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Kombucha Safety/Detox?

3K views 8 replies 5 participants last post by  tanyalynn 
#1 ·
In another thread on TF, some people mentioned not drinking kombucha if one had not

1) detoxed first
2) had any amalgams
3) were nursing or pregnant

Why is it bad to take kombucha with one (or all) of the previous?

How much should kombucha should one start taking (per day/week)? How does one ramp up (if necessary)? Are there certain groups who should NEVER take kombucha?

What signs should one look out for that shows that the kombucha is doing more harm than good?

I'm really confused. I thought kombucha was another form of good probiotics. I can't do ANY dairy, so I thought I had finally found a source I can take, regularly. Am I mistaken?

Ami
 
#4 ·
Hmm, I'm going to guess that there is no such reasons to avoid Kombucha. I mean, if there were, surely some MDC members would know! Yay, I can drink my kombucha with out fear!

Ami
 
#5 ·
It sounds like kombucha can act as a chelating agent, eh?

This is from the WAP site, by Sally Fallon (the whole article is a good read.)

Quote:
After much research I decided to have all the amalgams removed-all 14 of them.

At this point I had spent nearly $15,000 and was unable to afford chelation to remove the heavy metals from my tissues. I tried many things with some degree of success. One day a friend of mine gave me a nice tall glass of kombucha to drink. I immediately became very ill with all of my symptoms reinforced. I thought I was allergic to the tea and decided it was not for me until one day I met John Thomas, the author of Young Again. I proceeded to ask him why I was so allergic to kombucha. His answer was that, because my body was so toxic with mercury, I had taken too much for the first time. He recommended I start with only a small amount.

After following his advice, I realized that he was right. Minutes after taking a small amount of kombucha tea there was much inflammation in the areas where mercury had accumulated, and burning sensations in the bowel and bladder occurred as mercury was eliminated. I patiently persisted, watching the areas affected getting smaller and fewer, my symptoms diminishing and disappearing one by one. I had fibrocystic disease of the breasts and it is now all gone. The inflammation in the breasts was severe as the mercury was being chelated by the kombucha. My vision was full of floaters and they are now nearly all gone.
http://www.westonaprice.org/foodfeatures/kvass.html

hth
fp
 
#6 ·
Yes, kombucha is a detoxifier. If you have amalgams it will pull metals out of your tissues and if your body does not have it's detox going correctly the metals and other wastes will go where you don't want them to go. If you are breastfeeding it will go into your milk.

You can make your own fermented veggies as a probiotic. You can also make yogurt out of coconut milk, or rice milk.
 
#7 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by Nolansmum View Post
Yes, kombucha is a detoxifier. If you have amalgams it will pull metals out of your tissues and if your body does not have it's detox going correctly the metals and other wastes will go where you don't want them to go. If you are breastfeeding it will go into your milk.

You can make your own fermented veggies as a probiotic. You can also make yogurt out of coconut milk, or rice milk.
How will I know if I'm detoxing correctly? Is there any way to do this the good way? Or should I just stay far away until not nursing?

I've tried making coconut yogurt--still trying to work out the kinks. It keeps smelling sulphury.


Hmm, maybe it's an amounts thing? I like the effervescence of kombucha, and the taste. Maybe I can get away with drinking a little bit (like 4oz) a day?

Ami
 
#8 ·
JTA Mom--this is my understanding of the situation. Kombucha does mobilize toxins, in everyone. The key is how heavy a burden of toxic load someone is carrying, and that's a lot trickier to figure out than you'd expect. In some people
we can go 20 years merrily on our downhill slide before it becomes obvious.

Amalgam fillings are a classic cause
of detoxification problems, but they don't affect everyone equally. Not everyone with amalgams will have problems like I have, or like my kids have (due to me, they don't have amalgams) but given how compromised my health was, I felt pretty normal for a long time. The downhill slide is usually slow, so the risk for a pregnant or breastfeeding mom is that she thinks she's typical, grabs a bottle of kombucha at Whole Foods and drinks it, and then has headaches, weird mood issues, maybe vomiting if it's really bad, _while_ pregnant or nursing, and now a huge amount of toxins are circulating and getting to the kiddo.

Detoxification is a balance between what is mobilized and what we can excrete. Kombucha mobilizes more than it excretes, but in a fairly healthy person, their innate detoxification pathways are reasonably functional and although their circulating toxins may well be higher for a while, they'll feel fine and their bodies will excrete whatever was mobilized and they'll end up healthier. In a very toxic person, a LOT is mobilized and their detox pathways are, by definition, deeply compromised due to the stresses that have been on their bodies building up for years. Things like headaches, body aches, nausea and maybe vomiting are some short-term symptoms of this, but longer term issues like mood problems or an increase in digestive problems are also possible.

As for figuring out whether it would benefit an individual, that takes some detective work. I personally don't think the risk is worth the benefit for any pregnant or nursing woman, but I have two kids who got too many toxins from me, and the work (and worry) to correct that situation is significant.

I don't think that just having amalgams is enough to say no kombucha ever. My poor ability to excrete heavy metals is not average, I am particularly poor. My husband, for example, is pretty darn good, and I'd say most people are somewhere in the middle.

After that, the more health issues a person has, the more uncertainties they have about what's going on with them, the more caution they should use. I've heard of people who were concerned starting with 1 tablespoon per day for several weeks, keeping a close eye on mood issues (creeping depression or anxiety, not wanting to leave home, stuff like that). But risk tolerance and having a few ideas in your toolbox in case you start feeling bad are factors here.

But clearly most of the folks in TF, for example, that just start the stuff, they feel fine drinking an entire bottle. It's just, IMO, that the spectrum of toxicity is so wide in our society, and yet the symptoms can be subtle. That's where the warnings come from.
 
#9 ·
In terms of food-based probiotics, we LOVE kimchee. We use the NT recipe without whey (no extra salt), it is SO YUMMY. Water kefir is another choice, I killed our grains and decided I wasn't up for the commitment again (not that the commitment is huge, my ability to care for them was just obviously not up to snuff).
 
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