Health Benefits of Chicken Stock

An old solution to illness that has been used over decades.   The benefits of bone broth/stock are countless and every family should be aware of its beneficial effects.  Every time a member in my family is knocked down by illness, bone broth is one of our first steps back to wellness.

Your Grandparents probably ate soup more often than you do in your home now.  Not only was it an affordable option, went a long ways, it is one of the healthiest foods available.

During the cooking process it can look disgusting but the smell is incredible and cover the house with an auray of warmth.  Chicken stock is my number one suggestion for pretty near everyone that I work with.  The major difference being, if you have histamine intolerance, than you want to reduce your cooking time. 

Why do I  recommend this as a starting point?

Chicken stock is jammed packed full of nutrients and goodness.   The perfect balance of essential nutrients, healthy fats, minerals and anti-inflammatory proteins that your body is craving to make use of.   If you ever watch wild life documentaries, you may notice that the animal works quickly through the meat and straight to the bone and that is not only to sharpen those teeth of theirs but to get to the much needed nutrients

Chicken stock is simple to make and you can use a variety of herbs depending on where you are at with your gut health and your personal preferences.  Once your gut is more stable, you can move onto to bone broth which is essentially the same other than you are boiling the bones rather than the bones and meat. 

I personally like chicken stock but you can use almost any meat and they all have incredible nutrient value.   The most basic ingredients would be just chicken, water and salt but again as you continue to use this practice you will likely find yourself experimentling with various herbs.   

Let’s go over the simple steps:

1.  Boil a large pot of water (enough water to cover the full small chicken and an inch or so higher)

2.  Once the water is boiled,  I like to add 1/2 tablespoon of sea salt and then add in the whole small chicken.

3.  Turn the heat down to boil and add in 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar.  The apples cider helps to pull out all the amazing essential nutrients.

If you have a histamine intolerance you want to boil for 3-4 hours max.  If not, it is a matter of what you like and taste.  I personal let it go on simmer for about 6 hours.  I add lots of salt and drink it in a cup throughout the day.

Once you get used to making stock and if you are getting tired of drinking it straight specific to gut health, you may want to play around with adding in veggies and creating various soups.  The colour of the stock will change depending on what kind of meat that you used as well as how long you let it coil for.  

After awhile in the fridge you will notice the broth congeals on the top.  That is a good thing!  It looks gross but that is where the bulk of the nutrititional goodness is.  When you heat it up, just stir the fat into the liquid and you will forget how awful it looked.  The taste is incredible!!!

 Chicken stock and bone broth both are made using the bones and joints of the animal and so the nutrients are pulled out.  Proteins are high ranking in chicken stock.  The pretein value can be up near 50%.  Gelatin is what makes that cool thick layer on top when in the fridge and although it isn’t a complete amino acid it does proline and other non essential acids that are also important.  Protein is imprtant for 

These proteins perform a variety of crucial functions. First of all, they give your body the raw materials to rebuild your own connective tissue, especially tendons (which connect muscles to bones) and ligaments (which connect bones to each other). It’s hard to overestimate how important this connective tissue is for overall health and strength. Professional powerlifters know that their bodies are only as strong as their weakest link: bulging muscles are useless if their tendons and ligaments are underdeveloped. And injury to these crucial tissues doesn’t just stall your deadlift progression. Think of tendonitis, or the overall “aching joints” that seem to accumulate with age. Definitely symptoms we all want to reduce or avoid if at all possible.

As well as providing the raw materials for healthy bones and joints, the proteins in bone broth deliver an especially interesting benefit for rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic autoimmune disease marked by painful damage to the tendons and ligaments. Specifically, these proteins may actually help stop the autoimmune response in its tracks. One study found that chicken collagen dramatically improved symptoms in 60 patients; four of them showed complete remission.

Another benefit of bone broth for joint health comes from glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), a family of carbohydrates found in bones and connective tissue that show interesting effects in reducing joint pain. One of these GAGs, hyaluronic acid, is an effective treatment for osteoarthritis: it’s been mostly studied as an injection, but there’s also evidence that it’s useful when taken by mouth. Chondroitin sulfate is another GAG that has performed well in reducing the pain and damage of arthritis in several studies.

The best-known GAG is glucosamine, which thousands of people take as a joint health supplement. Interestingly enough, the studies evaluating glucosamine + chondroitin supplements have produced conflicting and inconclusive results, and there seems to be a significant bias introduced by industry funding. However, one study compared glucosamine + chondroitin to plain collagen and found that the collagen was actually more effective, indicating that there might be something in the whole food that the supplements miss.

Whether it’s from the GAGs or the proteins, or the combination of all of them, the evidence is in: bone broth is a valuable supplemental food for all of us, and a delicious potential therapy for joint diseases. Especially if you play sports that put stress on your joints (anything where you have to run or jump on concrete, like basketball or jogging), your knees will thank you for adding a big mug of broth to your recovery routine.

Benefits of Bone Broth: Digestion

Nature rarely seems to make foods that are healthy for only one reason, and bone broth is no exception. As well as keeping your knees free from disturbing crunchy noises every time you move, it also helps improve digestion in a variety of ways.

Glycine, for example, is useful because it stimulates the production of stomach acid. To judge from the billions of dollars Americans spend on antacids every year, you might think that this is the last thing we need, but in fact acid reflux may actually be a problem of too little stomach acid, not too much. For the full story, see this series; the short version is that a stomach acid deficiency leaves your food sitting there in your stomach, half-digested, and the pressure from your stomach being so full can force acid up into the esophagus.

By prompting your body to secrete more stomach acid, glycine can help prevent or treat this painful and potentially dangerous problem. This makes bone broth a delicious supplemental food for anyone suffering from acid reflux, IBS, or FODMAPS intolerance.

Adding to its metabolic virtues, glycine is also an important component of bile acid, which is necessary for fat digestion in the small intestine, and also helps maintain healthy blood cholesterol levels. Especially for people who are new to Paleo and switching from a carb-based to a fat-based diet, this has the potential to keep the digestive process running a lot more smoothly.

Glycine isn’t the only useful protein for gut health, either. Glutamine, another amino acid found in bone broth, is a natural remedy for “leaky gut,” that unpleasant and dangerous condition where the barrier between your gut and the rest of your body isn’t working properly, allowing molecules that should stay inside the gut to cross over into the bloodstream and potentially set of a cascade of autoimmune reactions. Glutamine helps maintain the function of the intestinal wall, preventing this damage from occurring.

Benefits of Bone Broth: Detox

Glycine also helps in detoxification – the actually meaningful kind, not the ridiculous nonsense about unspecified “toxins” and the necessity of removing them by embarking on long fasts or juice cleanses. None of those special cleanses are necessary, because your body has its own detox system: your liver. Glycine gives the liver a hand up in removing anything dangerous from the body – for example, in one rat study, rats fed glycine showed significant improvements in recovery from alcohol-induced fatty liver disease compared to rats that weren’t.

Glycine is also necessary for the synthesis of glutathione and uric acid, the body’s most important endogenous antioxidants. As described in the article on antioxidants, boosting production of the endogenous (internally produced) antioxidants is much more useful for reducing oxidative stress than taking Vitamin C or other antioxidant supplements.

Yet another detox-related benefit is that glycine helps clear out excess methionine, another amino acid found in large quantities in eggs and muscle meat. Methionine is an essential amino acid, but too much of it can raise blood levels of another amino acid called homocysteine, and the process of breaking down homocysteine increases the body’s need for B vitamins (thus increasing the risk of B vitamin deficiency even if your intake is adequate). Glycine from broths and cartilage can help break down homocysteine without the need for B vitamins. This is a perfect example of the wisdom of traditional cultures in eating every part of the animal: the proteins in the muscle meat and the proteins in the connective tissue balance each other out for 

Related Post:  HPA Axis Dysfunction and

Talk with your doctor if you think that this is something that you would like to look into.

Hormone Imbalance Symptoms

F fat in the tummy area.  

8.  Low Libido

Even though it really shouldn’t matter to us that much… it does..  Having 0 libido makes us feel like less of a women and less of a wife.  I don’t think any women is ok with not having a low libido let alone no libido.

9.  Anxiety & Depression:

I know I have said they all suck but if I had to pick the worst one this would be it.  After I had my daughter, I had the worst post pardum which is often a case of a drop of progesterone.  I have suffered horrid anxiety and depression and I wish it on no one.

Now what?  How do balance your hormones?