Apple Cider Vinegar is made with crushed apple juice, fermented with yeast which digests the sugars in the apples and then converts them into alcohol. Did you get that? OK, stick with me. A bacteria, acetobacter, then turns the alcohol through fermentation into acetic acid which results in vinegar and the production of a probiotic. Still there? The probiotics, acetic acid, the B-vitamins (from the apples) and the nutrients make Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV) - a unicorn of the wellness world.
Now we know how it’s made, and what’s inside it, we can figure out how it helps our insides.
Immune system
70% of our immune system lives in our gut. We need to keep it fed with healthy probiotics to stay in tip-top form. Popping Apple Cider Vinegar capsules may help kill bacteria in the stomach and intestines, it’s an antimicrobial substance and one study found that it was effective at killing E-coli and Staphylococcus aureus (the bacteria responsible for nasty staph infections).
Bloating
There are lots of different reasons why your stomach may be bloating. As we get older our stomach produces less digestive acids, and some people may just naturally have a low stomach acid production. The acetic acid in Apple Cider Vinegar may help with the digestion of protein-rich food and raise stomach acid levels, which would decrease bloating which a slow digestion can cause. However more studies need to be done to back this theory up.
Weight loss
We’ve always believed in ACV as a weight loss supporter, along with a healthy diet and exercise. And finally, there’s a study that backs up what we’ve always known! Just saying….ACV might help with weight loss.
Find out more here, but in a nutshell participants in the study drank 15ml of ACV with lunch and dinner, and ate 250 calories less than they normally would. Over a 12-week period they lost 4 kilos. The control group, who did not take ACV lost 2 kilos. And those who took ACV showed a decrease in cholesterol levels.
Reflux
Indigestion and reflux is often caused by a change in digestion and often it’s due to not having enough stomach acid. Supporting the stomach acid with the acid from ACV may seem like an unusual remedy but it seems to work, but again there needs to be more scientific research to back this up.
This ancient home remedy is packed with proteins, enzymes, probiotics and healthy acids. Here at Tonik, we know it makes us feel good and isn’t that what it’s all about?
