Trend Alert: Ancient Fermented Beverage
The easiest way that I know to grow a tibicos SCOBY is with a Tibicos:In. The reason you want to grow your own tibicos SCOBY is because you want to drink your own living, concentrated, immune-supporting probiotics for a healthy gut microbiome. Probiotics are generally more effective for gut healing when they are living and abundant (in concentrations of more than 500,000,000 CFU/ml). Probiotic supplements are generally dehydrated and have much lower concentrations
I have been digging around in the free research on tibicos offered by the internet. Interest in water kefir has increased exponentially in the last two years. I am excited to be a part of sharing this ancient fermented beverage with others. I have a very lofty goal of getting my water kefir SCOBY into 20 million North American human gut biomes over the next two years. The gut microbiome is so interconnected to the brain, one of the most recent episodes (S19E05) of Grey's Anatomy is saying so. So 20 million healed guts could mean 20 million brains that are happier and healthier.
It feels surreal to be aware of this microbiome. Practically, it has healed my gut so effectively that I am now completely aware of what in my diet triggers my immune system to overreact. My most frequent immune system trigger is actually not food-based, but I did have inflammation responses to food which confused things for years when my gut was not healthy. I successfully fasted for 7 days in 2018 and came out of it less tolerant of lactose but that was about it. At the time, I was sleeping 16 of every 24 hours, consistently. I hoped the fasting would help me be awake more, but it did not really. And the only way to gain the positive effects from fasting was to keep fasting which is not feasible for me in the long term.
In 2020, I drank grape kombucha from the grocery store for the first time. In the first few sips, I knew that I needed to learn to make this beverage myself. This flavour of kombucha could start a habit for me that I could not afford at the grocery store prices. Before I could ferment my first batch of grape kombucha, I became very ill. I had a cascade of infections starting with a head cold, turned sinus infection, turned full body systemic candida albicans infection. The candida albicans took over my brain and I fought through the most aggressive brain fog of my life to remember how to have hope and find healing.
Between the new obsession with researching kombucha and the renewed obsession with researching how I could control the overgrowing candida albicans in my gut, my video player algorithm showed me videos of people making water kefir. I did not realize how different it would be from kombucha at the time. But then I read as much as I could to come to the conclusion that water kefir is a much more resilient microbiome, and more important for my gut microbiome, than that of kombucha. Kombucha has probiotics that generally focus more on an effective digestion process. Tibicos probiotics have the building blocks for the immune system cells that are built in the gut. Two microbiomes that both help gut health in very different ways. Mega-bonus points for tibicos SCOBY beyond the immunomodulant effects because its much higher resilience means a tibicos SCOBY can be more easily grow without issues in a kitchen that is not even clean at all.
You don't have to take my experience for evidence, you don't even have to spend the hours of reading I had to in 2020. A very comprehensive article from the June 2022 issue of Future Food (Volume 5): Water kefir, a fermented beverage containing probiotic microorganisms: From ancient and artisanal manufacture to industrialized and regulated commercialization summarizes basically everything that convinced me to try it. Here is a collage of recent journal articles exploring the many benefits to humans that tibicos SCOBY offers.
"Microorganisms found in water kefir have shown to be non-pathogenic . . . they are able to inhibit the growth of pathogenic microorganisms"
I do believe the few weeks of regular kombucha drinking prepared my body to more than enjoy the first batches of water kefir that I fermented. My body enjoyed it so much that I found myself wanting to drink it every day, all day long. I barely shared with others in the early months because I was using the classic water kefir 2-step fermentation and could not make enough volume for more than myself. After experimenting and simplifying the process, I have been able to make enough volume to share with others. That is how I learned that this living food is really at its best when the ability to grow it is shared with others. Grow your own living, concentrated probiotics. Heal your gut.
