The Benefits Of Bone Broth

I get asked by a lot of my patients, and readers of this blog, my opinion on bone broth. Apparently bone broth is really “in” right now, with the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow touting its many benefits.

It’s funny how something so ancient, so a part of just about every culture around the world, can “suddenly” be trending. What’s next, Hollywood’s A-listers discover that walking or breathing fresh air is good for health?

My feeling about bone broth is that everyone should be drinking it.  That’s how good it is for you. When you simmer chicken, beef, pork and fish bones for many hours, the collagen, amino acids, vitamins and trace minerals are released into the broth.

Why is this a big deal? Why not just take supplements to get all of these important nutrients?

It’s all about bioavailability.

If you remember a while back I wrote a blog post about why you should EAT your water instead of drinking it. I mentioned that fruits and vegetables have structured water that closely resembles our own blood plasma, and so this structured water is bioavailable to our cells and can slip right on inside to hydrate them. Whereas regular water has a tendency to not get inside the cells but rather makes its way to your toilet.

Bone broth is a lot like the structured water in fruits and veggies. Our bodies easily access the nutrients from animal products, as that is the food our ancestors evolved with over hundreds of thousands of years.

The Science Behind Chicken Soup

Did you ever wonder why chicken soup seems to actually make you feel better when you’re sick? Because the base of chicken soup is bone broth. Well, if done right, and grandma always did it right.

An interesting study of chicken soup was conducted by the University of Nebraska Medical Center. The team found that the amino acids produced when making chicken bone broth reduced inflammation in the respiratory system and also improved digestion. ¹

Bone broth was how our grandparents and their grandparents and our ancestors from way, way back made use of every part of an animal. From the bones to marrow, skin and feet, tendons and ligaments, anything that couldn’t be eaten directly got thrown into a pot and simmered for hours (generally, the longer the better).

This simmering causes the bones and ligaments to break down and release nutrients like collagen, proline, glycine and glutamine that all have healing properties. Drinking bone broth is an excellent, and might I say delicious, way to get some incredibly important nutrients into your body. And it’s far more affordable than buying expensive supplements month after month.

Now let’s look at some of the specific health benefits of bone broth.

Benefits of Bone Broth

1. Protects Joints

As we age, our joints naturally start to experience more wear and tear. This is because the older we get, the less collagen we make, and the more our joint cartilage breaks down.

Research done by the Department of Nutrition and Sports Nutrition for Athletics at Penn State University found that when athletes supplemented with collagen over the course of 24 weeks, the majority showed significant improvements in joint comfort and a decrease in factors that negatively impacted athletic performance. ²

As the old saying goes, you are what you eat. So if you want to help repair the levels of collagen in your body that help to form cartilage, drink bone broth.

2. Promotes Gut Health

Studies show that gelatin is highly beneficial for restoring gut health. ³  Gelatin found in bone broth strengthens the lining of the GI tract, helping to promote the proliferation of good bacteria, and even helps fight common food allergies (such as to wheat and dairy).

The bottom line is, because the amino acids in collagen build the tissue that lines the colon and entire GI tract, supplementing with collagen can support healthy digestive function.

3. Maintains Healthy Skin

What causes skin to become thin and saggy as we age? The fact that we make less collagen.

Collagen helps form elastin and other compounds that make youthful skin so, well, youthful. In fact, studies have shown that women who ate more collagen showed significant improvement to the appearance of their skin in as little as four weeks. ⁴

People have also reported that drinking bone broth decreases cellulite. Though it may sound too good to be true, cellulite forms due to a lack of connective tissue, allowing skin to lose its firm tone.

4. Supports Immune System

I’ve just described the gut benefits of bone broth. Well guess where 80% of your immune system is located? By repairing the health of your gut, you improve the health of your immune system.

5. Boosts Detoxification

Modern man is exposed to a variety of environmental toxins, pesticides and chemicals of all varieties. While the body has natural processes to detox, it was never designed to withstand the bombardment of toxins most of us find ourselves facing each day. And it is now believed that toxins play a leading role in the development of diabetes and other diseases. ⁵

Bone broth helps the digestive system expel waste more effectively as well as promotes the liver’s ability to remove toxins.

Try Bone Broth for Yourself

If you’re interested in adding bone broth to your diet, a few tips:

• Make your own. The kind you buy at the grocery store is generally not real bone broth like your grandmother used to make. Even worse, it may contain MSG, and you DON’T want that.
• When making your own, be sure to get some bones of grass fed, free range animals that will be free or hormones and antibiotics.
• Make friends with the local butcher or farmer so you can get your hands on some parts that aren’t commonly found in the meat department like chicken feet, necks, and beef tail and knuckles. It’s the moving body parts that contain the most collagen.
• Along with water and vegetables like carrots, onion and celery, add a couple of tablespoons of apple cider vinegar to your stock pot. This will help to draw out minerals and other nutrients from the bones.
• The longer you simmer, the better. Chicken bones do well simmering for 24 hours, but beef can take anywhere from 48 hours or more to really draw out all of the beneficial nutrients.

Final Thoughts

I’m glad that more people are becoming aware of something our ancestors already knew – bone broth is incredibly healthy and makes use of the entire animal. Offering healing compounds like collagen, glutamine, glycine, proline, and other important amino acids, bone broth can heal your gut lining, decrease inflammation, remove toxins from the body, boost your immune system and help your skin look and feel years younger. Try to drink a cup or two each day or use bone broth as a base for soups and gravies.

Resources:

[1] Barbara O. Rennard, BA; Ronald F. Ertl, BS; Gail L. Gossman, BS; Richard A. Robbins, MD, FCCP; and Stephen I. Rennard, MD, FCCP. Chicken Soup Inhibits Neutrophil Chemotaxis In Vitro. Chest. 2000 Oct;118(4)

[2] Clark KL1, Sebastianelli W, Flechsenhar KR, Aukermann DF, Meza F, Millard RL, Deitch JR, Sherbondy PS, Albert A. 24-Week study on the use of collagen hydrolysate as a dietary supplement in athletes with activity-related joint pain. Curr Med Res Opin. 2008 May;24(5

[3] Giuseppina Frasca, Venera Cardile, Carmelo Puglia, Claudia Bonina, and Francesco Bonina. Gelatin tannate reduces the proinflammatory effects of lipopolysaccharide in human intestinal epithelial cells. Clin Exp Gastroenterol. 2012; 5: 61–67

[4] Proksch E1, Segger D, Degwert J, Schunck M, Zague V, Oesser S. Oral supplementation of specific collagen peptides has beneficial effects on human skin physiology: a double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Skin Pharmacol Physiol. 2014;27(1):47-55

[5] Veronica G. Parker, PhD, Rachel M. Mayo, PhD, Barbara N. Logan, PhD, RN, FAAN, Barbara J. Holder, PhD, RN, FAAN and Patricia T. Smart, PhD, RN. Toxins and Diabetes Mellitus: An Environmental Connection? Diabetes Spectrum 2002 Apr; 15(2): 109-112