A word about Kefir

When that fateful day of September 3rd 2011 I dropped grains completely and found back my health, I did it originally through the SCD diet (similar to Paleo), that also embraces the healing of the gut via home-made, lactose-free, probiotic yogurt. I’ve since moved to Paleo/Primal (which is a more complete diet than SCD in my opinion), but I kept SCD’s yogurt regimen, specifically from goat milk, which is more tolerable than cow dairy (goats have A2 casein, instead of the human-incompatible A1 found in most cows).

Six months passed, and with the additional help of ketosis, most of my ailments are completely vanished. I’d still get an occasional IBS breakout, no more than what would be considered “normal” though by most people.

For a month now, I don’t do yogurt anymore, I’ve moved to home-made goat kefir (fermented for 24-36 hours). Kefir contains up to 40 types of bacteria & yeasts, while yogurt usually contains 3 to 10 strains of bacteria. It also contains up to 5 trillion of these organisms, while yogurt usually goes up to 1-2 trillion per cup (a probiotic pill usually has up to 15 billion, most of them already dead by the time they’re bottled). Even people with lactose intolerance can tolerate kefir better than other dairy. Most importantly, the kinds of bacteria/yeasts that consist kefir, actually colonize the human gut, while yogurt’s strains only pass through, and are active in the gut for a short period of time. In other words, kefir is way more potent than yogurt.

Kefir is the stated reason why Caucasus people used to live up to 150 years old, before the modern cuisine caught up with them too. Kefir doesn’t only have internal healing and anti-cancer properties, but it can also heal external wounds. Its bacteria/yeasts strains work together in (visible by the human eye) colonies called “grains”, and attack any foreign microbe that is not part of their pack. E.Coli doesn’t stand a chance if it has the bad luck to fall into a cup (or a gut) of kefir.

My kefir, fermenting goat milk

Since I started having kefir, I haven’t had a single breakout of IBS, even when I stopped my Paleo-ketogenic diet and went plain Paleo (devouring quite a few carbs per day). Under “normal” circumstances, that would give me IBS symptoms at least once a week, but not while drinking kefir, no. In my mind, there’s no going back to yogurt, other than as the occasional treat: kefir is here to stay. It’s easier to make than yogurt too!

So why does kefir works so well? It’s for the same reason why some times fecal transplants from family members work for the treatment of IBS, SIBO, or C-Diff and other super-bugs: because you repopulate the gut with healthy strains that are compatible with the human gut. Kefir was probably “invented” by mistake. In the olden days, people would use the tripe of goats/sheep as a flask, to store milk or water. It probably only took one “bad” home-maker woman to not properly sterilize the tripe with hot water, before turning it into a flask. So the surviving bacteria from the tripe of these animals, fermented the milk. The poor husband, high up in the mountains of Caucasus taking care of his animals, had the choice of either drinking this weird sour milk/water, or go thirsty for the rest of the day. He drank it, he didn’t get sick by it, and so the story of kefir started. That was 2000 years ago, and while it’s just an assumption on my part on how it all started, it feels natural that it probably started this way. In contrast today, probiotic pills and yogurt strains are extracted from bovine tripe, but again, cows are incompatible with the human physiology, so these strains don’t stick in our gut. Goat/sheep’s strains do, so kefir became a superfood.

One word of caution though: to get these great benefits of kefir, you MUST make it yourself. The store-bought kefir products only have the limited effect of yogurt has, but not the extended properties of kefir. You see, you can’t bottle kefir with active yeasts in it: the alcohol produced by the yeasts would create pressure into the bottle, exploding it by the time it reaches the grocery store! Plus, the USDA is strict about some organisms that they haven’t fully researched yet, so kefir manufacturers in the US are forced to use the few well-known yogurt strains to make kefir. So if you want to get it right, you have to make goat kefir yourself. Buy the kefir grains from Amazon or elsewhere (make sure these are NOT kefir “starters”, but actual grains), and grow them according to instructions. Let them multiply and be happy & merry!

And as always, PubMed is your friend. The proof is in research too, not just anecdotal reports.


Haas wrote on April 20th, 2012 at 12:40 PM PST:


Do you have to make it with milk, can you use something like this one with other liquids??

This one below people are making Kefir with all sorts of liquids, apple juice and so on.

This is the admin speaking...
Eugenia wrote on April 20th, 2012 at 12:42 PM PST:

You can make kefir with other liquids, but the grains are most potent in milk, especially goat/sheep/camel milk.

Haas wrote on April 24th, 2012 at 7:04 AM PST:

thank you for the clarification, and my link didn’t post above, it was for water kefir grains (used with juices) which I’m going to try out.

Michael C. wrote on April 24th, 2012 at 11:48 AM PST:

I am too lazy to make kefir myself, I buy the most popular brand, I suppose, that is now sold pretty much everywhere (made by a Chicago family of Russian natives).

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