All posts by Kathryne Pirtle

Acid Reflux Healing, Allergies, Digestion and Healing Diet, Bone Broth Soups, Breast Health and Cancer Prevention, Digestive Disorders and Healing Diet, Healing and Building Health with Nutrient-Dense Foods, Inflammation and Healing Diet, Mood Disorders and Diet, Performing Artist's Health, Recipes for Traditional Foods

Bone Broth Soup–A great recipe for one of the best foods in the world

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Regularly eating bone broth soup has many wonderful health benefits. There is an old Latin saying, “Good broth raises the dead.” So what are the magical attributes to this slow food that have given it such an honor?

Bone broth is one of the easiest foods to digest. It is loaded with a wide array of easy-to-assimilate critical nutrients like calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, cartilage, marrow, amino acids and vitamins. The cartilage in broth will help you heal your own cartilage. Bone broths are also rich in gelatin, which can aid digestion and help to heal the intestinal tract.

In today’s world where everyone seems to have calcium and other nutrient deficiencies, good old-fashioned bone broth is the form of these nutrients that we can best utilize.

Bone broth can be made from chicken, fish or beef bones (for beef and chicken, pastured is best–free-range, organic is next best. For fish–wild-caught.) The most important thing is to add a little vinegar or wine to the water when simmering the bones as it pulls  the nutrients out of the bones and into the broth. Here is a wonderful bone broth soup recipe made from beef bones.

Rich Beef and Vegetable Bone Broth Soup

1 oxtail
1 knuckle bone
several marrow bones
several soup bones
2 T. vinegar
1-2 lb. stew meat
2 -3 large onions-chopped
4 large carrots-sliced
4 large beets-sliced
1/4 lb. Swiss chard-chopped
1 large bunch of parsley-chopped
other vegetables of your choice
2 cups dry red wine
filtered water to cover bones
Celtic Sea Salt to taste

In a large stock pot or crock pot, take the bones and cover them with water and put in the vinegar. Cover the pot and let the water come to a boil. Turn to simmer. When the meat from the soup bones and oxtail is cooked, take the meat off these bones and set aside in the refrigerator. Put bones back into same pot and continue simmering for about 24-36 hours!! (This is how you get nutrient-rich broth.) You may have to add water from time to time. After 24-36 hours, strain the broth and skim off the fat. Add the wine, meat from the bones, stew meat and vegetables. Simmer for about 2 hours. Salt to taste. (For easy lunches take a thermos of soup! Never heat in the microwave–it destroys the nutrients.)

For more information on a healing diet and nutrient-dense foods, see www.performancewithoutpain.com.

Best in health,

Kathyrne Pirtle

Children's Health, Digestive Disorders and Healing Diet, Healing and Building Health with Nutrient-Dense Foods, Mood Disorders and Diet, Performing Artist's Health, Singer's Health

Concentration, mood and digestion–what’s the relationship?

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Artists know very well that the ability to concentrate is critical to both practicing and performing. However all of us need these concentration skills to do well in our everyday lives. In addition mood instability that curtails a sense of well-being may impact our success. Today the cutting edge treatments for working with children who have autism, ADD, ADHD and mental health issues is a dietary protocol based on nutrient-dense foods that also maximizes digestion and absorption. This is because this scientific community has proven that this approach has offered remarkable advances in the reversal of all of these problems. These very same advances for serious ailments in children have a direct relationship on how we can look at what is helpful for optimal concentration and mood in less critical health situations.

When the diet is high in difficult-to-digest foods like high-fiber, complex carbohydrate and processed foods or sugar, digestion can slow down and cause an overgrowth of candida in both the stomach and the intestinal tract. The byproduct of sugars broken down by yeast (candida) is alcohol and acetaldehyde. The byproduct of poorly digested gluteomorphine protein from gluten grains is a morphine-like chemical. Need I say more! That alcohol and morphine would affect both the mood and the ability to concentrate even in small amounts is obvious. Acetaldehyde will bind itself to proteins we consume and make their nutrients unavailable to the body. Additionally, these foods become very addictive because of the chemicals they produce under these circumstances.

Therefore–changing your diet to foods that are easy-to-digest and nutrient rich is the best way to insure that your body and mind are able to function at peak performance.

Optimal digestion requires certain components.

  • The first is good intestinal flora, which helps us to break down our foods and keep the intestinal walls and villi functioning well for optimal nutrient absorption. Foods that enhance good gut flora are old fashioned probiotic, high-enzyme  foods like cultured dairy–whole fat kefir and yogurt; lacto-fermented vegetables–homemade sauerkraut and pickled beets and cultured drinks like kombucha and beet kvass.
  • Second, a diet rich in nutrient-dense foods such as meats, poultry, eggs and dairy from animals eating their natural diets and traditionally made bone broth soups
  • Third, a diet that includes traditional fats like butter, cream and coconut oil which help with nutrient absorption, cell integrity and hormone function.
  • Fourth, adequate vitamin A and D from natural sources like cod liver oil, egg yolks and liver also for nutrient absorption

For more information on healing and building optimal health with nutrient-dense, traditional foods, see www.performancewithoutpain.com.

Best in health,

Kathryne Pirtle

Cod Liver Oil, Healing and Building Health with Nutrient-Dense Foods

Fish Oil vs. Cod-Liver Oil

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Many people today are getting extra omega-3 fatty acids in their diet with fish oil. Omega-3s have decreased in our diets today largely because of vegetable oils and corn-feeding of our livestock. From beef to chicken and now, even our farm-raised fish, unless a person chooses to get their food from a farm co-op that pastures their animals, foods that used to have a balance of omega-3 to -6 fatty acids are now overabundant in omega-6. In fact, because of today’s foods, omega-6 fatty acids can dominate omega-3 fatty acids by as much as between 20 to 1 or 30 to 1! (Another important reason to purchase pastured foods.)

An overabundance of omega-6 fatty acids can sometimes be a factor in inflammation as it may cause an imbalance in the production of important hormones called prostaglandins. Because of this, many people turn to omega-3-rich fish oil supplements like salmon oil. These are beneficial, but when you take a high quality cod-liver oil you will not only get the omega-3 fatty acids, but you will also get both vitamins A and D, which are critical to nutrient absorption. Dr. Weston A. Price’s research of healthy populations worldwide found that these cultures consumed 10 times the amount of vitamin A and D compared to diets of his patients in the US–in the 1930s! So that figure now would be much higher today considering how depleted our food supply has become.

Unfortunately, commercial cod liver oil is not the  always the best choice, as the natural vitamin A and D has been removed in processing and a synthetic version of these vitamins is put back. The Weston A. Price Foundation recommends fermented cod liver oil from www.greenpasture.org as an excellent choice for this supplement. It is the only cod liver oil in the world that is  made in a traditional way. It is also much more dense in vitamin A and D than commercial brands so the dose is much smaller.

Cod liver oil has been recorded as being an elixir for good health by cultures all over the world as far back as in the Roman empire. Even your great-grandmother took cod liver oil! So take your cod liver oil!! And while you are at it, take it with high-vitamin butter oil, which was Dr. Price’s prescription for healing (also available at www.greenpasture.org).

For more information on building health and healing with nutrient-dense foods see Performance without Pain and our new e-book on healing acid reflux.

Best in health,

Kathryne Pirtle

Healing and Building Health with Nutrient-Dense Foods, USDA Dietary Guidelines, Nutrient Deficiencies and Degenerative Illness

What does the government and media say are the top 14 foods?

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According to the government and media health pundits the top 14 foods are:

  • Beans
  • Blueberries
  • Broccoli
  • Oats
  • Oranges
  • Pumpkin
  • Salmon
  • Soy
  • Spinach
  • Tea (green or black)]
  • Tomatoes
  • Turkey
  • Walnuts
  • Yogurt

This uninspiring list reflects the current establishment “angels” (anti-oxidants and omega-3 fatty acids) and “demons” (saturated fats and animal foods). Unfortunately, a diet containing only these foods is a fast track to nutritional deficiencies.

For more information on a healing diet and nutrient-dense foods, see  www.performancewithoutpain.com.

Best in health,

Kathryne Pirtle

Healing and Building Health with Nutrient-Dense Foods, USDA Dietary Guidelines, Nutrient Deficiencies and Degenerative Illness

14 Top Nutrient-Dense Foods

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Through the work of Dr. Weston A. Price we know that diets built on nutrient-dense foods can heal the body and build optimal health.  Below is a list of the 14 top nutrient-dense foods.

  • Butter from grass-fed cows (preferably raw)
  • Oysters
  • Liver from grass-fed animals
  • Eggs from pastured hens
  • Cod-liver oil
  • Fish eggs
  • Whole raw milk from grass-fed cows
  • Bone broth
  • Wild-caught shrimp
  • Wild-caught salmon
  • Whole milk yogurt or kefir from grass-fed cows
  • Beef from grass-fed steers
  • Traditionally prepared sauerkraut (homemade, not pasteurized)
  • Organic beets, beet kvass, traditionally prepared pickled beets (homemade, not pasteurized)

For more information on a healing diet and nutrient-dense foods, see our website at www.performancewithoutpain.com.

Best in health,

Kathryne Pirtle

Healing and Building Health with Nutrient-Dense Foods, Soy Foods, USDA Dietary Guidelines, Nutrient Deficiencies and Degenerative Illness, Vegetarian Diets

All proteins are not created equal.

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When you are deciding which foods to eat, choosing a diet where most of the foods give you the most nutrients per gram makes good sense for building and maintaining good health doesn’t it? In fact Dr. Weston A. Price found through his research of healthy populations worldwide that “All disease comes from malnourishment.” (see www.westonaprice.org)

Next, it makes sense to choose proteins that are easy-to-digest so that the nutrients that they contain are available to the body, which was another aspect of the work that Dr. Price did. When he sought to find cultures of people that had perfect health, he was hoping that he would find one that was vegetarian as he believed in the principle of vegetarianism. Unfortunately, he was very disappointed to find that cultures whose protein sources were from plants displayed degenerative conditions. This is because proteins from legumes, nuts and seeds are difficult to digest and do not have the nutrient-density of animal foods as they do not have the full array of amino acids.

As you can also imagine, fractionated proteins like “whey protein” and other protein powders are highly processed, difficult to digest and are therefore poor choices for nutrient-dense foods. These are among the “new-fangled” food  inventions of today that rob your pocketbook and promise results, when in fact, they are not real food!

So shopping for foods that will comprise a good diet is at best confusing when there is so much conflicting health advice–especially when we have been literally brainwashed into believing that a healthy diet is low-fat and high-fiber.

How can we go about making an educated choice about what proteins to include in our daily fare. If we are looking at nutrient-density alone, the foods highest in nutrients are not only organic, but they come from animals eating their natural diets. So finding a source of eggs, dairy, meat and fish from good sources is critical to good health as there is a remarkable difference in the nutrients in for instance, eggs from a pastured chicken and even an organic egg from a “vegetarian-fed” chicken (chickens are not vegetarian by the way–their natural diet is comprised of bugs and worms). Price also noted that in all cases healthy cultures ate ample amounts of traditional fats with proteins like butter, meat with its fat, cream, lard, coconut oil or palm oil.

Also, all healthy cultures that Dr. Price studied had sacred foods for good health, couples who wanted to conceive and growing children.  One of the sacred protein foods that they consumed was organ meats like liver. Liver from a grass-fed cow or other pastured animal is one of the most nutrient-dense animal foods that you can eat. If you consume liver just once a week, you will greatly magnify the nutrients available to your body for building and maintaining good health. Some people think the liver stores toxins, but in fact it acts as a filter. However, it is also very important to get liver from good sources-see http://www.westonaprice.org/localchapters/index.html for a list of local Weston A. Price chapters in your area to locate farm coops that carry naturally raised foods.

Below is a fascinating list of the comparative vitamin content of various kinds of liver. From this list, you will see just what nutrient-density really means.

Liver Comparison Chart

From: Nutrition Almanac, by John D. Kirschmann

Beef Lamb Veal Chicken Duck Goose Turkey
Amount 1lb 1lb 1lb 1 1 1 1
Weight: gm 454 454 454 32 44 94 102
Vitamin A 199130 229070 102060 6576 17559 29138 18403
Vitamin B1 1.16 1.81 .9 .044 – .528 .062
Vitamin B2 14.79 14.9 12.3 .628 – .838 2.21
Vitamin B6 14 1.36 3.04 .24 – .72 .78
Vitamin B12 363 472 272 7.35 23.7 – 64.6
Biotin 454 454 – – – – –
Niacin 61.6 76.5 51.8 2.96 – 6.11 10.35
Pantothen
Acid 		35 32.7 36.3 1.98 – – 7.81
Folic Acid .99 .99 – 236 – – 752
Vitamin C 140 152 161 10.8 – – 4.6
Vitamin E 6.36 – – – – – –
Calcium 36 45 36 3 5 40 7
Copper 12.7 25 36 .126 2.62 7.07 .512
Iron 29.5 49.4 39.9 2.74 13.4 – 11
Magnesium 59 64 73 6 – 23 21
Manganese 1.23 1.04 – .083 – – .294
Phosphorus 1597 1583 1510 87 118 245 319
Potassium 1275 916 1275 73 – 216 303
Selenium 206 – – – – – –
Sodium 617 236 331 25 – 132 98
Zinc 17 – 17 .98 – – 2.53
Total Fat 17.5 19.6 21.3 1.23 2.04 4.03 4.05
Saturated Fat 6.8 6.9 – 42 .63 1.49 1.28
Unsaturated Fat 5 6.63 – .5 .59 1 1.73
Cholesterol 1360 1361 1361 140 227 – 475

So when considering how to build good health for a lifetime, choosing foods according to nutrient-density will go a long way to helping you achieve that goal, and we have history and good research on magnificently healthy people as our example.

For more information on a healing diet and nutrient-dense foods see www.performancewithoutpain.com.

Best in health,

Kathryne Pirtle

Acid Reflux Healing, Allergies, Digestion and Healing Diet, Children's Health, Digestive Disorders and Healing Diet, Gluten Free Diets and Healing, Healing and Building Health with Nutrient-Dense Foods

Carbohydrate addictions–it’s not all in your head.

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Food addictions can be much more than just talk–they can be real biochemical dependencies that may be signs of health issues. Today, many people are addicted to carbohydrates, like breads, chips, cookies, candy, soda pop, etc. From the aisles of “organic” junk food products in our health food stores to literally hundreds of  junk foods that sit on the shelves of grocery, discount and countless other stores, and the billions of dollars that are spent on advertising these products especially to growing children, it is almost unfathomable that these types of “foods” were by-and-large created in the last 60 years. But why do people crave them?

Because there was no refrigeration, our ancestors consumed many foods that were preserved through lacto-fermentation like yogurt and kefir and fermented vegetables, such as traditionally prepared sauerkraut and pickled beets, which contained probiotic bacteria that helped to maintain a healthy digestive system. With refrigeration and the industrialization of our food supply we stopped making these probiotic foods and started consuming more and more new-fangled food creations. These new fascinating “foods” have wreaked havoc on our digestion and the health of our population as they are very nutrient deficient and hard to digest.

When we consume foods that are hard to digest–even organic foods, digestion slows down in our stomach and stomach acid diminishes. Low acid in the stomach can cause an overgrowth of candida . In addition, without adequate stomach acid, the gluteomorphine proteins in gluten containing grains may not to be properly broken down before they reach the small intestine. In the small intestine the resulting byproduct of poorly digested carbohydrates is alcohol and acetaldehyde as well as morphine-like chemicals. We all know that alcohol and morphine are extremely addictive substances. Acetaldehyde is a very toxic chemical that can bind itself to proteins and make them unusable as nutrients. Therefore, carbohydrate addiction is a real chemical problem and without healthy digestion, candida overgrowth and poor gut flora will ultimately cause intestinal damage and malnourishment.

The best way to end the candida cycle and food addictions is to focus on eating a diet of easy-to-digest, nutrient-dense foods. Foods with real nutrients will eventually help you end the cravings as digestion and nutrient absorption improves. For more information on building health and healing with nutrient-dense foods see Performance without Pain and our e-book on healing acid reflux.

Best in health,

Kathryne Pirtle

Acid Reflux Healing, Allergies, Digestion and Healing Diet, Asthma and Acid Reflux, Breast Health and Cancer Prevention, Children's Health, Digestive Disorders and Healing Diet, Gluten Free Diets and Healing, Healing and Building Health with Nutrient-Dense Foods, Inflammation and Healing Diet, Mood Disorders and Diet, Performing Artist's Health, Singer's Health

Do you get hungry two hours after eating breakfast?

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If you are getting hungry two hours after eating breakfast, you may be choosing the wrong kind of foods for your morning meal and this may be a sign that you have absorption problems as well. Let’s look at both of these important issues.

First, a breakfast of cereal, toast or a bagel with non-fat spreads and a piece of fruit may not be the breakfast of champions! For years before I got deathly ill with a digestive disorder, my favorite breakfast was bagels, no-cholesterol “buttery flavor” spread and a piece of fruit. Another choice was a bowl of cold cereal. However by 10AM, I was very hungry again. This is not good. A healthy breakfast is not one that would leave you hungry in just a few hours.

Instead, a breakfast with higher amounts of protein and fat from traditional foods will literally nourish you until the afternoon and will offer far greater levels of nutrients. In our book we recommend a few great breakfasts that besides being nutrient-dense, will also help improve digestion. Smoothies made with 16 oz. whole fat kefir or yogurt (preferably raw milk from grass-fed animals), 2-4 raw egg yolks (from pastured chickens–not commercial eggs), fruit and 1 T. coconut oil are a fabulous breakfast. Another is old fashioned bacon (organic, no-nitrate) and eggs (from pastured chickens). Nutrient density is the key to building optimal health and maintaining blood sugar meal to meal. Nutrient-dense foods have ample high-quality traditional fats, protein and carbohydrates.

However, another reason that you are hungry just two hours after eating may be that you are suffering from inflammation in your intestinal tract. Inflammation is usually caused from bacterial imbalances in the gut flora like a candida overgrowth. When inflammation is present, nutrient absorption will be hampered and a person will feel hungry very quickly after eating a meal. After years of malabsorption, malnourishment is sure to follow.

For optimal health we need eat foods that are high in nutrients and also those that will support good digestion. For more information on building health and healing with nutrient-dense foods see Performance without Pain and our new e-book on healing acid reflux.

Best in health,
Kathryne Pirtle

Children's Health, Digestive Disorders and Healing Diet, Dogs and Cats and a Nutrient-Dense Diet, Healing and Building Health with Nutrient-Dense Foods, Vegetarian Diets

What does the health of cats and humans have in common?

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Concurrent pivotal  research in the 1930s by Dr. Weston A. Price and Dr. Francis Pottenger determined that there was a profound relationship between nutrition and fertility in both humans and cats. Dr. Price found that in the 14 healthy populations he studied, women had no fertility issues or problems in pregnancy or childbirth, and their children were very sturdy. In fact he noted that the Eskimo women had one healthy baby after another. However, people from these same cultures who had moved away and obtained access to “modern foods” –pasteurized milk, white flour, refined sugar and vegetable oils, had fertility and pregnancy problems, and the children born from these mothers had structural imperfections like narrowed faces and crooked and crowded teeth as well as health problems–the very same issues that he had seen in his own patients in the United States.

During this same time period, Dr. Francis Pottenger was working with nutritional healing for the treatment of tuberculosis and other diseases at the Pottenger Sanatorium in Monrovia, California. He always focused healing on a proper diet based on the principles discovered by Weston A. Price, and served liberal amounts of liver, butter, cream and eggs to his patients.

He also kept colonies of cats who had had their adrenal glands removed to help him determine how much adrenal cortex to give to his own patients. He found that when the cats consumed a species appropriate diet of raw milk and raw meat that they thrived from one generation to the next. However, if they received either a diet of pasteurized milk and raw meat, raw milk and cooked meat or pasteurized milk and cooked meat that the cats developed degenerative conditions. In fact, with these problem diets, in the second generation, the cats had narrowed faces and crooked and crowded teeth, and in the third generation, the cats could produce no more young!

These astonishing independent yet parallel outcomes between both Dr. Price and Dr. Pottenger can teach us the keys to the exponential percentage of fertility problems that we are seeing today. Both humans and cats who have superior nutrition will have no fertility problems and their offspring will be healthy. But when nutrition is inadequate, the first sign is in fertility problems, structural problems and the presence of health issues.

What we must wake up to understand is that widespread fertility problems are truly a sign of something very wrong with our foods and nutritional beliefs. And if we are really honest, by not choosing and supporting a supply of nutrient-dense foods, this lack of fertility really will ultimately translate into extinction. What both Pottenger and Price revealed can help us to be determined to help to turn the clock back.

For more information on a nutrient-dense diet, see www.performancewithoutpain.com.

Best in health,

Kathryne Pirtle

Calcium Absorption, Cod Liver Oil, Healing and Building Health with Nutrient-Dense Foods

Vitamin K-2–found in foods from pastured animals–is critical for proper calcium absorption and deposition.

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Today we are seeing an exponential increase in health conditions like osteoporosis and atherosclerosis that are caused by poor calcium absorption or calcium going in the wrong places in the body–like in the arteries and organs and not in the teeth and bones.  This is partly due to a deficiency of foods that contain both vitamin A and D and also vitamin K-2, which is found abundantly in foods from pastured animals like raw butter and cheese. This vitamin works with vitamin A and D to promote the  proper deposition of calcium. Historically, when people consumed foods from naturally raised animals, these deficiencies were not seen. Dr. Price called this special vitamin “activator X’ as it worked as a “mortar” for the building blocks of vitamin A and D foods like cod liver oil to create the correct genetic expression of the skeletal structure. Here is an excerpt from the Weston A. Price Foundation website that further explains this principal:

In 1945, Dr. Weston Price described “a new vitamin-like activator” that played an influential role in the utilization of minerals, protection from tooth decay, growth and development, reproduction, protection against heart disease and the function of the brain.

Using a chemical test, he determined that this compound—which he called Activator X—occurred in the butterfat, organs and fat of animals consuming rapidly growing green grass, and also in certain sea foods such as fish eggs.

Dr. Price died before research by Russian scientists became known in the West. These scientists used the same chemical test to measure a compound similar to vitamin K.

Vitamin K2 is produced by animal tissues, including the mammary glands, from vitamin K1, which occurs in rapidly growing green plants.

A growing body of published research confirms Dr. Price’s discoveries, namely that vitamin K2 is important for the utilization of minerals, protects against tooth decay, supports growth and development, is involved in normal reproduction, protects against calcification of the arteries leading to heart disease, and is a major component of the brain.

Vitamin K2 works synergistically with the two other “fat-soluble activators” that Price studied, vitamins A and D. Vitamins A and D signal to the cells to produce certain proteins and vitamin K then activates these proteins.

Vitamin K2 plays a crucial role in the development of the facial bones, and its presence in the diets of non-industrialized peoples explains the wide facial structure and freedom from dental deformities that Weston Price observed.

By eating traditional foods from pastured animals, you can help protect yourself from common degenerative conditions. For more information on traditional diets, see our book at www.performancewithoutpain.com.

Best in health,

Kathryne Pirtle