hi my name is Barbara Allen I am author of the book conquering arthritis which has been the number one best-selling arthritis book on amazon.com for seven years running today I'd like to talk about rheumatoid arthritis treatment with respect to probiotics it turns out that probiotics which are the healthy bacteria in your gut are very important for regulating your immune system so if you had any kind of inflammatory condition whether it's rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis or any of the other hundred types of arthritis or actually any kind of inflammatory condition like other autoimmune diseases having these healthy bacteria in your gut are an important part of moving away from the disease process back into health so what I'm going to talk about today are non-dairy sources of probiotics because many people with arthritis have problems taking Gary if you can have dairy all you need to do is go to the store and get yogurt or kefir or a probiotic supplement you don't have a problem getting those but other people this is really useful information about how you can make your own one and repopulate your gut with the right type of bacteria so I'm going to start first with sauerkraut I made a version with cabbage and it's red because I put a single beet in and there were three heads of cabbage and I put in salt and I put this in a crock and I just let it sit in my kitchen I put a plate on top to push out all the air and I could actually put a mason jar with water on top of that and once a day or so I would press down so that the gases would would dissipate and so everything would would keep working correctly and after two weeks I got a lovely sauerkraut again it's red because they put a meat in it and this is chock full of lots of different lactobacillus which are a wonderful wonderful probiotic many many different species it's actually better than any supplement you could buy because most supplements even the very best only have ten or twelve varieties and thus has hundreds of different wild bacteria it just was from the air and if you'd like the recipe you can go to the website on the bottom of this page and you can get more information for the exact recipe so this was the first probiotic I made it's non-dairy and it's wonderful then I got so inspired that I made kimchi and this is very similar but it has onion and garlic and ginger in it as well as cabbage and I don't really like hot peppers so I left that out could also put that in and this only took a week to permit because instead of catching only the wild bacteria I poured a little bit of the brine from my sauerkraut into this so it got to working really quickly so the next probiotic is being ferment and this is very potent and very lovely I cooked red beans and first I soaked them overnight because that will help with digestibility and I poured off that water and then I put that I cook them for about an hour and then I put them in a blender with garlic and onions raw garlic and raw onions and then I just put a little bit of the brine from the sauerkraut and to get this started and left it out for about two days and here in Phoenix we're a little warmer than other places so that was enough you might have to leave it out three or four days if you're someplace that's a little bit cooler and this is just amazing I've been mixing it with some tomatoes and having it just like I would regularly have refried beans but oh good and if you have a problem with red beans you can you can cook whatever kind of beans you like you could use lentils is these red lentils you could use something like split peas you could use something like pinto beans you could use something like more than white beans any kind of being that you don't react against that's healthy for you that doesn't stir up your inflammation you can use as a base and then use that on tortilla chips or anywhere that that you would normally have a bean dip and if you don't like the onions and garlic you don't have to put it in but but for me at least they're wonderful the next thing I made was something called potato cheese and because I use some of the brine from the sauerkraut with the beet so it's a very pretty pink color otherwise it would be white and what I did was I baked the potato in the microwave and then I used actually the brine from the kimchi and I mixed enough brine in with the potato and a blender to make this kind of thick paste and then I just let it sit out for about a day and a half and it's very nicely permitted it's it's very lovely I don't know exactly how to describe it but I'll try it's got a little potato flavor and then it's got some salt from the brine and then it's got just a really lovely zippy flavor from the bacteria yes I haven't ever had anything like it before so I don't know exactly how to describe it but what I noticed is that when I had a little bit of this I eat a whole lot less at meals is so satisfying so there's something I'm getting that's really important when I eat this that I'm not getting what I'm having non fermented foods only at a meal the same thing is true if I had any of these products with the meal I end up eating a whole lot less and being satisfied and full and in my body it's it's almost like now that I've had these a few times I think about eating them right I sniff it I smell it they just so much like my whole body is smiling so whenever I get that feeling I know that something's really healthy for me I also want to mention that you can use other sources of carbohydrates as well to grow your probiotics so instead of taking a potato you might want to cook some brown rice and then puree that in a blender with with some some of the permit right or you could use something like quinoa or barley or rye or whatever other grains that might work for you millet so there are many many different source materials that you can use and it just depends on what is safe for you in particular and one of the ways to keep a food safe is to only eat it once every four days so if you find four different sources of probiotics that you like once you've made these they can keep for weeks in the refrigerator so so then you can keep a variety and then they'll stay safe over time as we take them every day the next recipes are something called Orangina and I was inspired by this particular it's called nourishing traditions by Sally Fallon and she describes how you can juice 12 oranges and I didn't have oranges what I have is a tangerine tree in my yard so I just used some tangerines and this particular mixture Sally Fallon recommends using way which is the liquid portion from cheese making or yogurt making and so what I did was I used a kefir culture and if you let it go long enough the the liquid and the solids will separate so use the liquid portion from kefir and here is keeper making when it hasn't gone quite so far so you need to let it go an extra day or so longer than you might normally do so that the keeper will get acidic and out for the curves and the way will separate and just so you can see I've got a picture here of what the curds look like that I separated out from the way and so you can use that just like cottage cheese it's a very lovely form of cultured milk so anyway into this batch of tangerines you said cored some of the way and this has been fermenting about a day and a half and when it's per minute enough it'll start tasting a little bit like bananas and this definitely has some overtones of bananas it's still got a little bit of the tangerine overtones and it's just an extremely lovely way to get probiotics so if you you don't have a problem with dairy you can use the way what I wanted to do was experiment as well with what if you had a dairy product right a problem how could you also make the orange drink so I put again a little bit of the sauerkraut brine in with the tangerines and this has a different taste because it's got a little bit different bacteria and it's still very lovely it doesn't taste like bananas yet but it's um it's getting some really nice very finals like wine overtones that are on top of the tangerine juice it almost tastes like these are two different drinks because the microorganisms have added different flavors and it's again a very lovely source and I'm not sure if this goes another day or so whether it will have the banana overtones or whether that only happens with the way and I'm doing a lot of experiments here so feel free to leave messages for me if you try this how it worked for you one thing I also wanted to mention is I have gotten a lot of inspiration from this book called wild fermentation by stand or cats and and he's very experimental and basically his idea about fermentation is try it with everything and he gives some really good guidelines about how to start and I want to mention that probiotics are not just for down regulating inflammation they're also for regulating your immune system so it fights against viruses better and this is my latest edition of science news you can see the earthquake damage in in Japan so that will give you some idea when this came out which is April of 2011 and there's a brand new study that just came out about antibiotics when you take them at weekends to fight off pneumonia and researchers don't know exactly why having good lactobacillus in your gut will help your immune system fight off viruses in your lungs they just know it's true right now and my guess is that as researchers look at this more and more the healthy air of the gut is in our bacteria the more our immune system works correctly fighting off the things that shouldn't be there and not attacking our own bodies when we have an autoimmune disease so Bon Appetit and I wish you a long and healthy life full of all sorts of good foods and may the bacteria help you do this again Barbara Allen author of the book conquering arthritis