Cabbage Sauerkraut Recipe

Okay,  so  a lot of us have digestive problems. In fact when we eat raw vegetables we get a lot of wind which can be quite painful.
There is a good reason for this.  Our digestive systems weren't made to digest a lot of carbohydrate matter. Carbs are all made up of cellulose.  


To eat vegetables we need to cook them or we need to eat naturally fermented sauerkraut.  The beautiful thing is the cellulose in the vegetable has now been broken down and it doesn't take the intestines to create fungus (candida) to process the cellulose.  Hence we are not aiding candida overgrowth or abetting leaky gut.  
So hurray for red cabbage Sauerkrau! It is nice and crunchy, it has a little bit of vitamin K2 from the natural bacteria that is created in the process, lots of vitamins and all those phytonutrients and polyphenols.


 It's really tasty particularly with fish or any meat. You can heat it slightly for winter or eat is cold for summer.


I eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner at the moment.  I can't keep making enough for mine and Ian's demand! 

More on Red Cabbage
Red cabbage contains anthocyanins - red and blue pigments - that protect the brain. It may also have beneficial effects to your stomach, as the stability of the anthocyanins in the product may stimulate gastrointestinal digestion. Acylated anthocyanins from red cabbage acts preventatively against the oxidative stress in vivo. Cruciferous vegetables, of which red cabbage is one, are also known to help reduce homocysteine levels.
Acylated anthocyanins are well known to be more antioxidant than non acylated anthocyanins. In addition, antioxidant measurements showed a better antioxidant capacity than grape polyphenols with lipid peroxidation of beta-carotene.

Cabbage is also a cruciferous vegetables . Cruciferous veges contain sulforaphane glucosinolate  a highly reactive antioxidant. In extensive studies, sulforaphane has been demonstrated to be a potent inducer of detoxifying enzymes and protector of our DNA.

After all that, the red cabbage sauerkraut recipe
Pick a nice fresh cabbage



  1. Weigh the cabbage.
  2. Calculate and measure your Celtic salt.  You will need about 15grams  for every kilo of cabbage.  (It's not that critical).
  3. Shred one whole red cabbage.  (Try to pick a juicy one as it creates more liquid).
  4. Layer the cabbage in a large bowl with the salt.
  5. Cover the bowl with a wet tea towel and leave overnight.  This will start to draw the water out.
  6. The next day scrunch the cabbage with your hands.  Really knead it for about 10 minutes. (Some people do this with their feet).  It would be good to have rubber gloves for the feet!

  7.  Use a 5 litre plastic bucket or a sauerkraut crock if you have one and put the cabbage into the bucket pushing down the layers down as you go.

  8.  If there is not enough liquid at the end of this process to cover the cabbage then make a little salted water to cover the cabbage.

  9.  Put a plate over the cabbage.  You may need to go to the local Op Shop to find one that fits.

 10. Place a heavy weight on top of the plate like a stone mortar from your pestle and mortar  set.  Wash it well first.

11.  Put a wet tea towel over the top of the bucket and refresh with more water daily.

12. Leave for 3 to 4 weeks depending on the temperature of your climate.  It will start making some foam and making strange sounds as it ferments.  This is great!

13.  When you take off the plate and smell the sauerkraut it should smell sour but not off.  It it's off throw it out.  When you taste it it should taste nice and sour.  This is the Lactobacillus culture.

14.  Put it into glass bottles and put into the fridge.

15   Start making another batch.

You can add some fresh dill, ginger, seaweed or caraway if you want.

Naturally Fermented Dill Cucumber Pickles

Pickles are a great way to eat vegetables.  Not only are they full of all the nutrients of a raw vegetable but they are really easy to digest and the ferment is ultra good as it contains some Vitamin K2.  Yummy for summer vegetable eating.

DILL PICKLES- Naturally Fermented


6-8 small (3-4 inches long) cucumbers.

1 1/2 cups filtered water

2 tablespoons celtic sea salt

4-8 sprigs of fresh dill

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and cut in half and smashed with a knife

1 teaspoon peppercorns


Plus: 1 wide-mouth 500ml glass canning jar (sterilised in boiling water and air-dried)


Optional seasoning: red pepper flakes, hot chilli, mustard seeds, coriander seeds, fennel seeds, celery leaves, bay leaves, fresh herbs, onion, cinnamon stick, cloves.

Instructions:


Combine salt and water and let sit until salt dissolves.

After washing cucumbers, cut the tips off on both ends. Leaving the cucumbers whole or cutting them in half or into spears is a matter of personal preference. Experiment to see what you like best.

In the jar put 4 sprigs of dill, garlic cloves and peppercorns.

Tightly pack the cucumbers in the jar. Add remaining dill.

Cut one cucumber in half and set it horizontally on top of the other cucumbers –this will keep the cucumbers from floating up above the water in the jar when they shrink a little during the pickling process.

Pour the salt water into the jar. It should completely cover the cucumbers.

Set the lid loosely on top of the jar, don’t seal it. Let the jar sit undisturbed at room temperature. You’ll know fermentation has begun when you see bubbles rising to the top of the jar and the water becomes cloudy. A thin layer of white scum might also form on the surface of the water. This is harmless and can be scooped away with a clean spoon. However, trust your nose. If the pickles smell bad while fermenting, throw them out.

It will probably take 3-10 days before the pickles are done. Taste the pickles during this time frame to see if the texture and flavour are to your liking. This is the only sure sign that your pickles are done. Once you’ve decided they’re done, tighten the lid and store the pickles in the refrigerator. Because there is no vinegar to preserve the pickles, they will only keep about a week. If the flavour of the pickles is not vinegary enough for you, try drizzling a little vinegar on the spears right before eating.

Grapevine leaves put into the jars will keep the cucumbers crunchy. Wash them with water first.

All about Vitamin K2- MK4 Variety

First discovered by a dentist
Weston Price the famous dentist who went around the world studying teeth in different races called it the X factor and now is identified as Vitamin K2.

You really do want to get enough Vitamin K2-MK4
Vitamin K2 is good the  bones, skin, blood vessels, the brain, teeth, a healthy gut,

Foods that you can eat with K2 MK-4 
All the values of K2-MK4 in animal products in this list depend on the quality of the food they ate.  To insure good levels of K2-MK4 the animals need to have been pastured on green grass grown on high mineral content soil.

Vegetarians will be deficient.  (No wonder vegetarians
are prone to osteoporosis!)
Unless you eat Natto (only mostly provides MK-7) as a vegetarian you are not going to get near enough Vitamin K2.  Dark leafy greens can only provide Vitamin K1 which is only good for blood clotting not bone or artery health.

Vitamin K2 -MK4 & other MK content of selected foods

Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox by Dr Kate Rheaume-Bleue is a book well worth reading if you have a serious health issue such as one I have described above.  It has only just been published and is a wealth of good information about this vital but here to fore little understood vitamin.

Why Vitamin K2 MK-4 not other MK's?
Although vendors of MK-7 have done a study that shows MK-7 lasts longer in the body than MK-4 they have never published the study for us to look at.
 Also studies on plasma in rats shows exactly the same time that MK-7 and MK-4 lasts in the body.
MK-4  has been found to activate two specific genes in osteoblast cells.  Osteoblasts build bone.  They also tested MK-7 and it did to activate these genes.  This shows that MK-4 has effects on bone tissue the MK-7 does not.
 I also think it's worth mentioning that MK-4 is the only form of vitamin K2 that's been shown to reduce fracture risk in clinical trials and MK-4 is the only one that has been shown to prevent/reduce arterial calcification in rats up to this point.

Leaky Gut or Intestinal Permeability

What Is Leaky Gut – The Science Behind It

It might surprise you but Leaky Gut is exactly what it sounds like.

The cells that line the intestinal wall are meant to act as a barrier to only allow fully digested nutrients through and into your blood stream to be utilized within your body.

But when Leaky Gut develops, these tightly packed cells begin to lose their structure and gaps form between them which allows undigested food particles, bacteria, yeast, toxins, and other harmful substances that exist within your gut into your blood stream.

And once in your blood stream, these unwanted substances can travel freely anywhere within the body and account for countless chronic symptoms.

Leaky gut then leads to the need for the the special diets.

Diets such as the FODMAP diet (to eliminate those fructans),  the Gluten free diet or the Celiac diet, the SCD diet or all the other specialized diets we find we need because our holey intestines have allowed  certain foods through the intestinal wall and they have become a poisonous substance to the body.

The Gut (the large & small intestine) is a second brain
Not only is a healthy gut important for digestion, iron absorption, to recycle Vitamin K and to digest Vitamin B12 the gut is also like a mini brain. 

 In fact it's now thought to be the second brain as it has over 100 million neurons, more in fact than the spinal cord. 
Unlike the rest of the body the gut doesn't need our brains (above) to help the process of digestion our second brain can do the job all by itself.
Actually the vagus nerve in the gut sends information  to the brain, not the other way round.   Everyday emotional well-being may rely on messages from the gut brain below to the  brain above.


The gut makes Serotonin
 95 percent of the body's serotonin (the hormone that governs mood, sleep and appetite) is found in the gut.  


When the gut make too much serotonin
 Irritable bowel syndrome arises in part from too much serotonin in our entrails, and could perhaps be regarded as a "mental illness" of the second brain.
Serotonin is also now understood to  inhibit osteoblastic bone formation.  Too much serotonin and you get osteoporosis! 
So the gut hormonally regulates bone formation!
Guess which food is responsible for making too much Serotonin?
  Carbohydrates.  so excess carbohydrates are not only responsible for
too much yeast growth in the guts causing those nasty holes in the gut lining but they are also responsible for too much serotonin production.
A healthy gut is essential for us to feel good  
It is very possible that many "mental illnesses" are really gut illnesses.  
We need to try treating the gut first by eating the program I suggest.  
There are so many people whose depression has gone through eating a LCHF diet.
Leaky Gut and Autoimmune Diseases
These two go hand in hand.   Once we have had a leaky gut for a length of time
then our next step will be one form of Autoimmune Disease or another.

If you are over 60 years, get a bone scan!

Don't end up in a nursing home with a broken femur
Don't wait till you have broken your Femur or even a leg before you take the important step of getting a Dexa scan to test for osteoporosis.


Don't bother using the chemist's bone scan. They are useless.  Both Ian and I has one done few years ago at a chemist and the test read that our bones were great.   This is obviously not true as a short time later he we find he had really bad osteoporosis.  I have since found out this type of testing is not at all accurate.


Sound mind, Sound femur
When I was young I worked in a nursing home and  I watched some lovely old people come in to be cared for after breaking their femur. When they came in they were alert and had been looking after themselves in their own home.
After breaking their femur they never left.   The steady decline from a lack of good food, exercise, healthy peer stimulation and the loss of their place in the world meant these people couldn't recover physically.  
They went down very fast emotionally and with that they lost their sanity.
They died in the nursing home.  Don't let this happen to you.
Bones do not heal at all well or easily when you have osteoporosis as we have found out the hard way.  Especially the femur bone.
The femur is the top of you thigh bone and it is hard to heal even with good bones and it is the most commonly broken bone in old people usually from a small fall.


You too can turn osteoporosis around.
You can turn osteoporosis around.  Watch our journey and tell everyone as we show the amazing turnaround that Ian is going through from severe osteoporosis to no osteoporosis.  


Don't become a Neolithic diet statistic
Cardiovascular disease, Dementia, Alzheimers, Osteoporosis,  are all diseases of our modern 'fad' diet.  
These are not diseases that are just normal as you get old these are diseases of the modern diet.  The high carb, low fat diet.
The so called 'fad diet' Ian and I are both eating, was one that our ancestors were eating for millions of years.   
So I ask, which one is the real 'fad' diet?

Trials of a Long Distance (in time) Low Carber

Having afternoon tea with friends can be saddening
Yesterday we met our friends at a cafe for an afternoon tea.  Sounds easy doesn't it? Just a nice cup of tea and no need to watch anyone eating food we couldn't have?
Well it didn't quite work out that way.
Our friends, at 4pm in the afternoon, decided that they wouldn't be able to survive till dinner time without a snack.


Neolithic diseases
Now I don't know if they had lunch, maybe not, but they ordered Nachos.
Out came a large plate of Nachos which was placed in the middle of the small table. Ian and I looked at each other.  We'd just been talking with them about all the Neolithic diseases created by too many carbs.  The whole carb thing is very much in the forefront of our minds at the moment after just finding out that Ian has bad osteoporosis.
Neolithic diseases is a term used by my favourite Neurosurgeon (at the moment) Jack Kruse.  It's a term for all modern illnesses of mankind such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, atherosclerosis, leaky gut with overgrowth of candida, etc all coming from our modern agrarian diet (too many carbs and bad fats).


Our friends are both overweight and I'm betting they have metabolic syndrome. One is on the way to becoming diabetic if he isn't already.  The other wants to have a baby soon.


The up and downs of hunger
They are both afraid of hunger because, like Ian and I have experienced, on a high carb diet your of experience hunger is pretty unpleasant.  They both admitted to getting angry when they were hungry.  This is because on a high carb diet your blood sugar swings low to high to low.  In both states your mood are altered.  In the low state you are not able to make good decisions and you will eat something you probably will later regret.


My desire just wasn't there any more
I tried to not look at the plate of Nachos but interestingly enough after the first fear that I may want to eat it, I then looked at it again and I had absolutely no desire to eat it.
It was then interesting to watch the addiction first hand with our friends eating this high carbohydrate meal.   
One of them has tried to do this program, but he wouldn't give up fruit and so even though he lost weight and felt better he got tempted back into his sugary high carbs foods again.
The rest of us just had a cup of tea. He ordered beer which is high carbohydrate.
He could have ordered the chicken wings but passed it up.  I know the chicken wings are very good and we suggested he have them.  
We tried.

The addict always finds a Collaborator in his need for the fix
But the addict was going to have his way.  And his fiancée agreed and collaborated.
And as we watched them eat, Ian commented later, that he saw unconsciousness arise in them as they ate.
Can you accept you are an addict of high carb foods?
If you can then you are on the way to overcoming the addiction.  
If you are in denial then you haven't got a chance.
My friend is in denial.


Food and the memory lane
Food often is a very social event.  We remember good times of eating certain foods in a convivial setting.  Those food feelings get stuck in our memory and from then on we associate that food with good times. 


And so it was an interesting an enlightening afternoon as we started to understand the absolute cognitive dissonance of the addict and his need for a fix.


Ian's - and my brain chemistry is changing for the good
We also saw how we have come to think differently because our actually brain chemistry is changing back to the way it was before we became addicts. We now can stand back and watch our compulsive selves and not be forced into unconscious behaviours by them.

Osteoporosis Protocol Ian is on Now

I am getting this protocol from a maveric Neurosurgeon in the States.   Here is the link

Firstly  Ian has been already on a high fat, medium protein and low carbohydrate diet now for 12 months. 

So this part of the of the Osteoporosis protocol is already under way.

Avoid all polyunsaturated oils like the plague.

Completely eliminate gluten OR go and have a gluten test to see if you have sensitivities.  Ian is either gluten intolerant or sensitive, we don't know.  This is common in osteoporosis people.  On this program you shouldn't be eating gluten anyway.

Low Stomach Acid

If you have low stomach acid you will need to take Betaine Hydrochloride.  You can test this for yourself by using it and seeing if you get a hot or burning sensation when you have one.  If you do just take a little bicarbonate of soda.

This will relieve it promptly.  

If you get no burning sensation you need it. Increase the dosage to 2 and see what happen. Keep this up until the burning returns and then back off one capsule.

Most osteoporosis people have low stomach acid. 

His supplements are:

Plenty of coconut oil- Ian is taking 2 tablespoons 3 times daily and also we cook with it.

1 cup of Bone Broth once a day -bones from grass fed beef (will supply some Glutamine)

Vitamin K2 MK-4 variety 45 mg-  This variety is very important as it is the only one used in studies that really works to get the bone building again.

Magnesium Malate before bed: 1000 mg.

Vitamin D3 :  8000 iu in the morning

Omega 3's: 2000 mg twice a day (DHA/EPA variety)

Vitamin A -  15000 iu -only the natural variety made from fish (must be taken with D3 and these ratios are important)  

Vitamin B complex- very important also

Also:  Turmeric, Resveratrol, Arganine, Ornathine.

Selenium:  A brazil nut a day or a supplement

Zinc:  50 mg

Iodine: prawns 2 times a week or a supplement

Co Enzyme Q10- only use the Ubiquinol variety.  800mg

DHEA: he is still not tested for this but we will need to get a doctors prescription for it . 

I get all these supplements (except DHEA) from I-Herb  in the USA as the prices are better than here and freight is very reasonable.

Ian has had these tests:

Vitamin D: must be optimal

Osteocalcin

Salivary cortisol

Cholesterol:  HDL to LDL (low HDL indicates too much omega 6's to omega 3's which means lots of inflammation.  It is also a sign of a Leaky Gut)

Triglycerides

Reverse T3 - Reverse Thyroid 3

HS-CRP - Highly sensitive C Reactive protein.

T3- Thyroid 3

TSH- Thyroid Stimulation Hormone.

Free Thyroid

Ferritin  - Needs to be optimal

B12  -  Needs to be optimal.

Testosterone, - all sex hormones should be optimal.  We aren't up to that yet.

DHEA - he hasn't done this will update on this later

AVOID PAINKILLERS

He must avoids all pain killers- NSAIDS and limit radiation as it affects bone stock.

LEAKY GUT

This link is for the same neurosurgeon information on a Leaky Gut protocol

And for how to find out if you have it go here.

We still don't know if he has a  Leaky Gut but if he does we will need to take plenty of Glutathione to repair it.  The trouble is that Glutathione can't be taken by mouth so he would need IV Glutathione.   The good thing is we have found a source of Lipospheric Glutathione that is supposed to get past the problem of the stomach as it is encased in a substance that allows it to get into the cells. We can buy it on the same USA site above but  we are going to make our own.  

Glutamine- very good for repairing a Leaky Gut

I will update on this later as we need to get Ian tested.

Testing for Leaky Gut caused by Candida

Leaky Gut Syndrome Diagnosis – Intestinal Permeability

Candida will cause Intestinal permeability.  If you want to test for this problem then this is the way to do it.

To diagnose Leaky Gut use this most widely used test to date. The test I am referring to is the Intestinal Permeability Test.

Intestinal permeability is another term used to describe Leaky Gut or permeability of the intestinal lining.

This test works by having you ingest two different indigestible sugar molecules. One sugar molecule is small enough that it easily passes through even a healthy intestinal lining. The other is large enough that it should not be able to pass through a health intestinal lining.

After ingesting the test drink, you then submit a urine sample which is them analyzed to look for the presence of these two sugar molecules.

If only one is present then this indicates that you do not have Leaky Gut. However, if both are found then this is an indication that you do.

This simple test is available through diagnostic laboratories such as Genova Diagnostics in the USA or Australian Reference Laboratories in Australia.