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Disclaimer! We at Bucha Bros, LLC aren’t health professionals, therefore any information stated in this article should not be taken as medical advice nor should be treated as such! It is solely an opinion piece!
A Drink for Your Health
With its overwhelming popularity, it’s no secret that kombucha is a superb health beverage. In each bottle is billions of healthy probiotics; those good little bacteria that help your gut be in tip top shape! Is it gross that a beverage can be full of microscopic living organisms? Not so! But if you do think so, it’s a good reminder that the human body is made up of billions of living cells trying to keep us alive! Hurray for anatomy & physiology!
For those who don’t know, kombucha is essentially fermented tea. It’s tangy, sweet, and often carbonated. A scoby (symbiotic culture of bacteria & yeast), along with some ‘starter tea’, is added to sweet tea and ferments for several days. During that time, the bacteria & yeast from the scoby feed on the sugar within the tea, and healthy probiotics develop as a result. It’s a fascinating process that would take entire pages to discuss in detail!
Sure, you can take the fact that kombucha is good for gut health with its probiotics at face value, but let’s dive deeper into why drinking kombucha is beneficial to our health, and what exactly the benefits are of drinking such a beverage.
The Gut Microbiome
The human gut microbiome plays a significant role in human health, far more than we had an understanding of decades ago. “Gut flora” are the types of microorganism diversity your gut has. And there are billions of these little guys living down there. If you find yourself sick often, it is said you have a bad gut flora; with bad bacteria, viruses, fungi, and even parasites, so it’s good to take antibiotics only when prescribed, and to then repopulate the gut with healthy probiotics.
The gut microbiome has some unique roles in the body. It helps with absorption; breaking down of the food we eat. It keeps the intestines lubricated to help transport cells. It works as a barrier against pathogens & diseases. It also has an impact on metabolism.
Outside the intestinal tract, the gut microbiome has some other unique roles. It has some control over blood sugar and cholesterol, especially weight management. A healthy gut microbiome can also be anti-inflammatory and may play a role in how the body’s immune response works. Did I mention gut health has also been linked to energy levels, and very recently it was discovered that even mood is also affected. So the gut does play a rather intense role in the body and keeping it healthy provides some serious health benefits!
Probiotics
Probiotics play a very important role in gut health, and kombucha is full of them! Basically, there are billions of different kinds of microorganisms living in our gut microbiome, and the healthy ones are what we call “probiotics”. The food we eat is broken down not only by our stomach with its hydrochloric acid, but by these tiny microorganisms as well. In return, we have better digestion and can make use of any vitamins, amino acids, and sugars our body needs.
While there are many dietary supplements that claim to provide bacterial species for your gut microbiota. However, these supplements are not monitored by the FDA so it’s unclear whether these products are of high-quality or if they event contain the live bacteria they claim to contain. Foods that undergo a fermentation process, like yogurts, kefir and kombucha are much more likely to contain these types of gut bacteria because they play a role in the process of fermentation as well.
Prebiotics like fiber are important because it provides extra nutrients for the probiotics. Kombucha does not contain fiber, however, we recommend getting some form of fiber each week, such as through consuming cruciferous vegetables as part of a healthy diet/lifestyle. Having harmful bacteria in the gut can lead to a host of health issues, such as celiac disease, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) stomach cancer, poor mood like anxiety, and unregulated blood sugar.
Too Much of a Good Thing?
How often do we recommend getting a good source of probiotics? It is important not to go overboard on getting probiotics in the body. Don’t go chugging a 2 liter bottle of ‘buch, or spooning a half gallon of yogurt in one sitting! Doing so, could lead to some unpleasant side effects. So we recommend even just a cup of kombucha a day can help bring the gut microbiome to healthy levels.
Just note that it isn’t a one and done, because these little probiotic fellas are living and breathing organisms. They need a suitable environment to survive, so filling your body with the right kind of food and continuing to take some form of probiotics in your day to day lifestyle can help promote a healthy body. You’ll feel good and look good doing it!
The Takeaway
Here at Bucha Bros, the pair of us care a lot about our own gut health! We go out of our own way to eat and even produce our own fermented foods rich in probiotics! While I, Ryan, reach out for more basic sources of probiotics in the form of yogurt. Eddie, on the other hand, is pretty hardcore, with his use of kimchi, sauerkraut, and pickled vegetables I had not even heard of! We both agree that adding kombucha can be a great health decision you can make! Thank you for reading!
