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Bone Broth: How to Make It and Why It’s Good

By Cecilia Rubio

I have been studying a lot about functional medicine lately and one of the things I learned and wanted to share with you is the benefits of bone broth. There are 4 very important reasons you should be drinking bone broth every day.

The most important one is that: Bone Broth Heals your Gut

Bone broth is packed with collagen, which turns into gelatin when you cook it. Gelatin is one of the most potent gut healers on the planet. Gelatin is loaded with glycine, a powerful anti inflammatory amino acid, and it’s rich in other healing nutrients including magnesium, proline and arginine.
Gelatin gut-healing properties are important because in order to stay slim and healthy, you need to have a rock-solid gut. Why? Because your gut is home to the trillions of microbes that scientists call your microbiome. Think of this microbiome as an ecosystem-one that’s either in balance or out of balance. If it’s in balance, you have a wide diversity of good microbes and very few bad ones. If it’s out of balance, two very dangerous things can happen:

-The bad microbes can multiply rapidly, churning out toxic chemicals.
-Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth can occur. Microbes overpopulate your gut, overwhelming it.

Your gut can get out of balance for the following reasons:
Antibiotic use, which kills trillions of good microbes. A diet of the wrong foods, which starves the good microbes. Stress, which poisons the environment. Anti acids and other gut-altering medications, which can change the chemistry of their ecosystem in harmful ways.

When bad microbes gain too much control in your gut, or when good microbes multiply too rapidly, they produce chemicals that cause inflammation. When your immune system keeps encountering these escaped gut toxins day after day, it eventually gets stuck in the “on” position. Your warrior cells keep releasing toxic chemicals, even though there’s no war to fight. This causes chronic inflammation and we know that chronic inflammation underlies every disease of aging, from obesity and diabetes to heart disease and cancer.

Bone Broth Helps with your Wrinkles

Bone broth contains Hyaluronic acid, which hydrates your skin, erasing fine wrinkles. When you drink bone broth, it’s like mainlining the components of collagen to your skin and it is far more effective to build collagen from the inside.

Bone Broth Helps you Loose Weight Fast 

Unlike the watery broth you get in a can, bone broth is rich, hearty, and satisfying. When you drink a cup, you’ll feel like you’ve eaten a full meal, even thought you’re only taking in around 50 to 60 calories. As a result, you won’t experience cravings, even if you cut down drastically on your food intake.

Bone Broth Helps your Joints

Your joints contain cartilage, as slippery Teflon-like coating that allows the joints to slide over each other without grinding. Similarly, animal bones contain cartilage. In addition to being rich in collagen, cartilage is packed with glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate. These are the same nutrients many doctors prescribe as supplements to keep joints young and healthy.

And the best news about this liquid gold is that you can make it at home!!

I suggest you become friends with a butcher at an organic store so you can get good quality bones that do not have hormones, antibiotics and are grass fed animals.
Butchers generally love to assist you with good quality meats and bones.

Here is a simple recipe for bone broth:

-2 unpeeled carrots, scrubbed and roughly chopped
-2 stalks celery, including leafy part, roughly chopped
-1 medium onion, roughly chopped
-7 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
-1 kilo and a half  of grass-feed beef bones (preferably joints and knuckles
– 2 dry bay leaves
– 2 teaspoon himalayan rock salt
– fresh ground black pepper to the taste

Directions:

Place everything in a big cook pot and add enough filtered water to cover everything by 1 inch (about 13 cups) cook for 8 to 10 hours on low. Use a shallow spoon to carefully skim the film off the top of the broth. Pour the broth through a fine stainer and discard the solids. Taste the broth and add more salt as needed. The broth will keep for 3 days in the fridge and 3 months in your freezer.

Feel free to do the same with chicken, fish or pork bones.

Cecilia was born in Chihuahua Mexico and graduated from the University of San Diego with a business degree. She decided to change direction and take the path of becoming a Zumba instructor. Her passion has been health and fitness all her life. Cecilia teaches Zumba at Bodytree and is also a certified Health Coach.