These a some of my plump & happy kefir grains before going to swim, grow fatter, & reproduce in a new bath of milk. The biggest grains are 15-20mm in size, so will soon need separating in to smaller 5mm grains. The one on the spoon is about the volume of tiny 10g of grains that the rest have grown from to over 700g. I maintain 2-3 batches of 300-400g in rotation in & out of the fridge to prevent them fermenting too quickly. At an ambient temperature 50g of smaller grains, which have a greater surface area, would be enough to ferment 1l of organic whole milk. The softer inside of each grain is protected by a tougher outer layer. When the grains are split. the kefir changes in taste & consistency as different strains of bacteria, yeast & streptococci are exposed to their food source.
Chris Kresser has an excellent & free e-book on gut health for anyone signing up to his functional medicine email. Please see excerpt below. I've found this information & other free e-books to be a very useful healthy eating & nutrition resource.
I'll add to this as I come across more articles:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl... This paper includes photographs of some of the individual lactobacillus, yeast, & streptococci.
That’s such a big number our human brains can’t really comprehend it. One trillion dollar
bills laid end-to-end would stretch from the earth to the sun – and back – with a lot of
miles to spare. Do that 100 times and you start to get at least a vague idea of how much
100 trillion is.
The human gut contains 10 times more bacteria than all the human cells in the entire
body, with over 400 known diverse bacterial species. In fact, you could say that
we’re more bacterial than we are human.
Think about that one for a minute.
We’ve only recently begun to understand the extent of the gut flora’s role in human
health and disease. Among other things, the gut flora promotes normal gastrointestinal
function, provides protection from infection, regulates metabolism and comprises more
than 75% of our immune system. Dysregulated gut flora has been linked to diseases
ranging from autism and depression to autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto’s,
inflammatory bowel disease and type 1 diabetes
Unfortunately, several features of the modern lifestyle directly contribute to unhealthy gut
flora:
■
Antibiotics and other medications like birth control and NSAIDs
■
Diets high in refined carbohydrates, sugar and processed foods
■
Diets low in fermentable fibers
■
Dietary toxins like wheat and industrial seed oils that cause leaky gut
■
Chronic stress
■
Chronic infections
Antibiotics are particularly harmful to the gut flora. Recent studies have shown that
antibiotic use causes a profound and rapid loss of diversity and a shift in the composition of the gut flora. This diversity is not recovered after antibiotic use without intervention.
We also know that infants that aren’t breast-fed and are born to mothers with bad gut
flora are more likely to develop unhealthy gut bacteria, and that these early differences in gut flora may predict overweight, diabetes, eczema/psoriasis, depression and other health problems in the future...
...To review, here are my top tips for improving your overall gut health:
■
Remove all food toxins from your diet
■
Maximize your digestive capacity using supplemental acid and enzymes
■
Eat plenty of fermentable fibers (starches like sweet potato, yam, yucca, etc.)
■
Eat fermented foods like kefir, yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchi, etc., and/or take a high-
quality, multi-species probiotic*
■
Treat any intestinal pathogens (such as parasites) that may be present
■
Take steps to manage your stress
Full e-book available from CK's website, as well as several shorter articles re good, bad diets, & what to always avoid which I've posted, previously. CK's pro-paleo, which doesn't suit my food preference as a vegetarian, however, the information he provides is easy to read, & easy to understand & follow.
Other books include Michael Mosley's* Clever Gut's Diet & Giulia Enders' Gut: the inside story of our body’s most under-rated organ.
*MM found kefir to be the best source of probiotic to be able to survive digestion & reach the gut. bbc.co.uk/programmes/articl...
Can I alter my gut bacteria and improve my health?
More and more research is suggesting that our gut bacteria can influence almost every aspect of our health, from balancing our blood glucose to affecting our mood. So is there anything we can do to change this inner ecosystem for the better?
Popular probiotic products available readily in supermarkets, pharmacies and health food shops claim that there is. Unlike antibiotics, which kill harmful bacteria, probiotics are supposed to work by enhancing the quality and quantity of so called “friendly bacteria” in our guts.
Already in the UK we spend over £700 million a year on these products, but doubts still remain over how well they actually work. Can the microbes in them survive the perilous journey through the strong acid in our stomachs, which is designed to kill off dangerous bacteria in our food? And if they do survive to reach our intestines, can they compete with the families of bacteria already living there and set up home, populate and multiply?...
Yemoos lists these as components of kefir grains. Each strain will have several from each microbiological family, dependent on geography & the substrate used for cultivation.
Strains of bacteria and yeast found in Kefir Grains (and kefir itself):
The following strains are grouped by type, and are the result of years of research from Dominic Anfiteatro, a leading researcher in kefir. We have not personally verified the list.
LACTOBACILLI
Lactobacillus acidophilus
Lb. brevis [Possibly now Lb. kefiri]
Lb. casei subsp. casei
Lb. casei subsp. rhamnosus
Lb. paracasei subsp. paracasei
Lb. fermentum
Lb. cellobiosus
Lb. delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus
Lb. delbrueckii subsp. lactis
Lb. fructivorans
Lb. helveticus subsp. lactis
Lb. hilgardii
Lb. helveticus
Lb. kefiri
Lb. kefiranofaciens subsp. kefirgranum
Lb. kefiranofaciens subsp. kefiranofaciens
Lb. parakefiri
Lb. plantarum
STREPTOCOCCI/LACTOCOCCI
Streptococcus thermophilus
St. paracitrovorus ^
Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis
Lc. lactis subsp. lactis biovar. diacetylactis
Lc. lactis subsp. cremoris
Enterococcus durans
Leuconostoc mesenteroides subsp. cremoris
Leuc. mesenteroides subsp. mesenteroides
Leuc. dextranicum ^
YEASTS
Dekkera anomala t/ Brettanomyces anomalus a
Kluyveromyces marxianus t/ Candida kefyr a#
Pichia fermentans t/ C. firmetaria a
Yarrowia lipolytica t/ C. lipolytica a
Debaryomyces hansenii t/ C. famata a#
Deb. [Schwanniomyces] occidentalis
Issatchenkia orientalis t/ C. krusei a
Galactomyces geotrichum t/ Geotrichum candidum a
C. friedrichii
C. rancens
C. tenuis
C. humilis
C. inconspicua
C. maris
Cryptococcus humicolus
Kluyveromyces lactis var. lactis #
Kluyv. bulgaricus
Kluyv. lodderae
Saccharomyces cerevisiae #
Sacc. subsp. torulopsis holmii
Sacc. pastorianus
Sacc. humaticus
Sacc. unisporus
Sacc. exiguus
Sacc. turicensis sp. nov
Torulaspora delbrueckii t
* Zygosaccharomyces rouxii
Legend
t Teleomorph. Sexual reproductive stage. Yeast form pseudo-mycelium as in Flowers of Kefir.
a Anamorph. Asexual reproductive stage. Reproduce by budding or forming spores or cell
splitting [fission].
# Can utilize lactose or lactate.
^ Aroma forming.
subsp. Sub specie type.
sp. Specie type.
sp. nov. New strain or new specie strain type.
biovar. Biological variation strain type.
var. Variety type.
Units Count of Microbes in Gram Stained Kefir Grains
Bacilli [single cells, pair, chains]
Streptococci [pair, chains]
Yeast [single cells]
The Means Range
Bacilli 66, 62-69%
Streptococci 16, 11- 12%
Yeast 18, 16- 20% [11]
Evolution Sequence among Genus Groups during Kefir Culture Cycle
Wow, those Kefir grains look very plump and bursting with life!!! Thanks for all that information - I enjoy my daily Kefir very much - I'm still buying mine pre-made from the supermarket, but one day I might dabble in obtaining grains to make my own. You are certainly doing really well with making yours! Very inspiring.
Hope you get the fresh ones soon, it's fabulous stuff!
Mx
Hi BadHare, I agree your kefir looks amazing. This is also packed with info so theres a lot of interesting reading here so thanks for doing the research for us.
Our gut villi increases the absorbent area in our small intestines to that of approx a football pitch (4500 sq meters) So as you rightly say our gut flora is very important.
Its also interesting quoting Hippocrates and of course he was right. Have you come across Jethro Kloss? he wrote the back to eden books and he said in the 1920's that in the future hospitals would be full of people because of their diets and boy was he right. He was a seventh day adventist and would quote the bible to people and said that baking powder was the work of the devil (because its Epsom salts) Anyway I'm drifting off at a tangent here LOL.
And this is what you want to make sourdough bread with and the kefir looks so good to me I think it will work out fine.
Thanks Jerry! I've been meaning to make a resource post for ages, as I keep using these links at random & have to look them up every time. There are several missing, even one research paper stating it's as good as mouthwash.
Eating well isn't new. I think some of the Greek philosophers were even vegetarian.
I've not heard of Jethro Kloss, but agree he's right to a point. Diets were always nutritionally deficient for poor people, & in excess for the rich. I really don't agree with him on epsom salts? Can you explain his reason? I like soaking in a bath with a whole kilo in.
There are a lot of yeast in the kefir matrix, so it should knock a few days off the sourdough fermentation process. I like to use rye & 00 flour for baking, though neither are GF. The slower fermentation is supposed to break down gliadin & fructans rendering the bread healthier, but I doubt that's sufficient for coeliacs.
Mel
Thank you Mel for providing very interesting reading and links and also your Kefir grains look amazing. That'll be me in the kitchen when I purchase mine.
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Books on the Gut Biome
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