How to Make Easy Homemade Yogurt for Gut Health

Your gut does more than just process food. There is a microscopic community living in your gut that helps promote overall health and well-being. While most bacteria are considered bad, those living in your gut are beneficial and need to be taken care of.

Probiotic foods, like this good-for-your-gut homemade yogurt or natural probiotic supplements are the best way to strengthen this community and boost your health.

Probiotics for Gut Health

It is no secret that probiotics help support the bacterial community living inside you. Poor diet and the use of antibiotics cause a decline in the numbers of beneficial bacteria, which increases your risk of serious disease. By adding additional numbers through probiotic foods and supplements, like Complete Probiotics Platinum, you ensure that this health-boosting community continues to serve you.

Not only does your intestinal flora promote digestive function and health, but it boosts immunity and heart health too.

There are trillions of bacteria living in your gut, of which most are beneficial. The key to gut health is maintaining a balance of these microorganisms in favor of the beneficial strains. The health of your gut is linked to your overall immunity as well as brain health, so it is important to keep this balance.

For example, without the protection of bacteria, leaky gut syndrome can occur, which allows molecules to pass into the bloodstream. Once this occurs, inflammation is triggered and can spread, increasing your risk of serious disease.

There are a number of benefits to consuming probiotic foods or probiotic supplements outside of promoting gut health. Understanding the full scope of activity that probiotics have will have you jumping on board the homemade yogurt or probiotic supplement train immediately.

Reduce inflammation: Inflammation is the root cause of some of the most serious diseases including heart disease, asthma, arthritis, and cancer. By preventing inflammation in your gut, probiotics help to control this natural immune response and protect you from unnecessary inflammatory damage.

Heart health: Some probiotics have been shown to lower LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, thereby protecting you from serious cardiovascular diseases. In addition to this, probiotics can also reduce your blood pressure levels.

Immune system boost: Your gut microbiome is responsible for communicating with your immune system. A balanced and healthy flora community promotes immunity, protecting you from infections and common ailments.

Mental health: The gut-brain axis shows a direct line of communication between your brain and the bacterial colony in your gut. Individuals with depression or anxiety often suffer from gastrointestinal problems and stomach ailments in turn, can increase depressed and anxious feelings. Probiotic supplements have been shown to reduce depressive and anxiety-related symptoms, thereby promoting optimal mental health.

Improved skin health: The role that probiotics play in reducing inflammation have prompted the belief that they can support skin health. By reducing inflammation, skin conditions such as rosacea, acne, and eczema can also be prevented and treated.

Homemade Yogurt as Your Probiotic Source

Yogurt is one of the top probiotic foods on the market, but with many varieties containing added sugars and colors, people continue to search for more natural alternatives to support their digestive health, like the supplement Medizyme. The most natural option is to make your own, and it is much simpler than you may realize.

Sadly, the yogurt sold in most stores is pasteurized after the fermentation process, which kills off most of the valuable nutrients and beneficial cultures. While many manufacturers add these probiotics back in to the yogurt, they are not as effective as the natural ones that were lost. The added sweeteners also reduce the effectiveness of probiotics and promote the growth of harmful strains in your gut.

By choosing to make your own yogurt with raw milk, you are assured of getting beneficial probiotics and enhanced gut health. Raw milk comes from cows that are fed on grass, so contains more fat-soluble nutrients that are often lost during pasteurization.

The store-bought yogurts may be convenient, but the homemade option will take better care of your gut microbiome, which allows the bacteria to take better care of you.

Homemade Yogurt Recipe

Ingredients

1 quart of fresh raw milk
2 tablespoons Greek or Bulgarian starter cultures (found in most health food stores) OR two tablespoons unsweetened, additive-free yogurt with live cultures (also found in most grocery stores)

Directions

1. Heat the raw milk over a medium heat to a temperature of 43 degrees Celsius (110°F). The temperature is important to monitor so that you do not kill off the beneficial nutrients. Remove the milk from the heat and add the culture starter.
2. If you have a yogurt maker, mix these together according to the instructions and leave for between 8 and 12 hours.
   If you have a dehydrator, mix the milk and culture starter in a mason jar, cover and place in the dehydrator. Set the temperature to 43 degrees Celsius and leave for 8 to 12 hours.
3. If you have a slow cooker, again mix the ingredients in a mason jar, then place in the center of the slow cooker and add warm water to the ceramic insert. You can add a warm towel over the cover for additional heat and again, leave for 8 to 12 hours.
4. Once the culture time has passed, remove the mixture from the device you used and place into the fridge for an hour or two. The homemade raw milk yogurt will be ready to serve after two hours and can be sweetened up with honey or syrup and topped off with fruit, nuts, or granola.

Probiotics are essential to your gut health as well as overall well-being. You can try natural supplemental support to ensure that your intestinal community maintains strength.

Better yet, try natural homemade yogurt as a quick and easy way to keep beneficial bacteria in charge of your gut. This way your taste buds and your gut bacterial community get a delicious and health-boosting treat.

This post was supported by 1md.org; images by Alison Marras and Alexander Mils on Unsplash