Fresh back from the Look After You Summer Solstice Juice Retreat.  I always make myself a fresh vegetable juice most mornings – it’s a very energising way to start the day.  Recently I have been using cabbage in my juice to a greater degree.  Brickyard Organic Farm at Badsworth grows the most amazing range of delicious, crunchy cabbage.  A wide range of choice is available: Savoy, spring, red and many other varieties.

Cabbage has a reputation for aiding good digestion, in fact as long ago as 1949 a study by an American scientist Garnett Cheney MD of San Francisco hailed cabbage juice as a rapid healer of peptic ulcers………..in fact the average ‘crater’ healing time of the 13 patients in the study who had duodenal ulcers was just 10.4 days!  This compared to 62 patients treated with standard therapy whose average healing time was 37 days.  Vitamin U in cabbage promotes ulcer healing – it also assists acid reflux, colitis and gastritis.  Vitamin U is not really a vitamin but is the enzyme Methylmethionine, which was discovered by Cheney.

Vitamin U also has a reputation for being healing for skin ulcers, curing haemorrhoids, helping diabetes and also supporting the body’s detoxification processes. Moreover, it enhances immunity and has also been found to possess some anti-histamine like effects which reduces the severity of complaints caused by allergies.

Cabbage is also high in L-glutamine, an amino acid which is the only amino acid containing 2 amine groups. This enables it to give up one of its amines and combine with glucose making one of 2 glucosamine; n-acetyl-glucosamine which repairs intestinal lining and acetyl=d-glucosamine which heals cartilage, tendons and ligaments.
Cabbage helps our transit time, and the fibre in it is a lovely mop and bucket for soaking up toxicity and carrying it out of the body.  Cabbage is high in chlorophyll – plant blood which carries magnesium.  Mixed with carrot, celery and ginger it makes a scrumptious juice.