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Posts by Sharon Spruell:

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My Homemade Yogurt

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Why I Switched to Homemade L. reuteri Yogurt (and Haven’t Purchased Store-Bought in Months)

A few months ago someone asked me why I bother making my own yogurt with L. reuteri instead of just grabbing a tub of store-bought yogurt to use as a starter. It was a fair question. I’d just started making yogurt for myself , so I’m no expert, but once I tried this particular strain and method, I stopped buying commercial yogurt entirely. Here’s the practical, real-world difference.

It’s Not the Same Kind of Bacteria

Most store-bought yogurt is made with *Streptococcus thermophilus* and *Lactobacillus bulgaricus*. These are excellent at turning milk into yogurt quickly (usually in 4–6 hours) and giving it a thick texture. They’re chosen for manufacturing speed and consistency. They are also mostly transient—they pass through your system without really colonizing the gut or producing many of the more interesting compounds.

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L. reuteri is different. The strain I use (20billion CFU LRDR™ strain in MyReuteri) is a human-adapted strain that can adhere better to the intestinal lining. It also produces reuterin, a broad-spectrum antimicrobial that helps suppress unwanted bacteria such as certain strains of E. coli, Salmonella, and others, while leaving beneficial microbes largely alone. Standard yogurt starter cultures don’t make reuterin. Some research also links specific L. reuteri strains to immune modulation (including support for regulatory T-cells) and effects on the gut-brain axis, including influences on GABA and oxytocin pathways. Those are not typical selling points of conventional yogurt cultures.

The Count and the Culture

A typical serving of commercial yogurt might deliver a few billion CFUs of those transient bacteria, and the numbers decline while it sits on the shelf. Because I ferment mine for 36 hours at a lower temperature with a pure prebiotic fiber (It’s Just), the initial 20 billion CFU dose multiplies dramatically. The result is a far higher density of live, active bacteria—orders of magnitude more than what’s in a standard tub.

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Just as important, this culture is robust enough to keep going. Commercial yogurt used as a starter often peters out after a couple of generations; the industrial strains weren’t selected for indefinite home propagation. Mine stays consistent batch after batch.

No Fillers, No Shortcuts

Store-bought yogurt frequently relies on pectin, starches, gelatin, or other thickeners because the fermentation is rushed. Many also contain added sugars or are formulated for long shelf life. Mine starts with organic half-and-half and pure prebiotic fiber. There are no thickeners, stabilizers, or preservatives. The texture and flavor come from the long fermentation itself.

How I Actually Make It

I heat about 1/4 cup of organic half-and-half  (use a full quart per batch) to about 99°F (roughly body temperature), then stir one MyReuteri powder capsule and 2 Tbs of It’s Just fiber into it until everything is fully dissolved. That warm slurry wakes the bacteria gently and prevents clumping. I add it back to the rest of the dairy (not necessary to heat it all) and ferment for 36 hours in my Ultimate® Yogurt Maker. Follow the instructions that came with your yogurt maker, whichever brand you use. The finished yogurt is consistently smooth, rich, and slightly tart—more like a luxurious cultured cream than a thin or grainy yogurt. It doesn’t separate when the temperature and cleanliness stay steady.

Ultimate Probiotic Yogurt Maker
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Support your local honey bees

I usually eat it plain. Occasionally I stir in Anthony’s organic fruit powders (I prefer Blueberry, Strawberry, and Lemon), a little local honey, Anthony’s Allulose, 100% pure maple syrup, and even a little pumpkin pie spice for the Fall. Those additions work well without needing the syrupy fruit-on-the-bottom style of commercial products.

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The Practical Takeaway

Store-bought yogurt is a convenient food. This is closer to a high-density, heirloom-style ferment I can keep going indefinitely. The bacterial strain, the fermentation time, the pure ingredients, and the ability to re-culture it all set it apart. That’s why I haven’t bought a tub of regular yogurt in months—and why, when someone asks, I can point to both the process and the results.

If you’re already making yogurt and curious about trying this approach, the combination of a high-potency L. reuteri starter and a pure prebiotic fiber is what makes the difference for me.

I’ve linked most of the products mentioned in this post (MyReuteri, It’s Just prebiotic fiber, and Allulose) to Amazon so you can easily find exactly what I use.

Prayer

The Way of Prayer

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Prayer, the Way I Learned It and the Way I’m Learning It Now

I grew up with a fairly traditional Christian picture of prayer. You asked for things. You thanked God for things. You confessed things. There was a sense of speaking upward, of presenting requests and waiting to see what would be given or withheld. A lot of it felt like conversation with someone outside the situation—someone who could intervene if the request was clear enough or faithful enough. I still recognize that shape. It was the one I was handed, and for a long time it was simply how prayer worked.

I was baptized into the New Church (Swedenborgian) on May 21, 2017 by the late Rev. Alfred Acton in Summerville, SC. However, I was not new to the New Church. I have been an avid reader of Swedenborg since 1983 when I lived in New Jersey and worked at the Princeton University bookstore. The New Church understanding I’ve been sitting with since that time treats prayer a bit differently. It isn’t mainly about persuading God to change circumstances or to supply what we lack. It’s more about opening ourselves so that what is already good and true can have more room to work within us. The emphasis shifts from asking for outcomes to asking for a change in our own loves and understanding—so that we become more willing to receive what is useful and more able to act from it. God isn’t pictured as deciding whether to grant a request; the picture is closer to divine life constantly present, and prayer as the means of turning toward it instead of away from it.

The difference sounds clean when I write it down. In practice the shift has been slower and less tidy. The older form still rises first when something is hard or when I want a particular result. I catch myself framing the prayer as a request for intervention, then having to pause and reframe it as a request for clearer sight or a less resistant heart. That pause doesn’t always feel natural. It can feel like I’m doing prayer wrong, or like I’m abandoning something that once felt straightforward and personal. At the same time, the older approach sometimes leaves me waiting for an answer that doesn’t arrive in the form I expected, and the waiting itself becomes another thing to manage.

What I’m noticing is that both versions are still available to me, and they don’t cancel each other out as neatly as the explanations suggest. The traditional way still carries the directness I grew up with—the sense that I can bring something specific and be heard. The New Church way keeps returning me to the question of what I’m actually willing to let change in myself while I wait. Neither one has fully replaced the other yet. Most days I’m somewhere in the middle, using the language I know and trying to point it toward the understanding I’m still learning. The prayer itself hasn’t gotten simpler. It’s just become more honest about the fact that I’m still in the process of changing how I listen.

The Lord’s Prayer

The Lord’s Prayer has become the place where those two understandings meet most clearly for me. It was the prayer I learned first, the one that still rises without effort. At the same time, it keeps pointing me toward the things the New Church writings emphasize—thy kingdom come, thy will be done, forgive us as we forgive, lead us not into temptation. Saying it slowly doesn’t feel like presenting a list of requests. It feels more like turning my attention toward what I’m actually willing to receive and what I’m willing to release. Of all the prayers I know, it is the one that most reliably opens my heart instead of simply filling the silence. I still don’t always stay in that openness once the words are finished, but the prayer itself keeps offering the doorway.

Our Father, who art in the heavens,
Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done
As in Heaven, so upon the Earth.
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our debts
As we also forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom,
And the power, and the glory
Forever and ever.
Amen.

Off the Wagon

On the Wagon

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Staying on the Wagon When Everything Else Is Off It

Most days I’m reminded how little of the world around me is set up for the way I’m trying to eat and live. The grocery store funnels me past the things I don’t buy. Restaurants still treat bread, sugar and seed oils as the normal choice — especially in this small southern town. Family dinners look the same as they always have. None of it is aimed at me personally. It just isn’t built with my version of eating in mind, and that gap shows up every time I have to navigate it. It gets “old”.

I keep coming back to a mostly keto / carnivore approach because it’s one of the few things that has actually moved the needle on the psoriasis and the psoriatic arthritis of which I’ve been suffering for nearly 20 years. When I stay with it, the inflammation quiets down. When I drift, it comes back. The connection is clear enough that I don’t really question the approach anymore. What I do question is how often I can stay close to it without turning every meal into a negotiation with the people around me.

I don’t want to be the person who makes dinner about their restrictions. So I usually take what’s closest, skip what I can, and try to keep the focus on being there instead of on what’s on my plate. That works until it doesn’t. A few bites that don’t fit, a restaurant meal that looked fine until it arrived, a holiday plate I didn’t want to refuse—none of them feel like much while they’re happening. The part that lasts longer is what comes after. The stiffness returns. The skin flares. And then it takes real time, sometimes weeks of being strict again, to get back to where I was. That lag is what makes the small choices feel heavier, and heavier, and heavier each and every time.

It also leaves the whole thing feeling so much lonelier than I first expected. The online groups are helpful for information and for knowing other people are dealing with the same constraints, but they don’t know me — my situation, my life. There’s really no one in my life who truly understands why certain foods matter more than others or who can sit at the table and just get it without an explanation, or a criticism about whether that is on my diet! Most of the real support I receive stays on a screen, and a screen doesn’t share the struggle.

I still choose this way of eating because the alternative has its own clear costs. What I’m still figuring out is how to stay close enough to it that my body notices the difference, while staying flexible enough that I can keep showing up for the rest of my life. Some days that balance is easy. Other days it isn’t. The hard part isn’t the food itself. It’s how rarely the world around me makes the easier choice the one that also helps me survive.

distractions

Paying Attention

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What Paying Attention Looks Like When Everything Is Designed to Interrupt It

I keep noticing how much of my day is spent negotiating with things that want a piece of my attention. Not in a dramatic way. More like a low, constant negotiation I only fully register when I step outside it for a minute.

A notification lights up. I don’t open it, but I still feel the pull. An article title sits half-read in a tab. A thought starts to form, then gets interrupted by the next thing that needs a response. None of it feels urgent in the moment. It just feels normal. That’s the part that stands out to me—how ordinary the interruption has become.

Paying attention used to feel more like a default. Now it feels like something I have to deliberately choose, and even then it’s partial. I can sit with one thing, but part of me is already tracking what else might be waiting. The longer I stay with something, the more noticeable the background noise becomes. Not loud. Just present.

What’s interesting is how quickly my mind adapts. After a while, the constant low-level interruption stops registering as interruption. It just becomes the texture of the day. I only notice the difference when something pulls me into a longer stretch of focus—reading something that doesn’t let me skim, working on a problem that actually requires me to stay with it, or sitting outside long enough while my phone stays in the house. Those moments still feel different. Quieter. More continuous.

I don’t have a clean conclusion about it. I’m not sure the goal is to eliminate every interruption or return to some earlier version of attention. What I keep coming back to is how much of the design around us assumes we’ll give our attention away in small pieces, and how rarely it asks us to stay with anything for long. When I do manage to stay, even briefly, it still feels like a small recovery of something. Not dramatic. Just noticeably different from the default.

That’s mostly what I’ve been paying attention to lately—the difference itself.

I’ve also been paying closer attention to the moments when focus actually returns, and what helps it happen. It doesn’t usually come from trying harder. It comes from making the interruptions slightly less automatic. Putting the phone in another room instead of just silencing it creates enough friction that I don’t reach for it without thinking. Giving myself a clear endpoint before I start—finish this chapter, work for the next forty minutes, then check messages—makes it easier to stay with one thing instead of drifting. And sometimes it’s as simple as noticing the exact second the pull shows up and choosing not to follow it for a few more minutes, just long enough to finish the thought I was already in.

None of these erase the background noise. They just make it a little more possible to stay continuous with one thing for longer than the default setting allows. And when it works, even for a short stretch, the difference is still noticeable. Quieter. More intact. That’s the part I keep coming back to.