I recently had the opportunity to attend a conference entitled Brain Solutions. I was excited to see that Natasha Trenev was one of the speakers and would be filling us in on recent advances in the understanding of the gut-brain-microbe axis. But as the conference went on I felt increasingly annoyed by the hyping of expensive products.

As those of you who follow this blog know, I am nearly as skeptical of the supplement industry as I am of the pharmaceutical industry (depending on the product). I prefer to find ways for us to take care of our own health as much as possible without the addition of a middle man to sell us overpriced gimmicks. Don’t get me wrong, it is true that our world is so contaminated and the soil so depleted that it is often necessary to use some kind of a supplement (nascent iodine is one I feel is necessary in our increasingly radioactive world).

Take probiotics for example. In the past 3 years or so the amount of information coming out about the importance of probiotics for our health is mind-boggling, and I fully appreciate the studies and research put into this area. Natasha Trenev is one of the leaders in this field, in fact she was the one who promoted the term ‘probiotic’ in the first place. I have a lot of respect for Natasha Trenev, therefore I don’t want to belittle the work she has done, but I disagree with the idea that homemade probiotics are not as good as the ones that have been scientifically engineered to be sold to us at high prices.

I also feel that it is very important to become aware of the relationships between people, plants, cultures, frequencies, minerals — every thing. In our modern world we are encouraged to look for a magic bullet, a pill or some other kind of ‘miracle cure’ without understanding that the process and the unseen connections are actually vital to success in becoming conscious and healing ourselves. It is generally easier to be disassociated and ignore the vital reciprocity that is necessary for us to be grounded in our experience and understanding of our bodies. Awareness is often painful, which is why we tend to ignore it and prefer to simply pay for a short-cut — or hero worship someone so we don’t have to take action ourselves. (To be honest I do plenty of my own hero worshipping — throwing my energy at someone in the hopes that I don’t have to deal with things myself.)

At the above mentioned conference Natasha Trenev was asked if it was necessary to make kefir with raw milk or if pasteurized and homogonized milk would do just as well. Her answer was something along the lines that using raw milk to make kefir wouldn’t work at all and that the milk needed to be at the very least lightly simmered for about 20 mins. She also mentioned that making your own kefir was not a good way to get a good selection of probiotics, because it is highly probable that your home-cultured product will become contaminated, therefore it is much more reliable to use a scientifically created probiotic such as the ones her company sells.

Listening to this statement it became clear to me that she had probably never actually tried to make raw milk kefir and so she probably wasn’t the right person to ask this question. I have been making my own raw milk kefir for many years now and I know many other folks who do the same. I have also spent a lot of time taking high-priced ‘top quality’ probiotic supplements, so I have the experience of observing how both types of probiotics effect my health. Many of the supplements I have noticed no change whatsoever and others have been very strong and have helped my health. The best results both me and my partner have had by far is with homemade kefir. The kefir culture also colonizes your colon so I have found even if I can’t make kefir for a few months the micro-organisms still protect me (for up to 6 months on a grain-free, refined-sugar-free diet).

The first thing I will say is that it is very important to have respect for any of your home-cultured probiotics, whether it is sauerkraut, kombucha, kefir or whatever. It is true that it is possible for them to become contaminated if you are careless, disrespectful and absent-minded with them. I have also noticed that they do better in an environment without a lot of wireless frequencies. Wireless frequencies encourage the growth of pathological yeasts and other unfriendly micro-organisms.

Once that first step of basic respect and appreciation for another living organism is followed you can actually work together with your living raw milk kefir in a symbiotic relationship. The relationship you develop in your daily ritual of caring for your kefir enables the kefir to produce the exact ratios of micro-organisms that are geared precisely for what your body needs on each given day. The relationship that you form with the kefir is symbiotic and therefore it is a two way communication process. As you care for the kefir and appreciate and thank it for the health-giving properties it provides for your body, the kefir in return appreciates the care that you are giving to it and it will produce a culture tailored to your precise needs.

Now this may all sound rather fanciful and imaginary, but with an increased understanding of quantum relationships as well as the studies that have been done around the ability of plants to communicate with their care-givers across time and space show that this is actually more real than trusting a third party scientist to make a one-size-fits-all product on your behalf. Please read The Secret Life of Plants: a Fascinating Account of the Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Relations Between Plants and Man by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird for more information on this topic.

If any of you would like to get started creating your own custom, designer probiotic kefir, premium dried kefir grains are available here.