| It's really important to make friends with beets as they are one of the best foods for the gallbladder. Beets are helpful in fat digestion, decongesting the gallbladder AND liver and thinning the bile. Not too shabby for a lowly root vegetable! The bile has several functions in the body. One is to break down the fat in the food we ingest. It is an emulsifier (detergent) that cuts through the fat like detergent cuts through grease, breaking it up into smaller molecules which the body can then distribute for other uses in the body. Bile also helps with the elimination of toxins from the liver. For example, if you breathe in exhaust fumes from a car or a plane, or if you breathe in dust, it goes down into your lungs where your blood picks it up and deposits it into the liver. The liver filters the toxins from the blood and dumps them in the bile for removal. The bile takes them into the intestines for elimination. If the bile gets thick like cream and/or begins to form sludge, and does not flow smoothly, this indicates that the fat metabolism is deficient. If someone is not metabolizing fats and eats a fatty meal, they will start to burp immediately. This is a symptom of gallbladder trouble. So it is important to keep the bile thin and beets are one of the best foods to do that. Every part of the plant is useful to the gallbladder. So don't throw out the greens! Steam them as you would Swiss chard or spinach, add a little lemon juice and salt and eat with other vegetables. They are good served with the beet roots or at a separate meal. Beets can be steamed, boiled, roasted with olive oil and rosemary. My favorite is partially boiled, partially steamed whole beets, in the skin. (Remember that most of the vitamins and minerals are found in the skin so you do not want to throw that out. Just be sure to buy organic.) Then I slice them and sprinkle fresh lemon juice and a little flax oil over them. Be advised that eating beets or drinking beet juice can be a little alarming if you've never eaten them before. Expect pink urine and dark red stools. This is, after all, the color of beets! Don't worry, it's normal. It is actually a good way to clock transit time of the bowel. If you note when you ate them, you can see how long it takes for the red stool to appear. What's normal? 18 hours is ideal, but everyone's body is different. Of course, if you are just can't stand beets, we have them concentrated in pill form for you. The whole plant is in there, root, stems and leaves.
Here's a different way you can use your beet tablets. Something not well known about beets is that they help in the conversion of fat to blood sugar which means they are a good food to eat with a fatty meal (which none of you are eating any more) and which also means they can help with hypogylcemia. Try this. Take 2 beet tablets mid morning and mid afternoon, when you would normally start thinking of a snack. Chew them, preferably. This can help to balance your blood sugar and help to ward off sugar cravings. It also helps to decongest the liver and gallbladder when taken on an empty stomach this way, rather than with a meal when it helps more with digesting.
And the beet goes on...
Debbie Graefer, L.Ac.
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