Edit: this article was edited on April 12, 2021 to include a study published on PubMed on Nov. 11, 2020 showing the effectiveness of Kefir in fighting against COVID-19
Learn about Kefir Benefits, a wonder drink that will restore your health in and bring healing in ripple effect.
Kefir (pronounced /kəˈfɪər/ kə-FEER).
The word “kefir” is gotten from the Turkish word “keif”, which is meant to express the “good feeling” one has after drinking Kefir. [1]Traditional cultures In the Mediterranean and Caucus Mountains have attributed healing powers to kefir for millennia. In the last couple of decades Kefir has become subject of scientific research to determine it’s true health benefits to human health.
Kefir has been found to be very beneficial by the Russian people, they have used it since 1908 to improve overall public health. In 1973, the Minister of Food and Industry of the Soviet Union sent a letter to Irina Sakharova acknowledging her part and thanking her for bringing kefir to the Russian people.[2]
Kefir Milk is made by adding Kefir Grains to Milk (sheep, goat, cow or camel milk). Kefir Grains are essentially colonies of good bacteria, yeast and subspecies. Traditional Kefir made at home has 36 to 60 bacteria strains while commercially produced and packaged one only has 9 to 11 strains of bacteria.
Below we shall explain the benefits of Kefir Milk, made at home with Traditional Kefir grains passed down from generation to generation.
1. Kefir Boosts Immunity
As alluded earlier, Kefir has many bacteria strains, Lactobacillus kefiri in particular has antimicrobial properties. It is known to inhibit growth of pathogens like:
- Enterococcus faecalis (main cause for wound infections, pelvic and urinary tract infections)[3]
- Staphylococcus aureus (main cause for skin and soft tissue infections including boils)[4]
- Salmonella enterica (main cause of typhoid fever and stomach infections) [5]
- Escherichia coli (causes severe anaemia and kidney disease) [6]
- Listeria monocytogenes (Causes Listeria which leads to meningitis)[7]
- Bacillus cereus (responsible for food poisoning symptoms) [8]
Kefir also contains an insoluble polysaccharide called kefiran that greatly helps fight against candida, a type of yeast infection found in the mouth, intestinal tract and the vagina.
2. Builds Bone Health
Kefir milk promotes calcium-absorption-enhancing bioactivities. When bones health is getting depleted, one is at risk of Osteoporosis a disease characterized by low bone mass and structural deterioration of bone tissue, leading to an increased fracture risk.[9]
Peptides from milk also helps reduce the formation of blood clots, a condition known as thrombosis.
3. Fights Cancer
Kefir is rich in anti-cacinogenic properties which help slow down the growth of early tumors.
A research by Journal for Medicinal Foods, shows that our drink in question helps reduce breast cancer cells by up to 56%. The reasearch paper comes to this conclusion:
The present findings suggest that kefir extracts contain constituents that specifically inhibit the growth of human breast cancer cells, which might eventually be useful in the prevention or treatment of breast cancer. [10]
4. Improves Digestion
The gut is made of build up of complex micro-organisms. There are a ton of good bacteria, yeast and subspecies. These bacteria colonies help breakdown foods into absorb-able nutrients.
The gut flora balance can be interrupted when pathogens and viruses multiply in big numbers in the gut. This means digestion can be interrupted until normal flora is restored.
Kefir rich in good bacteria helps restore the gut flora improving food breakdown which results to your body getting beneficial nutrients and bowel movement. [11]
When one takes antibiotics they kill pathogens as well as the good bacteria. there is no better way to restore the good community of helpful micro-organisms that taking traditionally made kefir, from Kefir grains.
5. Relieves Allergy and Asthma
All parts of the body that have mucous membrane like like nasal passages, digestive system and lungs contains microbes which teach your body system to identify harmful pathogenic microbes and the non-harmful (friendly microbes, dietary proteins, and many environmental allergens).
The use of antibacterial soaps (too much hygiene) and excessive use of antibiotics in children eliminates these useful microbes on mucus membrane areas. The result is the body doesn’t adapt or train on how to identify and handle friendly microbes and dietary proteins.
When the integrity of the small intestine lining is depreciated.. semi-digested foods can get to the bloodstream causing continuous allergy attacks.
Drinking Kefir Milk can help continually recolonize your mucus membranes with friendly microbes, hence reducing inflammation to make sure your gut doesn’t leak. [12]
6. Heals Skin
Did you know Eczema, psoriasis, rosacea and acne are NOT skin conditions at all. Most skin conditions are just a mirror of what is happening in your gut. These are just autoimmune diseases sitting in the gut.
Here is why:
The body is covered by the Skin on the outside and all passages in the body are covered by mucus membrane: The gut, sinuses and lungs. The mucus membrane play the same protective role as the skin. Therefore, when you take care of your skin and forget your gut, it’s just like washing a cup on the inside and forgetting the inside.
You may heal your skin by restoring microbiomes by drinking kefir milk, you may also apply Kefir physically on the affected part of the skin.[13]
7. Helps Premature Infants Gain adequate Weight
Kefir Whole Milk is recommended as a supplement for feeding premature infants. Kefir helps develop indispensable fatty-acids in the blood serum of infants which has good tolerance and adequate weight gain [14]
Donna Schwenk of HealYourLife aslo had a personal experience in 2013
“I immediately began to add one to two teaspoons of kefir to each of Holli’s bottles. What happened shocked me—in one month my baby had gained four pounds! That’s a lot for a preemie. She had color in her cheeks, and she was sleeping through the night. She stopped spitting up everything, and she began to thrive. So we upped her kefir intake, and in a short time, she became the healthiest person in the house.”
BONUS: Kefir also helps introduce early immunity to infants.
8. Helps Detoxify the Body
Kefir Helps detox your body in three ways:
- The liver is the body’s laboratory that removes toxins from the body. Kefir has the right nutrients useful for liver/s detox system.
- Kefir helps in Bowel movement, cleansing the colon and quickly getting rid of toxins before they enter the blood stream.
- Kefir is rich in microbes – Microbes are used in bio-degradation, this means they break complex pollutants into simple non toxic substances. When oil spils in the ocean threatening entire ecosystems, scientists use microbes to break down the oil into simpler substances. [15]
9. The Key to a Healthy Heart
Through the fermentation process, Kefir produces Vitamin K2, more accurately referred to as menaquinone-7 (MK-7). K2 helps reduce stiffening of the artery walls by protecting blood vessels from calcification.
This same process that makes vitamin K2 a bone health supporter makes it an invaluable nutrient for cardiovascular health. Matrix Gla-protein (MGP) is the most potent modulator of arterial calcification known today. It also binds calcium but, in doing so, it protects blood vessels from calcification, but only when activated, which requires adequate vitamin K2 intakes. [16]
10. Helps Tolerate Lactose
So you are Not a milk person? Not anymore..
With Kefir you can introduce dairy products to your diet again. Lactase Enzyme present in Kefir helps breakdown Lactose milk sugar. The result is reduced flatulence, gas, diarrhea and bloating from milk related causes. [17]
Moreover, Kefir has many microbes that help in overall food digestion, so you can get relief much faster.
11.Grants a Relaxing Effect
Kefir is rich in Tryptophan, an essential amino acid that acts a natural mood regulator, since it has the unique ability to help the body produce and regulate certain hormones.
Tryptophan helps;
- improve sleep quality
- protection against depression
- Helps control Impulses hence overcoming addictions
- natural relief for headaches [18]
Definitely this is a drink that you would want to have in your diet on a regular basis.
12. Helps in WeightLoss
Our body needs an array of nutrients. Whereas one may eat foods rich in nutrients, each person synthesizes the food differently depending on the gut flora that is acting on the food. Two person may take the same meal but end up benefiting from the meal differently.
A person whose gut has microbes will get the most nutrients from a meal than a person who has a wrecked gut.
The brain continues to send hunger pangs even when you are full, until such a time when the required nutrients are able to reach the blood streams.
To digest sugar and carbohydrates is not complex and can be done by average enzymes in the body. To convert that sugar into energy requires essential and non-essential amino acids.
Kefir has Tryptophan, which activates niacin that helps convert macronutrients like sugar and carbohydrates into energy. when this does not happen the macro nutrients are stored as fat.
In this regard the role of Kefir in Weightloss is twofold:
- Helps the body get the right nutrients so the brain can activate signals to the body when you are full.
- Helps breakdown macronutrients into energy so that they are not stored as fat. [19]
13. Withstand Stress
Vitamin B1(Thiamine) present in our wonder drink is used to convert food(carbs) into fuel(glucose), which the body uses to produce energy that helps one quickly adopt to stressful and energy demanding situations.
It’s rare to be deficient in thiamine except for alcoholics and those undergoing dialysis.
People with B1 deficiency are unable to digest carbohydrates which leads to pyruvic acid buildup in the bloodstream causing difficulty in breathing, lack of mental alertness and heart damage. [20]
14. Normalize blood pressure
A study by H Maenda in 2004 titled: Effects of an exopolysaccharide (kefiran) on lipids, blood pressure, blood glucose, and constipation. concluded that kefiran significantly suppressed increase of blood pressure and reduced the serum cholesterol levels in subjects that consumed excessive dietary cholesterol. [21]
15. Beneficial to Diabetics
A study by A OSTADRAHIMI in 2015 titled: Effect of Probiotic Fermented Milk (Kefir) on Glycemic Control and Lipid Profile In Type 2 Diabetic Patients: A Randomized Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial
Concluded that Probiotic fermented milk can be useful as a complementary therapy in the treatment of diabetes, as it helps control glucose and lipid profile in patients with diabetes type 2. [22]
16. Slows Aging
Our drink of power has anti-inflammatory effects.
“Inflammation is the body’s natural response to threats from pathogens, toxins, environmental strains, injury, stress and other harmful causes.”
Chronic Inflammation is a danger to cellular health which causes aging or may lead to diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer.
Pathogens and fungus like candida may produce toxic waste which may cause inflammation in the body. Kefiran helps breakdown these wastes into simple substances harmless to the body and also inhibits growth of pathogens. [23]
17. Kefir: A protective dietary supplementation against viral infection (Including COVID-19)
In a scientific study published in November 11, 2020 – Kefir has been proven to be of great help in the fight against COVID-19.
Kefir and its probiotic contents can modulate the immune system to suppress infections from viruses (e.g., Zika, hepatitis C, influenza, rotaviruses). The antiviral mechanisms of kefir involve enhancement of macrophage production, increasing phagocytosis, boosting production of cluster of differentiation-positive (CD4+), CD8+, immunoglobulin (Ig)G+ and IgA+ B cells, T cells, neutrophils, as well as cytokines (e.g., interleukin (IL)-2, IL-12, interferon gamma-γ). Kefir can act as an anti-inflammatory agent by reducing expression of IL-6, IL-1, TNF-α, and interferon-γ. Hence, kefir might be a significant inhibitor of the ‘cytokine storm’ that contributes to COVID-19. Read the study further
18. Kefir Drink is Easy to Make at Home
Just like a mother’s milk is to an infant so is Kefir Milk to every family member.
With Traditional Kefir Grains you can make the drink in your home every 24 to 36 hours.
An in an instant you’ll introduce anti-bacterial, anti-mycotic, anti-neoplasic, anti-inflammatory effect, antioxidant activity, anti-hypertensive effect, anti-carcinogenic activity, anti-allergenic, antithrombotic, immunomodulatory properties, hypocholesterolaemic effect, control of plasma glucose, improved digestion and tolerance to lactose
You May Get Traditional Kefir Grains in Kenya: Reach out
