Can Fermented Vegetables Help with COVID-19?

I've been watching and waiting for months to post this article. In my own personal experience and those individuals I help through my website, we have all seen tremendous help and healing from eating fermented vegetables and especially when dealing with any kind of virus. I knew fermented vegetables had certain strains of bacteria that could often prevent or help when dealing with a virus, but COVID-19 was a new virus and it's hard to make a claim without research.

Dr. Jean Bousquet, professor of pulmonary medicine at Montpellier University in France and chair of The Global Alliance Against Chronic Respiratory Diseases, and his team studied a link between countries that consumed a lot of fermented krauts (such as South Korea and Germany) and saw they had lower death rates and cases.^[1] “Little attention has been given to the spread and severity of the virus, and regional differences in diet, but diet changes may be of great benefit,” said Dr. Jean Bousquet, advising people to include fermented vegetables in their breakfast.

“If the hypothesis is proved, COVID-19 will be the first infectious disease epidemic whose biological mechanisms are proved to be associated with a loss of nature. When modern life led to eating reduced amounts of fermented foods, the microbiome drastically changed, and this may have facilitated SARS-CoV-2 to spread or to be more severe,” writes the team.^[2]

How COVID-19 Enters The Body

The study, published in the journal Clinical and Translational Allergy,^[3] found that fermented cabbage helps decrease levels of ACE2 which is key to the virus replicating and finding entry into the body. ACE2, which stands for angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, is a protein that sits on the surface of many types of cells in the human body including the heart, gut, lungs, and inside the nose. This protein adheres to cells located on the surface of the lungs and begins to form pockets or little openings, in the organ. This is used by COVID-19 as an entry point into the body. SARS-CoV-2 (Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 - the official name of the virus) with its spiky exterior, does have the ability to unlock the ACE2 receptor and gain entry into the lungs. This is how the virus begins - by invading the lungs and making copies of itself.

Fermented Foods and ACE2

The exciting news is consuming probiotic fermented cabbage brings down the number of ACE2, making it much more difficult for the virus to enter the body.^[4] It's amazing how protective it can be, but only raw fermented cabbage has this effect. Sauerkraut that is canned and heated lacks the probiotic power that you need to keep this at bay.

As the virus spread, many high-risk groups started to surface. People with heart conditions, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity were the ones that seemed to be greatly affected. Many people in these groups take medications that are known to boost ACE2^[5] expression. So again, scientists wondered, could that protein be responsible? The research is still ongoing and there is no easy answer but they did find that fermented foods were helping many people around the world.

Kefir Helps Too!

Countries such as Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania have very low death rates due to the virus. These countries all consume fermented milk and fermented cabbage. Fermented milk such as kefir is also known as a natural ACE inhibitor^[6],[7]. Turkey, another apparently low-death rate country, also consumes a lot of cabbage and fermented milk products.

Cultured Vegetables Most Important

The researchers gathered data and found that, everything considered, only fermented vegetables had a significant impact on the mortality rate by country. Interestingly, for each gram per day of consumption of fermented vegetables, the risk for COVID-19 mortality fell by 35.4%. Check out the graphs on this link to see the impact.

Geographical Mortality

The first time I heard about the power of the cultured vegetable kimchi was during the bird flu epidemic. It was a scary epidemic that hit Asia in 2005 - about 60% of those infected with this virus died. Scientists were searching frantically for ways to protect humans and poultry from this deadly virus.

Koreans have eaten kimchi for thousands of years and believed in the powerful medicinal effects of kimchi. Microbiologist Kang Sa Ouk thought he had found a way to battle against the bird flu virus with kimchi. Dr. Kang used the special bacteria extracted from kimchi to treat chickens with the bird influenza.^[8] They gave thirteen chickens kimchi and eleven of the thirteen chickens made a full recovery; those in a control group who were not treated with kimchi died. Kimchi was credited with protecting South Korea from the bird flu since most Koreans eat seventy pounds of kimchi a year. Neighboring countries that don't consume kimchi, like China and Japan, were not so fortunate. They had many cases of bird flu while South Korea had no confirmed cases. It was this bird flu story that really convinced me to try the cultured vegetables I had previously made a week earlier. It was my first batch of cultured vegetables, and I had been stricken with food poisoning from a batch of artichoke dip. I was desperate to feel better. Laying in bed, sick as can be, I was thinking about this story. I then dragged myself to the kitchen, grabbed my cultured vegetables, and swigged a drink from the jar. Later that day I felt like a new woman and was convinced of the power of these cultured vegetables, and the rest is history. I eat them every day.

Kimchi and all cultured vegetables have been studied and proven to have many healing properties. The Journal of Medicinal Food has credited kimchi with the following benefits:^[9]

With 200 strains of good bacteria, these are powerful foods that can make a huge difference in helping you stay healthy.