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Ahhh… the power of yogurt. Yogurt should be the backbone of any persons plan to deal with a digestive problem. Our guts are full of bacteria, without them we would die. They don’t just help break down food, they are also a vital part of our immune system. Yep… the little single celled guys that live down there in the trillions help regulate our immune systems.It works out for everybody, they get a place to live and eat. We stay healthy and fit and the world is a happy place.

Things can get out of whack for multiple reasons, medical parlance calls this dysbiosis. As always, the all encompassing Stress can weaking the immune system. Anti-biotics can whipe out whole strains of bacteria creating a void that other, sometimes “bad”, bacteria can fill.

Yogurt fits into all this because good quality yogurt is teeming with trillions of bacteria. The best brand I have found is the Erivan brand. I can find it at most Health Food stores. I like Erivan because it is so tart, and doesn’t have anything added to it. Lots of Yogurts have sugar or even gums (which I’ll go over in another post) added to them that negate some of the benefits of the Yogurt. The tartness is a signal that it has been fermented for a long period of time.

When making Yogurt the sugars in the milk (lactose) are converted to lactic acid by the bacteria. If a yogurt is fermented long enough a person who is lactose intolerant should be able to eat it.

Which brings me to my final point. THe best and cheapest way to get yogurt is to make it yourself. Simply get the best quality milk you can find or afford. Pastureize it by heating it to 175-180 F let it cool to about 110. Add the starter which you can by at most health food stores. Keep it incubating at that temp until it is the desired tartness. I like to ferment it for at least 10 hrs to get most of the lactose out. To be really sure that the lactose is gone it should be fermented for 24hrs, but I haven’t had a problem using only 10.

Another trick I recently discovered is that adding a probiotic capsule can give your yogurt extra kick while saving you money on probiotics. You are going to have to experiment with this, but I have found that by adding 1 capsule of Udo’s Choice Adult Probiotic to the packet of Yogurmet yogurt stater gives me a better yogurt. More importantly it feels more “active” and it seems to help my gut more then just taking a capsule or just the yogurt alone. The bacteria in the probiotic capsule will reproduce and multiply giving you “free” probiotics many times over. I have tried this with Culturelle’s Lactobacillus GG and wasn’t happy with the results. The yogurt didn’t taste as good and it didn’t sit as well in the gut. You’ll have to experiment to see what works best for you.

I’ll try and add some links later to yogurt making sites.