Although bone broth powder started gaining momentum only recently, bone broth has been around for thousands of years. Bone broth, a core constituent of the Paleo diet, is a diet based on foods that were consumed by our ancestors from centuries ago, including poultry, fish, beef, and vegetables, and fruits.
Bone broth, commonly known as beef or chicken broth, is becoming a very popular beverage among health enthusiasts in the United States, largely owing to its health benefits.
It is basically a soup base that is made by slowly simmering the connective tissue and bones of animals (beef, turkey, duck, chicken, etc.) in water for up to 24 hours. This hearty beverage is touted for its variety of vital nutrients that may improve digestion, benefit your skin, improve joint health and boost your immune system.
What is Bone Broth Powder?
Bone broth powder is a nutritional supplement that purports to offer the benefits of consuming protein and bone broth, all in powder form. This protein powder can be taken by mixing it with the liquid of your choice, including soup and water.
Bone broth powder is made by boiling animal bones, tendons, ligaments, and water under sustained high heat and pressure. In addition to helping the broth retain its nutrients, this also allows it to be cooked for a considerably shorter time.
Reducing the cooking time is particularly important because nutrients such as hyaluronic acid chondroitin and glucosamine may be lost when cooked for a long period of time. The bone broth is then slowly dehydrated and concentrated into bone broth powder.
What are the Health Benefits of Consuming Bone Broth Powder?
It is important to keep in mind that there’s limited scientific research on the benefits of consuming bone broth powder. Instead, its health benefits are attributed to some of the benefits of its nutrients, including:
- Glycine
- Chondroitin
- Glucosamine
- Proline
- Hyaluronic acid
- Glutamine
Does Bone Broth Powder Help Improve Digestion?
Studies have shown that your general health depends greatly on your intestinal tract health. In addition to being easy to digest, bone broth may also help improve the digestion of a wide variety of other foods.
Bone broth protein is rich in gelatin with attracts and bonds with liquids, helping food move through the gut more easily. It has also been shown to heal and protect the mucosal lining of the human digestive tract.
Gelatin contains an amino acid known as glutamine which aids in maintaining the intestinal walls as well as healing and preventing leaky gut syndrome. Leaky gut is a condition caused by the impairment of the barrier between the bloodstream and your gut. This leads to inflammation as well as other potentially dangerous conditions.
So How does Collagen Help Digestion?
Bone broth is high in glycine which stimulates the body to produce stomach acids which are essential for the digestion of any food. Hypochlorhydria (low stomach acid) is very common in many developed countries and can easily cause serious health complications, including GERD and heartburn. Glycine is an essential element of bile acid, which aids in the digestion of all fats. Therefore, bile acid helps maintain healthy blood cholesterol levels.
Studies have shown that gelatin helps draw fluids into the intestine, hence improving gut motility as well as healthy bowel movements. In fact, collagen deficiency is closely linked with conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease. Consuming bone broth regularly helps with leaky gut syndrome and it can also help protect non-leaky guts.
The gelatin in the ligaments and bones used for making bone broth helps repair damaged intestines by “patching up” holes. Repairing the porous intestinal lining helps ease constipation, chronic diarrhea, as well as some food intolerances.
According to research, people who suffer from inflammatory bowel disease typically have significantly lower levels of various amino acids. Therefore, such people may live more comfortable lives and relieve some symptoms of the disease by simply consuming more amino acids. Drinking bone broth regularly is a simple way of getting amino acids in the body and reducing inflammation.
The bottom line
Since bone broth powder is essentially concentrated bone broth, the body can utilize all of its protein, unlike other protein sources like egg, soy, or whey. Although most bone broth powder supplements are made with chicken bones and ligaments, there are alternatives made with fish bones or grass-fed beef.
Therefore, consuming bone broth powder may be beneficial for people with IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), leaky gut, or IBD (inflammatory bowel disease), such as Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis.
Read about why you should include bone broth powder in your diet HERE!
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