Toni Sicola, 32, is a California-based holistic health and wellness coach who chronicles her experiences on her “Cultivated Wellbeing” blog. She used to suffer from stomach cramps, bloating after eating, and intermittent constipation and diarrhea—symptoms consistent with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). 

At the suggestion of her naturopathic doctor, she tried a gluten-free and dairy-free diet and experienced a sharp reduction in stomach pain and gas. She credits adding homemade bone broth to her regular diet for allowing her to consume dairy products again.

“Bone broth contains collagen and gelatin that rebuilds the tissue in your intestinal walls and keeps food in your intestines and out of the bloodstream. I can eat ice cream now with no consequences. It used to cause me to double over in pain,” she says. 

Osteopathic Joseph Mercola, MD, author of The No-Grain Diet, calls bone broth “the staple of a gut healing diet.” If you have any kind of autoimmune disease, allergies, asthma, autism, attention deficit disorder (ADD), eczema, psychological disorders, or other signs of gut dysbiosis, IBS, Crohn's, or colitis, you start off with bone broth,” he writes. “Not only is it very easily digested, it also contains profound immune-optimizing components that are foundational building blocks for the treatment of autoimmune diseases.”