Sharon Brown: [00:04:47] Thanks for having me. It’s my pleasure.

Sharon Brown: [00:05:03] Sure. So, you know, bone broth has been used for thousands of years by cultures all over the world. Unfortunately, it’s not something that I was aware of growing up or, you know, the first few years of my children’s lives. And my story really goes back about 12 years ago. And that’s when my second son, my middle son, he was about 6 years old. He had suffered from chronic sinus infections and ear infections and respiratory infections. And he was told we were told when he was in first grade that we should put him on Ritalin for signs of A.D.D. And I knew that we needed to do something different for this little guy. And I came across this concept of healing through food, particularly bone broth. It was a concept from Weston A Price their foundation. And the idea was that bone broth had an appealing effect on the gut. And I didn’t have anything to lose back then. And so I decided that I was going to start incorporating bone broth and really a whole food diet approach to healing Blake and all of his symptoms.

Sharon Brown: [00:06:11] And so we started incorporating bone broth into his diet about 12 years ago. And within a year’s time we had healed him of all of his ailments that he had suffered from. From the time he was six months old, using food and bone broth. And that prompted me to go back to school, get several degrees in nutrition. Then I opened a practice, nutrition practice in Del Mar, California. And I worked with thousands of people all across the country teaching them to heal through food. And the mainstay of my program was bone broth. And my biggest challenge at that time was getting people to make their own bone broth. And that’s how we started our company, bona fide provisions. So that’s really how bone broth came into my life and how we became a company that distributes it all throughout the nation in the frozen section.

Sharon Brown: [00:07:28] So, I mean, I think the one thing about my son, Blake, was that, you know, he was chronically ill. And so when we started incorporating bone broth into his diet, initially, he would just drink it by the cup and he was drinking copious amounts. You know, I’m talking 48 ounces a day, probably. And what happened after about two weeks as a little, you know, six and a half year old, seven year old is he got tired of drinking the bone broth. And so I had to just get really creative. And so I just started slipping it into everything that I made for him. So from the time he woke up until the time we went to bed, I was slipping bone broth into everything from sautéing eggs in the morning to the liquid in place of that. I use it in place of the liquid that was in pancakes or waffles that I was making him in place of the liquid for Quinoa or rice with sautéed vegetables, braised meats. And so for him, it was, you know, a huge amount of bone broth for because he was chronically ill for the average person, you know, six to eight ounces is really perfect.

Sharon Brown: [00:08:49] Well, thank you. Yeah. I mean, really, that was the idea, when we started making bone broth. It was for my clients and really it was for my patients that were either too sick or just couldn’t make their own bone broth because it really is a laborious process. And the idea was, well, if we can get this liquid gold into their wellness program, I knew that we would be able to get them well. And the problem is that there wasn’t a bone broth on the market that met my standards. The box bros just were not going to cut it for people who were really chronically ill. And so we decided to make a bone broth. It was just like the bone broth that you make it home. And then we froze it. You know, we freeze it just like you do when you make a big batch at home. And that’s why our bone broth gels. And, you know, our ethos of our brand is that if you can’t really read an ingredient that’s in there or it’s not an ingredient that you would use in your kitchen, you’re not going to find it in our product. So things like guar gum, carrageenan, citric acid, none of those funky things are ever going to be in any of the food products that Bonafide Provision makes.

Sharon Brown: [00:10:20] Yes. So unfortunately, with bone broth, there isn’t a regulation. So there’s no regulation as to what you can call bone broth. And so when you see the box broths on the shelf, when you pull those boxed broths off the shelf, oftentimes you’ll see that the first ingredient may be bones. But then they do things and they add things like fillers, like there is one brand that has a chicken bone broth. It’s actually says chicken bone broth on the front. You turn it around and it says, you know, bone broth on the back. But the second ingredient is vegetable broth. And the reason that they do that is because it’s very expensive to make bone broth that’s just made with the bones. And so what they’re doing is they’re diluting it and they’re calling it bone broth. The other thing that you’re going to see on the shelf with the bone broth are it’ll turn it around and it’ll say chicken flavoring and water. So there aren’t any bones being used at all.

Sharon Brown: [00:11:13] And for me, it’s a nutritionist that really is heartbreaking because I know that many people have been turned onto bone broth because of the benefits behind it and they’re being fooled. And so we decided that we were going to when we made our bone broth, we’re going to make it just like you do at home. And we’re going to freeze it, because when you freeze it, if you think about freezing it really as mother’s mother, nature’s preservative, you don’t have to add anything to that broth like citric acid or put it in a box, you a box and feed it and cook it inside that box to be able to make it shelf stable. We decided to do it just like you do at home. And so that’s really the heart behind our brand. It’s really why the ingredients are so clean. Because it was all started for people who had compromised health issues.

Sharon Brown: [00:12:15] That’s a really great question. Why? Bone broth and why is it good for our health and when does it actually doing? You know, 12 years ago, when I started to utilize this for my son, my husband and I, we didn’t know why there was you know, there was this innate thought that, oh, OK, chicken soup is good for you, you know. But we really didn’t understand the science behind bone broth. And now we do because of lab tests and because of the science behind bone growth. We just have so much more information now. So what happens when you take bones and an animal and you cook them for long periods of time and you add apple cider vinegar? The apple cider vinegar acts like a key later and it pulls all the minerals, the nutrients, the collagen in the amino acids from the bones and dumps it into the broth. And that’s what we refer to as bone broth or liquid gold. Specifically, the most important components of the bone broth is a college and it is the most bio available source of college in meaning it’s most likely your body’s collagen. And so your body instantly recognizes the collagen in bone broth as the food source and it takes it quite quickly.

Sharon Brown: [00:13:28] The second thing that bone broth does is it has amino acids and amino acids are key for the lining of your gut. Now we know that up to 70 percent of your immune system resides in your gut. We also know that now it’s thought that almost eighty five percent of those cells reside in your gut. And the cells that line your gut, the gut that is kind of making sure that everything stays within that gut lining that isn’t getting outside into the bloodstream. The cells that line that gut, their favorite fuel source is called el glutamine. And bone broth is very high in el glutamine. And when those cells come in contact with El glutamine, they actually respond by spitting out a little bit of mucus. And what happens is that mucus can act like a sowing needle or a spackle around our gut lining to make sure that it’s sealed. And so that’s the science behind bone broth. And it’s really less about, you know, the idea of bone broth and more about the components and the nutritional value that’s in the broth itself.

Sharon Brown: [00:15:16] Sure. It’s interesting because there’s so many of us practitioners who were really practicing ketosis in our nutrition practices for years before keto became a trend. And really, keto is just ketosis with, you know, it’s the abbreviated version of ketosis. And the idea of ketosis is when, you know, most Americans who are on or really anybody who is on a standard American diet, we fuel this body called our machine by utilizing carbohydrates. And because we are very carbohydrate ladened society and we’ve you know, we’ve been told for so many years that that old food pyramid that the mainstay of our programs should be carbohydrates. And so when you go into a state of ketosis, you really just flip that pyramid around upside down. And what you’re doing is your fuel source is actually from fat rather than carbohydrate. So waking up in the morning instead of getting your energy from the carbohydrates, you’re waking up in the morning and your fuel source is fat. And the way that you do that is you decrease the amount of carbohydrates that you take in. It’s a program that is we used for years with the Gaps program.

Sharon Brown: [00:16:36] The Gaps program was a program that was created by Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride, who healed her son of autism. And it’s a program that helps put your body into a state of ketosis initially so that you can start being that fat burning machine and you get all of those healthy fats to your brain. And so ketosis is something that we love to do. We love to utilize. We’ve used in my practice for years. And, you know, my caution to everyone is work with a practitioner because it’s you want to work with somebody that can walk you through it. You know, you won’t feel well in the beginning stages of going into ketosis. And so you want to be able to work with the practitioner that can help you through the first couple of weeks, because then it can it can be rough.

Sharon Brown: [00:17:36] I agree. I agree. I think that there’s you know, I think a lot of us try to self help and self heal using Internet. And I think that if you can get it. It’s great to get all the information right. I mean, if we had the information back 12, 13 years ago, you know, 20 years ago, my middle son is 20. It’s going to be 21 years old next month. Had I had the information that’s out on the Internet with podcasts and all of the wellness sites, I would have never had him in a place when he was a year and are six years old. But try to work with a practitioner because you can cut a lot of your downtime and you can cut out a lot of your mistakes by working with somebody that can help you.

Sharon Brown: [00:18:52] So I am somebody who really limits grains. I’m not a big supporter of consuming grains. And the reason is, is because our body, we can completely function for the rest of our lives without grains. They don’t provide a ton of nutritional source. And when we think about our food programs, you know, there’s this whole idea of like clean eating, dirty eating, food that’s good for me, food that’s bad for me. And and this diet culture idea. What I really like to encourage people to do is eat the way that we did a hundred years ago on a farm when we were free of many of the modern diseases of today and know that, you know, when we ate grains, it was a very laborious process to harvest those grains, soak those grains, ferment those grains into making any type of product that we consumed 100 years ago. And so I really like to tell people to, you know, the mainstay of your food should be high quality proteins, vegetables and fruits. And you rotate them all the time and seasonally. And when you do that, I have found that those tend to be the most healthy individuals that I worked with with the least amount of disease.

Sharon Brown: [00:20:40] Yes, you’re right. Absolutely. I mean, I you know, I’m I’m going to be fifty four in June. And I grew up that was what we know. We had a bowl of cereal in the morning. We had, you know, a piece of meat and cheese in between two pieces of bread. And for dinner we had spaghetti. And so we were so, you know, carb bloated, carbo-holics. And if you think about what those carbs are doing for your body, it’s providing such a my new amount of nutrition that the companies actually have to add the vitamins into those products to make them nutrient dense. And we have to kind of scratch our heads and go, wow, you know, I don’t think that that’s the way it is supposed to be for this machine. You know, Mother Nature provided the most amazing foods to fuel what we call our body. And it comes from nature. It doesn’t come from big factories with ingredients that you can’t either pronounce or even read.

Sharon Brown: [00:21:51] Wow.You look so nice.

Sharon Brown: [00:22:04] Thank you. And, you know, I think it’s really also just about feeling good, you know? So I have three children. I have one who’s twenty five, twenty one. And then my daughter, who’s 18. And the great thing is, is that when you start them young enough, you will have some that go through their picky stages, but you will find that this becomes their lifestyle as well. They really do start to incorporate the things that you teach them at home. I have tube ways, the one who’s doing a graduate program. I have another one off at college all home right now because we’re we’re self isolating. But these boys are foodies. They cook their own food. They show up in natural grocery stores. And they understand that, you know, you really can feel great when you wake up in the morning and it’s all dependent on your foods that you eat.

Sharon Brown: [00:22:54] There’s this amazing connection between the gut and the brain. And I think oftentimes we realize or we don’t realize that this connection has everything to do with the way that not only we feel physically, but how we feel emotionally. You know, most of our serotonin and our dopamine are made in our gut. We can not make the amount of serotonin and dopamine that we need, which is our happy hormones, the hormones that make us feel great and feel like we look great. Right, if we aren’t eating the proper foods that are going to nourish our gut. And so we really do need to start thinking about the foods that we eat and how they’re going to affect not only the way that we look, but the way that we feel and our outlook on life.

Sharon Brown: [00:24:00] Absolutely. I think one thing that most people don’t know is that when you are in utero and you’re being formed in your mother’s womb, there’s a piece of tissue and that tissue breaks apart and one becomes the gut and the other becomes the brain. And the tissue is always connected. It’s connected via something called your enteric nervous system. And there was actually a vagus nerve that goes from the from the brain to the gut. And they’re like Siamese twins and whatever you think is affecting your gut. That’s why when you have to go up on stage or you give a speech, you get butterflies and transfer. Firstly, whatever goes in your gut affects your brain. And so it’s so important for us to understand that, you know, emotions we can, you know, just feel better. Depression, anxiety oftentimes can be helped by the food choices that you are putting into your body. That’s not to say there isn’t a time for medication. That’s not to say that medication can’t be useful in many cases. But there is this whole idea behind that gut brain connection. That’s. Very, very powerful. And you know, it’s why Hippocrates, the father of medicine said that all disease begins in the gut and that disease means physiological disease. And it also means mental disease.

Sharon Brown: [00:25:35] Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, we kind of touched on this a little bit, but there’s a couple of things. First is the grains. Grains are very difficult to digest, at least the grains of today, the grains that are on our grocery store shelves. The next thing that can be hidden that most people don’t realize is citric acid. And if you look at the citric acid that lines to our grocery store shelves, most people think that citric acid comes from this beautiful orange. Right. When in fact, it doesn’t. The citric acid of the day. And over 90 percent of the citric acid that’s in all of the grocery store products that line the dry shelves comes from GMO molded corn. And it is a known allergen. And that allergen can create havoc for people who are sensitive. And so there is citric acid and so many things. And so my cautionary tale to everybody is to read your labels. Try to stay away from citric acid if you’re having health issues. You may not be able to because it’s everywhere. But you the more you become aware of it, the more likely you are to shop for brands that don’t have it. And then finally, I think that, you know, it’s really just the fast foods of today. It’s OK to have these things once in a while.

Sharon Brown: [00:27:02] But we really do need to be mindful of the fast foods that we’re eating because of the oils that are used. Most restaurants, even fine dining restaurants, use some form of canola oil. And canola oil keeps your body in a state of inflammation. And when your body’s in the state of inflammation, you cannot heal.

Sharon Brown: [00:27:46] It is a big one. And you know, I tell everybody everything in moderation. Right. The 90 10 rule that I do. The ninety five rule just because I feel better. You know, this isn’t anything where I feel that my diet is dictating me. I just really appreciate good food because of the way it makes me feel. You know, when I come home from being on vacation, when we wake up and we start our day with who knows what. You know, way too many things that I’m not used to eating. I come home and I just need to get back to my eating plan. And it’s something that I just love doing because of the way that it makes me feel. And so, you know, it’s okay to eat out once in a while. It’s OK to eat out once a week, but you’ll start to notice how those foods make you feel. And a lot of times it is because of the oils that they’re using.

Sharon Brown: [00:29:11] Absolutely. I mean, I love what you say that healthy eating is something that we love to do rather than what we have to do. And it is a form of self-care. You know, it is a form of self-care because of how you feel. And if somebody can get themselves clean enough. Right. If they can do a clean eating program for six to eight weeks and then they add these foods back in, that may have been causing any issues for them. They will be able to experience the effect that we are talking about, how food affects your mood, how food affects your joints. You know, when you get to be my age, 54 years old, food affects your joints greatly. And so it really is this idea of just embracing this this clean eating because you want to and because it makes you just feel great.

Sharon Brown: [00:30:26] It’s so true. You have to become an ingredient reader. But beyond that now, and fortunately, the companies have become so tricky. You really do have to do a little bit of research for products that you’re consuming often. So I talked about bone broth and how many of the box broths aren’t really bone broth. Kombucha. You know, some of the kombucha is out on the market today are not made from the Scoby mushroom that are traditional. Kombucha is made from there, actually made from powders. They start with a powder and they become effort after ESTN and they they become bubbly because of things that they’re adding into that can boost check. And so you need to really become a label reader and you just want to stay away from things that you wouldn’t have in your kitchen. So guar gums and carrageenans, in any of the gums that you’re seeing, those are thickeners and those are ingredients that will make products creamier. But you don’t need them in your diet and you will be able to find right next to that product with all of the guar gums and carrageenans in a product that’s free of it. So support those brands that are doing the right thing and bringing ingredients to your family in your home, that that makes sense. And our ingredients that are real ingredients that you would find on, you know, on your kitchen table and in your homes.

Sharon Brown: [00:32:12] Yeah. So, you know, when you think about got healthy, you really have to think about it as building your house. If all of any of us had inherited as much money as we can imagine and we were gonna buy our own house, our own land and we were gonna build a house, we’d have to set the foundation of that house. And that foundation is key for that. How withstanding anything that comes its way, the foundation of the house is the mainstay of that house. The gut is the same thing with any approach to wellness. When I worked with people and as I said, I worked with thousands of people all across the country. When I had my nutrition practice, I had a four month waitlist to work with me. And I shared that with you not because of, you know, the accolades that come with that. It was really just more about the program worth and & program was all about health. We always started with health.

Sharon Brown: [00:33:16] So if you came to me and you were having any issues with your skin, I would tell you that your skin was just a reflection of what was going on inside of your body. And it was a mirror of what was going on in your gut. And if you healed the gut, you heal the skin. And if you came to me and you were 90 years old and you were suffering from arthritis, we would heal the gut. And oftentimes we can get many of those symptoms eliminated or at least under control. And that really went across the board, regardless of what you came to me for. So anxiety, depression, dyspraxia, dyslexia, any type of issue. Right. So Crohn’s disease, colitis, diverticulitis, celiac disease, everything that we did, we started with the gut, because I found that when you healed the gut and you supported the gut, you were able to move the needle so far then just talking about, say, your autoimmune issue and your thyroid. If somebody came to me with an autoimmune issue, thyroid or hormone issues, I’d say, great, we’re gonna do everything in layers.

Sharon Brown: [00:34:27] But the first part of the layer that we’re gonna do is your gut. And then oftentimes the other things will resolve themselves. And so the things that we use for the gut was we would eliminate all grains for six to eight weeks, copious amounts of bone broth. We would do fermented vegetables in very small quantities initially and lots of vegetables and proteins that are rotated and cooked well for the first three weeks of the program. And then we would incorporate fruits into the program about four weeks. And when we did this, we just found that we would have enormous success with whatever people we’re dealing with on their health journey and it’s this really this idea goes back to eating the way that we did on a farm 100 years ago. I know I sound like a broken record, but just like a mom who told you to clean up your room. Sometimes you need to hear things over and over to reap the benefits. And really, that was what we did in my practice. And that’s what I do to heal my own son, who’s now gonna be twenty one years old. He’s never been back to the doctors since he was six years old. He hasn’t been on any medication since he was six years old. And we reversed all of his symptoms, which was chronic sinus infections, ear infections, respiratory infections. He had skin issues. He was on albuterol. He was on steroids for breathing treatments. He was also being told that we needed to put him on Ritalin. So what I did was I ignored all of those. And I started with his gut and we were able to heal him.

Sharon Brown: [00:36:29] Well, absolutely do all of the steps that I just talked about, those are key steps in supporting the gut. And you just really need to start your probiotics slowly. If you’ve been on several rounds of antibiotics, because you can have something that is referred to as it’s not a very nice word, but it’s called die-off and it’s the Herxheimer effect. And basically you will start to feel worse before you start to feel better.

Sharon Brown: [00:36:55] And so if you’ve been on a lot of rounds of antibiotics, you want to start really slowly and sometimes with the more severe clients, you would have to take a probiotic. Open up the capsule and break it into fourths or sixths and and consume that little tiny amount daily. Because you have had you know, you’ve reached such havoc on your gut. And so eventually you want to get it up to, you know, a larger dosage of the probiotics. It’s starting slow and then you’re in it for the long haul. You know, you need to repopulate all of that good gut flora and that microbiome that you talked about. It’s a very, very delicate and sensitive system that we don’t really understand fully. And so what you want to do is you want to be able to stay on these probiotics and rotate the different state strains for a couple of years.

Sharon Brown: [00:38:04] Yes, but there’s hope. And I think that a lot of times people feel very defeated. I know that I felt defeated the first time I started to read about healing through food when my son was six years old. You know, I wanted to crawl into bed with the covers over my head and cry because I thought, oh, my gosh, I’ve been doing everything wrong with this child. And, you know, and then I just rallied and I realized that it was going to take a while and we were going to do baby steps and we were going to stick with the program. And then we started to see the fruits of our labor. And and it worked.

Sharon Brown: [00:38:55] Our body is resilient. And that is a great thought to remember. You know, you don’t have to think about what you ate or what you did yesterday. Today is a new day and you really can start supporting your health and your gut now. And baby steps. Take baby steps. Don’t be hard on yourself and just start incorporating the things that we talked about. And you’ll find eventually, you know, in three months time that you’ve completely revamped the way that you eat and you’ll start to reap the benefits of that.

Sharon Brown: [00:39:40] That’s a great question. I love that. You know what I like to do and I think everybody is a little bit different. And I think we get so rushed in our days. And we all have been told about self-care. And I am that, you know, the biggest, I guess, hypocrite when it comes to this, because I talk about self-care and then I forget to do it. And one of the things that I have found that’s really helpful is I pray throughout the day. So whether you are a person who meditates or prays. What I have started to do as I start to set my alarm clock on my phone and I’ll set it every three hours. And what I’ll do is I’ll just take I’ll receive the alarm on my phone. And once the alarm goes off, I’ll take about two minutes just to center myself, pray for where I am and what I’m trying to accomplish. You can do the same thing if you’re a meditator. But just to take a minute, to take a breath throughout our day. We won’t self remind you we need that timer. But I have found that when I do that, I become so much more productive. And I also just feel a sense of relief that, you know, it’s all gonna be okay. We don’t have to take this all too serious. And it gives me a kind of a boost of energy to keep going.

Sharon Brown: [00:41:12] Great. Thank you so much for having me. And proud of all of you on your wellness journey. You can do it.