Bone Broth for Gut Health - How Might It Help?
Video Transcript:
Hi everybody and welcome to this topic about bone broth and whether it could help to heal your gut.
If you don't recognize me, I'm Ashley Oswald. I am a registered dietitian and founded Oswald Digestive Clinic. And I get to present this information to you today.
So let's just go ahead and dive right in.
What is bone broth?
Bone broth is made by simmering the bones and connective tissue of animals for one to two days,
It can be used in soups and sauces or on its own as a health drink.
Popular among chefs, holistic practitioners, and athletes for its potential healing properties.
I'm going to help to break down the science for you today. I put out this image here of Brodo, which is a newer restaurant in New York City. That is mostly at the time I was looking at it, it was just selling bone broths.
They might have expanded on to soups and things, but it just kind of goes to show how popular bone broth has gotten over the past few years. I actually have a personal story growing up.
My mom would use gelatin to strengthen her nails, and we're going to talk about what's the difference between collagen and gelatin and, all that, but it actually is and was effective. So it's pretty cool when you see those instant changes as far as food and medicine go.
Bone Broth as a Cultural Staple
So bone broth, it's been a cultural staple for some time for its healing immune-boosting properties throughout history.
Thai Noodle Soup
Vietnamese Pho
Japanese miso soup which they've always said is kind of boosting the immune system, helping to fight off cold.
Caribbean cow foot soup - We'll discuss a cow's feet in particular to see what potential advantages there may be, and in Chinese medicine it's been said to help with building blood cells and bone, strengthening the kidneys, supporting the digestive system, and recovering from stress.
Russian Borscht uses bone broth.
Fun Fact:
An interesting little story in 18th century Paris, travelers stayed the night at Inns and guest houses, and they were served something called restorative which is basically hot broths. And this is, was the first dish on the menu in early restaurants in France. And it kind of led to that word restaurant.
So really this hot broth, this bone broth is the root of where that term restaurant came from. So we don't have any really big double-blinded placebo-controlled randomized trials to see whether bone broth helps with chronic disease states. But if you also think about how it, how would we do a great study that way on bone broth?
It's a challenging study to implement because you'd have to have one group doing a regular amount of bone broth, maybe a few times a day for many months, and then the other group not, but then we'd have to just see how the diseases progress and the kicker is, you have to have all the other variables the same.
The bone broth has to be different in the two groups. To have a good randomized control trial. You can't really hide bone broth, the group taking the bone broth, they're going to know they're taking the bone broth.
Why nutrition research is challenging?
A. Discredit generations of anecdotal evidence from cultures around the globe.
B. We have research supporting some of the health benefits of the individual components of bone broth.
That's what I want to talk to you about today. So I want to kind of lay some this foundation so that you have a better understanding of what this is because I think a lot of people are confused about it. So I want to talk about collagen versus gelatin.
Collagen versus gelatin
Both collagen and gelatin are in bone broth.
Gelatin
A degraded cooked-down form of collagen.
Collagen
The most abundant protein in the body. You can think of it as that glue that holds everything together. Found in the bones, the skin, the joints, the ligaments, tendons, connective tissue, and the gut.
So they're almost one and the same, basically, gelatin is made from collagen, which is why both of them are found in bone broth. And so about a quarter of the protein in the body is collagen. It starts to decline when people are in their thirties, like age, thirties, and then in the forties, you start to see some wrinkles, sagging skin, weaker bones, stiff joints, and maybe bad eyesight can all come about from decreasing collagen.
So this is a common additive to like anti-wrinkle face creams and things, but it's mostly marketing because can skin can't absorb the large molecules that get added to skin creams and things. So we really should be getting it from our, our foods.
And so the gelatin, it can kind of congeal in the fridge if you've ever had Jell-O as a kid, which is made from gelatin, you can see how it congeals and can make more of a solid and it's not a complete protein, but it does have non-essential amino acids that the body might have a higher demand for in times of surgery, infection, and healing. So it can help the body heal fast.
And on the next topic, I want to talk about some of these amino acids. I also want to add that it's collagen and gelatin. They're not well-rounded protein. It's not gonna meet all your kind of amino acid needs, which again, protein is broken down into amino acids, which then the body uses.
And so further, you have to have a healthy gut to properly break down proteins into amino acids. So that's part of why bone broth is being promoted for people with gut issues because it's thought that someone with poor gut health is going to have a better chance of absorbing some of these amino acids from the broth better.
What's not being talked about, is that broth isn't a comprehensive amino acid.
If someone's just trying to get their amino acids or these parts of the proteins from just bone broth, they're going to be missing out on really important essential amino acids.
So the collagen research it's largely around arthritis and skin health. So it's been shown to have positive benefits for osteoarthritis. And then also for skin health, it was shown to improve skin hydration and elasticity in older individuals and could help reduce skin wrinkles.
It could be helpful for hair growth and strong nails. And then it can help to promote kind of the strength of hair as well.
Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins.
Essential - which cannot be made by the body and must come from food
Non-essential - which can be made by the body
So bone broth contains a lot of non-essential amino acids, but why it could still be helpful is that during times of illness and stress like with chronic diseases, for example, the non-essential amino acids might become conditionally essential, which basically means your body has a higher demand and the body can't keep up with the demand for the non-essential amino acids.
So what are the ones that are in bone broth here?
Non-Essential Amino Acids in bone broth
Glycine
The most abundant amino acid in bone broth. Helps make glutathione.
Glutathione
Glycine helps to make this thing which is an important antioxidant it's known as the mother of antioxidants, which basically helps prevent protect your cells from damage
Glutathione is really supportive for detoxification, this natural detox in the body. And it also interestingly can help to make bile salts, which you might know is important for helping to break down and digest fats, which fats if you're eating the right types, the anti-inflammatory types like we talked about in the core course, that's going to be really important and necessary for your body to get that in and into your cells to be properly used. Can help to calm the mood.
So broth can help give some anti-anxiety benefits, some calming benefits.
Now, if broth makes you anxious, it could be instead that you're reacting and having a buildup of glutamate from the broth or you're sensitive to histamines, and then you'd want to talk with a functional nutrition dietitian or functional medicine doctor to kind of explore why you're having that reaction a little bit further because if you're histamine intolerant, you'll want to try to find the root cause to why you're being, having a sensitive reaction to histamine.
See our YouTube Video about "What is histamine intolerance"?
Just wanted to make sure you have an idea of what we are discussing right now.
Cysteine
Can help to thin the mucus from the lungs so that the mucus can be expelled more easily. So basically it makes that lung mucus less sticky and could help to improve breathing.
Glutamine
The preferred fuel source for gut cells. And if you are having gut issues, maybe you have Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, or some other issue in your gut. It might be that your body has a higher demand for this glutamine to help heal the gut because it is the preferred fuel source.
Arginine
Helps to support the immune system.
Proline
Helps to repair proteins.
OTHER NUTRIENTS IN BONE BROTH
Some other nutrients in bone broth include these things called GAGs. GAGs or Glycosaminoglycans are basically the things that are most notable for helping arthritis.
If in your broth, you or whoever made it used cartilage-rich bones, which would be like chicken feet and feet. So I'm coming back to that or beef knuckles, you can get more of these GAGs or Glycosaminoglycans.
Examples of GAGs:
Hyaluronic acid - has been used for years to help treat race horses with osteoarthritis
Glucosamine - is a precursor to GAGs, and this is notable to help with the growth and repair of cartilage. Can help to reduce arthritis pain. It's one of the best-known joint health supplements
And you can get these GAGs that can do the same thing from bone broth and then, healthy bodies, they make enough GAGs, but if your body has a higher demand, again, you might get some added support from using the broth to help meet that higher demand that like conditionally essential demand.
And then there are a couple of other GAGs that can help with gut and soft tissue healing that can from the bone broth. But again, it's from the cartilage, which is a smooth plastic-like white substance that wraps around the bones and the cartilage-rich ones are like the chicken feet or beef knuckles.
And then bone broth can also provide some minerals, which might be better absorbed, but it's not a significant amount compared to other foods. What some might say is that somebody with a lot of inflammation in the gut might be able to better pull the minerals from the bone broth and use them better because it is such a broken-down form of food.
So that is one consideration. But again, it's not a significant source of minerals. Like some people think.
Heavy Metals in Bone Broth
In 2013, there was a medical hypothesis from the UK that came out, which is a small blinded study that showed that some broths have a very high amount of lead, several times the recommended amount. And so there are some huge red flags that went up from that.
And that's why in 2019 Dr. Kara Fitzgerald liked much attitude to her, she did fund her own study, which is a pretty big deal for us. And, she found that there were no or low, heavy metals in the thousands of bone broths she sampled and kind of came to the conclusion that it might differ based upon differences in the local environment.
So diet, production practices, ingredients, cooking techniques, and other factors could be playing into here.
So there also found that:
there's no significant difference in heavy metal content between organic and conventional bone broth, which is really interesting, right?
I wouldn't have expected that, but that's what they found. And they found it slightly better with organic grass-fed, but probably not as much as I would've guessed. So wanted to make sure to share that with you.
And then I also wanted to share that as far as lead goes what they found was that the amount of lead in the bone broth compared to other foods in wine there's 29 times the amount of lead than what's in bone broth, 23 times the amount in raisins and then nine times the amount in shrimp.
So compared to some of our other everyday foods, it was really a minimal amount that was found in the bone broth from her study, which is really good to hear. And, and I'm not saying that there's too much lead in wine to where it's concerning. I actually don't know off the top of my head. I'd have to look it up.
That's just kind of the comparison that was given in this study. So not detected, they didn't even detect any of, some of these other heavy metals, which include antimony, beryllium, bismuth, cadmium, gadolinium, mercury, palladium, platinum, tellurium Valium, thorium, tin, and tungsten. Pardon my pronunciation of some of those I haven't I don't think I've said some of those words in my whole life.
So anyway, lots of those heavy metals were not detected. So that's really promising. And then stock versus broth. I wanted to explain the difference here to you.
Stock
It is basically broth. That's cooked a long time. Cooked for two to three hours with bones and it yields this like clear stock because obviously it's cooked for a short amount of time.
Broth
It is cooked for several days. And usually with something acidic like apple cider vinegar, which can help to pull out some minerals and amino acids from the bones.
The broth is typically richer in nutrients, and that's why we were talking about broth on this topic today. What you can do if you're making this at home is you can make a stock and then you can freeze those bones and make it into a broth later on with some vinegar and just cook it much longer.
So you can kind of repurpose the bones and get the most out of them. And then if you react to broth, like again, if you're histamine sensitive reacting to broth, then you should consider just doing the stock and maybe still getting some of those benefits that we talked about today.
Now, these definitions, come from wise traditions, and I believe it's different in different parts of the world, as far as what's considered broth, what's considered stock. So just kind of know that, but this is a common understanding.
Broth recipe tips
If you want to make your own at home, I have some tips for you:
1. Use clean filtered water because you might be getting some heavy metal contamination from the water.
2. Buy quality meat.
3. Consider using an Instant pot to prevent it from smelling up the home. I have had clients who have mentioned that to me, they're very careful about when they make their broth, just because it like makes the whole old house smell like broth.
There is research supporting the healing and immune-boosting properties of individual components of bone broth. So it's a good source of non-essential amino acids from the collagen and then some easily absorbable minerals.
So I hope this was helpful and interesting to you.
I hope you have a great rest of your day I'll see you in future topics.
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