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Probiotic Superfoods That Can Change Your Life

By on January 27, 2014
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By Donna Schwenk

What if I told you there were special foods you could eat that would heal you, strengthen your immune system, prolong your life, and fill you with a sense of well being?

Twelve years ago I was a new mother at 41 years of age, falling apart, and paralyzed with fear. I was sick with diabetes and suffering from high blood pressure. I had just given birth to a premature baby girl. I knew that I was in trouble and prayed, desperately begging for help. I wasn’t living any more. I was merely surviving and barely getting through my days.

When you are sick and don’t feel well, it is difficult to feel any joy and excitement in life. You are simply existing and not truly living. I tried to comfort myself every day, talking to myself in the privacy of my own head. I told myself things like, “The answers will come to me, I know they will. They will come and I will find my way. I was not meant to live like this.”

The answers did come, and they were tailor-made for me. They came in a form and fashion that spoke volumes. They came to me in the form of food. However, it wasn’t the kind of food that most are accustomed to eating. These foods were fermented (or, as I call them, cultured foods). They are foods like yogurt and sauerkraut, and are teeming with billions of probiotics and good bacteria. They changed me in an extraordinary way. I’m talking about foods like kefir, kombucha, and cultured vegetables.

Not only are these foods delicious, but they also have the extraordinary ability to speak to the cells of my body and they changed me from the inside out.

You and I contain 100 trillion cells of bacteria. It’s who and what we are. For thousands of years, people ate and consumed cultured foods. Sadly, we have forgotten about these foods. We have become a society that is obsessed with speed and convenience. When we get sick, our first thought is to reach towards the medicine cabinet. We don’t stop and try to figure out what the true source of the problem is.

When I started eating cultured foods every ailment I had went away. I watched as these foods healed my tiny baby. Then they healed my older teenager from Irritable Bowel Syndrome and food allergies.  I was astounded as I watched these foods work miracles in my friends and their children. Problems like ulcers, asthma, food allergies, and digestive issues were going completely away.  How could something so simple be changing everybody? Hippocrates stated something so profound when he said,

“All disease begins in the gut.”

When I flooded my body with foods that had billions of good bacteria in them, my body began to heal me. You and I house more bacterial cells than human cells in our bodies, and I think it is time we stop talking of killing bacteria with antibiotics and start building up the trillions of bacteria inside of us that are mostly good bacteria. Actually, 99% of the bacteria that live in you are good or harmless, but you are unaware of this.  This is my job: to help you know how much these foods can help you. I’ve spent over ten years researching them, learning how to make them, and teaching others.

My body was trying to get my attention. Sometimes pain is the only way we can learn and change who, and what, we are. I shall never forget those days of struggle. I didn’t know I could feel this much joy and happiness and I want you to feel it too. When you feel good – you do good, it is a natural side effect of joy. It just spills forth from you.

I went from lying on the couch to living life. I began teaching classes, started a blog, built a website, became an author, and found the life I was truly meant to live. My life has transformed in every area and I feel as though I am aging backwards. This is the journey I took, and I am so thankful for the pain that brought me here.  Please let me remind you – you are supposed to feel good. Your body has the ability to heal itself and you are supposed to feel happy too. They have found that your moods are affected by the bacteria in your gut, and I am living proof that you can go from sadness to joy and live the life of your dreams.

I hope that we can have an epidemic of wellness in 2014. I hope – I can help  you believe in your own wellness. It is the sweetest way to live your life.

The wish for healing has always been half of health. ~Lucius Annaeus Seneca

 

Donna-SchwenkDonna Schwenk is the Hayhouse published author of Cultured Food Life, and the Kansas City Chapter leader for the Weston Price Foundation, a worldwide organization comprised of people dedicated to restoring nutrient dense food to the human diet through education research and activism. Donna teaches classes in the Kansas City area, helping to share with others what has come so easily to her. To learn more about the foods that healed her, visit www.culturedfoodlife.com.


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