Hello Health Champions. I'm sure you've heard all kinds of amazing health claims about kombucha
and apple cider vinegar so in this video we're going to go over the truth level of some of
those health claims as well as the strengths and the weaknesses of each one first of all apple
cider vinegar is made from fermented apples and kombucha is made from fermented tea but
we need to understand that you can't really ferment tea you need to have a sugar source
and the source for apple cider vinegar is the sugar in the apple but for kombucha
we have to add some sugar it's usually just table sugar but it could be raw sugar or something
a little bit different but just a basic sugar source and then in the fermentation process when
we make vinegar we run that process to completion until there's no sugar left whereas in kombucha
we run a partial fermentation so there's going to be sugar remaining depending on how long we
run the process so obviously therefore in the end product the apple cider vinegar has
no sugar but the kombucha is going to have some sugar residue or even significant levels the
acetic acid is what makes apple cider vinegar what it is and it's typically at around five percent
it's standardized to that level and in kombucha it's gonna vary a lot so when i looked it up
they said that a typical kombucha has about one percent but then when i try to find that
on the product labels there was usually a whole lot less sometimes as little as 1/100th
of that level in there and there's been a fair amount of research on apple cider vinegar and what
they're researching then is not always apple cider vinegar sometimes it is but more often it's just
white vinegar so it's the acetic acid that gives the vinegar the properties that we're looking for
and it's been noticed to reduce blood glucose and a1c keeping all other factors constant it can help
reduce weight and belly fat it can help lower triglycerides and cholesterol so basically all
of the factors associated with insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome and they're not really sure
about the exact mechanisms but they have some ideas they know it improves insulin
sensitivity and signaling they know that there seems to be some improved satiety
with it and also that the liver is going to put out less glucose the liver is typically what
maintains glucose between meals and it can either do that by breaking down stored glycogen or it can
make glucose through gluconeogenesis but either way with apple cider vinegar there seems to be
a little bit less of that and finally acetic acid is a short chain fatty acid so you've
probably heard about MCT oils that MCT oils can give you some energy but it doesn't trigger
insulin or blood sugars it's like a fast energy and short chain fatty acids are even faster than
MCT's so that's one potential benefit that it gives you a little bit of energy and that might
also contribute to the satiety one more good thing is that these short chain fatty acids
also become food for your beneficial gut bacteria kombucha has also had some research done and
the main thing that they've been focusing on is anti-microbial they found that it has significant
activity against gram-positive bacteria and gram-negative bacteria
but we've also heard claims that it helps for yeast and candida and when they checked that out
it showed that it had no effect at all on candida they also wanted to find out if it was the acetic
acid or the t or something else in there so when they did the studies with tea alone even when
they went like super concentrated tea they found none of these effects at all so they concluded
that basically all the results that they found was from the acetic acid composition and in this study
they used a concentration of 33 grams per liter of total acids and we'll talk about what those are
and 7 grams per liter of acetic acid so they also recommended that if you were looking for these
benefits then you probably want to use a product around that kind of concentration but in kombucha
the acetic acid may not be the primary thing that we're looking for there are a lot of other things
in there the acetic acid is about five percent of the total acid but then there's glucuronic acid
at 65 percent of the total and that's been found to assist in liver detox and also this glucuronic
acid can help balance hormones sex hormones specifically like estrogen and testosterone
a third common substantial acid is gluconic acid at 30 percent and that has been shown to support
the growth of bifidobacteria which are some of the most beneficial of your gut bacteria but in
addition to supporting your gut bacteria kombucha actually contains some of these bacteria so it's
pretty high in probiotics bacillus coagulants as boulardii and lactobacillus can be pretty
significant so if you look at a label of one of the better products and better i say because it's
one of the larger brands they brew traditionally and they're brave enough to put some stuff on the
label that a lot of people don't have and when we check the total levels here we find 1 billion
and 4 billion and 4 billion so that's 9 billion organisms that's not as much as some of the
most potent probiotic products on the market they can have up to 50 or even 100 billion bacteria
but it is more than some of the more basic or cheaper probiotics on the market so it is
pretty substantial but we need to understand some of the issues around kombucha if we're trying to
get these benefits that we're looking for acetic acid like i said when i looked it up they said
that it should be around one percent which is 10 grams per liter when they did the study they had a
total of 33 grams of acid and the acetic acid was 7 grams per liter so their study was a little bit
less than what i read was typical but then when we add up from this label which again is one of
the better brands we find 100 plus 75 plus 1400 plus 650 as we multiply that out it's 4.7 grams
per liter which is about 1 7 the study they ran had seven times more total acid in their product
and when we look at the acetic acid specifically 75 milligrams in a bottle multiplies out to about
1 44 of the amount of acetic acid that they had in that study so if you're looking for
some of those benefits from acetic acid you would have to drink a whole lot in comparison
one third teaspoon of apple cider vinegar would give you that same amount of acetic acid but
there's some more issues we need to know about not because they're necessarily good or bad but so we
know what we're getting and the first one is sugar kombucha can have anywhere from 0 to 20 grams per
serving so that makes a big difference if you're trying to watch your sugar you start off with tea
and sugar when you make it and you add a SCOBY if you want to make it yourself then SCOBY stands for
symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast so it's both yeast and bacteria that's going to ferment
this sugar and the first thing we get is the yeast eats the sugar and turns it into alcohol and then
the bacteria of various kinds turns the alcohol into acetic acid and some of the other acids
that we talked about as well as more probiotics and another SCOBY that's kind of like a bonus
you start with a SCOBY you end up with two and you can use both of them again and a typical recipe
is going to have somewhere around a cup of sugar per gallon of tea that's about 60 grams of sugar
per liter and as we run the fermentation we're going to get less and less and less sugar so
most of the time they stop this process about halfway that would get us about 15 grams of sugar
per bottle and if you run it longer then you could get closer to zero but
there's some labeling issues also so sugar is a concern but oftentimes they try to tell you
that if it's total sugar if it's not added if it's just sort of happens to be in there for
whatever reason in the product when they start then it's good then it's a natural sugar whereas
if they add the sugar then it's white sugar and then it's bad and that's not really true because
99 sugar is sugar there's not really any difference your cells and your liver by the
time it's in the bloodstream they don't know the difference the fructose is still going to clog up
the liver and the glucose is still going to spike insulin and blood sugar but a lot of companies try
to be sneaky because they know people don't like added sugar so if they start off with a juice
instead if they mix the tea with apple juice or pineapple juice or kiwi juice now they don't have
to list it as added sugars because fruit juice counts as zero added sugar it still contributes
to total sugar so it makes no difference there but they're kind of tricking people to think that it's
way more natural and it's like that much more natural and it doesn't make a big difference
kombucha can also be done in a traditional way where you ferment it straight through according
to certain rules or it can be from concentrate and sometimes they put that on the label and sometimes
they don't one way you can know is if it's diluted if one of the ingredients on the label one of
the first ingredients maybe is carbonated water now you know that they made it from concentrate
and i'm not totally opposed to doing it from a concentrate as long as you preserve the bacteria
and the things you're trying to keep in there and as long as you sweeten it with something that you
can tolerate if you put regular sugar back in now you could be right back to these levels
or if you use something else that you may not tolerate so well maybe a sugar alcohol for example
and sugar alcohol could feed some of the bad bacteria in sensitive people and that would defeat
the purpose of taking kombucha with a probiotic in the first place and maybe most importantly
make sure it's not pasteurized because a lot of the benefit comes from the probiotics from the
bacteria if you pasteurize it you kill all of that off you might as well just drink sweet tea
and also in some cases they actually add the probiotics after the fact and again that's
not necessarily a bad thing but you have to ask yourself why do they do that if they run this
process traditionally and they let this culture thrive and develop there should be probiotics
in there so if they have to add it then maybe they messed with the process somewhere along the way
now let's look at some of the benefits and compare side by side and apple cider vinegar is best known
for its insulin resistance benefit so we get a big check there that's the acetic acid again kombucha
like we said at best it's going to have one-fifth but oftentimes much much much less acetic acid
than that so it's very questionable whether you're going to get much insulin resistance benefits
from kombucha when it comes to probiotics on the other hand it's kind of flip-flopped because
apple cider vinegar while it does have some bacteria they're mostly bacteria associated with
acetic acid not so much of the bacteria and also there's not very much of them not nearly as much
as in kombucha which again runs in the billions antibacterial the apple cider vinegar is because
of the acetic acid again the kombucha it's kind of questionable because of the very very low levels
digestive benefits they both have but probably for different reasons because we know
that the acetic acid with its lower pH can have some digestive benefits we know that both of them
support probiotics support the biome in different ways apple cider vinegar has the short chain fatty
acids that support the growth and kombucha has other acids that support the growth plus their
probiotics and so forth so they're both pretty beneficial for the digestive tract
and they also both through the studies have shown to have antioxidant benefits so i wouldn't look
on kombucha or apple cider vinegar as some magic pill that's going to solve all your
problems but i do think that both have benefit as an add-on if you start changing the other
things in your life as well if you start moving toward a healthy lifestyle they can add a little
bit of edge so if you like kombucha then do your research read the labels make sure that
you have something where they list the bacteria and the acids because again if they don't list it
then maybe there's nothing in there maybe their process isn't as particular as you want it to be
you can also call the company with some hard questions about is it from concentrate
what kind of bacteria are in there is it pasteurized make sure it's not pasteurized
or if you have the interest and the time i think it's always a good idea to make it
yourself because that way you control the process you know exactly what went in there the only thing
is it's a little time consuming but you will save tons of money so if you make it yourself i would
personal preference run it a little bit longer than than like the halfway point
and you can buy something called a bricks meter that will measure the sugar percentage
content and i would run it not to zero because then i think you lose some of the bacteria but
run it a good bit beyond the halfway mark and then you can dilute it with something that you
know what it is and if you like bubbles you can carbonate the water before you mix it and finally
you can sweeten it with something you know what it is like stevia or monk fruits that's not gonna
add a bunch of sugar if you enjoyed this video you're going to love that one and if you truly
want to master health by understanding how the body really works make sure you subscribe hit
that bell and turn on all the notifications so you never miss a life-saving video