The Benefits of Bone Broth (+ Recipe)

I generally shy away from the word ‘superfood’ as we live in a world with an abundance of healthy promoting real foods from arugula to zucchini, BUT for women feeling exhausted in their middle years, bone broth comes pretty close to the holy grail of nutritional content.

THE BENEFITS OF BONE BROTH

Contains Easily Absorbable Amino Acids
This help heal the epithelial cells of the gut lining alleviating feelings of gassiness and bloating that can become more common as we age and our digestive tract ages with us. Healthy digestion ensures absorption of nutrition from all the other energizing foods you include into you daily menu.

Mineral Dense
Meaning support for your adrenal glands. If you have been suffering from stress, exhaustion or anxiety then bone broth is for you. Not to mention your diet will appreciate the bump in calcium, magnesium and phosphorous content.

Packed with Glucosamine and Chondroitin
These are the building blocks for our tissues. Bone broth helps support strong bones, joints, hair and nails as we age.

Rich in Collagen
An important connective tissue which helps prevent osteoarthritis and general wear and tear on joints and bones (definitely something for my midlife athletes to consider). Collagen is also the perfect ingredient for smooth, young looking skin. After 40, the body naturally makes less collagen which is why, we start to notice those laugh lines and wrinkles. Collagen also helps to form lean muscle mass and promotes burning fat.

Detoxifying
During perimenopause, it is the liver that carries the burden of breaking down the excess hormones that accumulate in our bodies. Rich in amino acids, glycine and proline, bone broth supports your liver in building detoxifying glutathione so that she can do her detox job more effectively.

Anti-Anxiety
As a rich source of magnesium, bone broth can help you to relax and feel less anxious which will lead to better sleep. The amino acid glycine found in bone broth also supports the body to combat the stress-inducing effects of the heart-rate-accelerating hormone norepinephrine.

Bone broth is one of the foods that makes the list in my FREE guide The Ten Essential Foods For The Midlife Woman. You can get your copy here.

Bone broth is readily available in supermarkets today but it is easy to make this midlife superfood at home. I make mine in a slow cooker so that I can spend five minutes on preparation and forget about it until I find time to pour the contents of the slow cooker through a colander and discard the bones. This can be up to 48 hours later.

So what do you need to make this delicious and highly nutritious midlife elixir for yourself?

Bones from 1 roasted chicken – After you have enjoyed your roasted chicken or turkey dinner, pile all of the bones into a slow cooker for bone broth.

• 1-2 carrots

• 2-3 stalks celery

• 3-4 cloves garlic

• 1 onion halved, skin on or off

• 3-4 bay leaves

• 10-15 peppercorns

• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar.
  
  Add all of the ingredients into the slow cooker with the chicken carcass. Know that the apple cider vinegar will pull the minerals out of the bones to increase the nutrition of your broth. Also know that your broth will not miss an odd carrot or the celery stalks. It is not about perfection here but consistency…just get your broth started with what you have in the kitchen.
  
  Fill the slow cooker up with filtered water to cover the bones and cover and switch on low. Leave the broth to do its’ thing for 48 hours. Even in the summer I often have my slow cooker out on the deck making bone broth for a delicious limey summer chicken tortilla soup or gazpacho!
  
  After 36 – 48 hours, let the contents cool and pass through a colander into a large container in which you can store your delicious bone broth. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Daily Cleansing Lemon Water - A Baby Step With Big Impact

Daily Cleansing Lemon Water

“Keep is Simple” &  “Take baby steps”  are good rules of thumb when making change

Embracing a healthy diet and lifestyle should not be about repeated dramatic overhauls, restriction and denial of entire food groups, restarts, mental flagellation, hours of food preparation, a hunt for obscure superfoods or weighing and calculating your food intake! This is the antithesis of simplicity, of ease, of loving yourself.

Let’s talk about the simple habit of drinking lemon water each morning:

If you choose to squeeze half a lemon into a glass of warmed water each morning….add cold to the freshly squeezed lemon juice and top the glass up with a little boiled from the kettle……this small act of kindness to self will bring you a myriad of health benefits.

WHY drink Lemon water to start to the day:

• Clears the skin and relieve constipation
• Acidifies the stomach helping to relieve GERD and reflux.  

• Prevents your proton pump from going into overdrive causing acid reflux

• De-natures proteins so that the amino acids can be absorbed easily

• Supports the digestion of minerals from food you eat throughout the day

• Boosts immunity (the stomach can be one of the bodies first line of defenses from bacteria and viruses)

• Causes you gall bladder to clench and release bile into the digestive tract. Bile is important because it binds with excess cholesterol and toxins in your gut to carry them out of the body in the stool…your daily poop.

• Alkalizes the body, hydrates the digestive tract and flushes the liver washing through toxins, excess hormones and chemicals it has worked to eliminate during the night

Check your nails sister…..if you have very marked long ridges on your nails, the chances are that you mineral absorption could benefit from the support of a daily morning lemon water habit.

Another one of my mantras is “GOOD, BETTER, BEST!”

Drinking a glass of water at the start of each day is GOOD, Adding lemon water to that glass is BETTER, and here is the simple addition for BEST:

Add a ½ teaspoon of chia seeds to your lemon water!

 The morning lemon water has so many health benefits and that doubles with the addition of chia seeds.

 Adding chia provides you with:

• Soluble AND insoluble fibre. Insoluble is the cleansing scrubbing brush of your gut and the soluble hydrates as it drags water within itself to the colon and pulls toxins and excess hormone out of the body with it.

• Valuable minerals such as magnesium and calcium which will be easily absorbed into the body in that acid environment.

• They are rich in anti-inflammatory omega 3 fatty acids which support brain health, skin health and prevent inflammation across the body.

 SERIOUSLY, why would we not do this?

 Daily optimal health is all about embracing small changes such as this one and easing into a more nutritious way of living, being and enjoying life.

(Drink lemon water with a straw if you whiten your teeth or are worried about your enamel)

If you want more information about the foods that will support your beautiful body through the hormonal changes of peri-menopause, you can get hold of my FREE guide The Ten Essential Foods for the Midlife Woman here.