Kickin' it with Karen : Beyond Sauerkraut

"Just a simple sauerkraut without all the fancy stuff, please".  Kickin' it with Karen: Beyond Sauerkraut   A colleague of mine asked me if she could buy some sauerkraut from me. How strange. I never thought anyone would want to buy something made in my kitchen. But, she really wants the natural, fermented probiotics that are bioavailable in a quality sauerkraut and the only place she knows where to get it is from Whole Foods (EXPENSIVE) and well... from me. Probiotics are so important for our gut health. As a reminder from my previous sauerkraut post, "Probiotics are the good bacteria that line the intestines and help break down food and help your body absorb nutrients as well as help regulate and increase energy". We need probiotics to support our immune system and regulate our metabolism (Axe). For my colleague, I am glad to oblige. But it is so easy, anybody can do it. There are a thousand and one million hundred gazillion recipes out there in ...

Kickin' it with Karen: Beyond Sauerkraut Is anybody else out there a teacher? We are just a week and a half out from winter break and I feel like I have been hit by a bus. Exhausted much? Holy Hallelujah! These are they days when waking up - even if I have gotten 9 hours of sleep - feels like I'm waking from the grave. I think most professionals would say, "What are you doing for self-care?" - something I think teachers regularly forget about. We are so busy caring for our students, making sure they are meeting the standards and making progress, as well as making sure they are "OK" in and out of school. Our students face a myriad of challenges and with that comes the trauma and the drama.  Everything that happens to them out there in their world often comes back with them to school. When we get wrapped up in their story, we can experience secondary trauma.  This takes an emotional toll that if we don't pay attention to it, this can end up having rea...

Kickin' it with Karen: Beyond Sauerkraut In previous posts I have mentioned that I started making and eating probiotic foods such as sauerkraut because I had been diagnosed with something called "Leaky Gut Syndrome".  Leaky gut syndrome occurs when there is an increased intestinal permeability which causes bacteria and toxins to leak through the intestinal wall directly into the bloodstream (McMillan). Though, in the Western medical community, the debate rages on as to whether this is a real thing (GI Society),  I know for me it is definitely REAL! Before the diagnosis and the subsequent treatment with probiotic food and supplements, I felt awful! All the time! So why probiotics? Because they heal the gut! Probiotics are the good bacteria that line the intestines and help break down food and help your body absorb nutrients as well as help regulate and increase energy (Krajmalnik-Brown et.al.). I no longer take probiotic supplements because I get all of this through...