After 30 days I was having 2-3 mostly normal bowel movements, with a huge decrease in pain, urgency, mucus, and bleeding.
Hey team, in this article I’m going to show and explain the full cabbage juice routine that I followed for 30 days in 2015 while in the process of recovering from a severe case of Ulcerative Colitis. This cabbage juicing routine was first studied by Dr. Garnett Cheney in 1949 and into the 1950s. In 1949, Cheney published this study, RAPID HEALING OF PEPTIC ULCERS IN PATIENTS RECEIVING FRESH CABBAGE JUICE. In this study, thirteen patients ranging from twenty-six to seventy-two years old with peptic ulcers were given one liter of fresh green cabbage juice daily. Seven of these patients had duodenal ulcers, five patients had gastric ulcers, and one had a gastrojejunal ulcer. All patients showed rapid improvement compared to standard diet and medications. In eleven out of the thirteen patients, the ulcer craters disappeared within six to nine days. For the other two patients it took fourteen and twenty-three days for the ulcer craters to heal. Overall, the average healing time for the total of thirteen cases of peptic ulcer treated with cabbage juice was nine days (1). I recognize this is an extremely small sample size. However, the results are still very interesting and mirrored my personal experience following the protocol.
I am not a doctor or a dietician, and the information in this article is intended only for educational purposes and should NOT be acted upon without the approval and supervision of a licensed physician. If you have, or suspect you have, a health condition, you should contact your doctor, or other healthcare practitioner. You should consult with your doctor before making any dietary changes with the intent to treat an illness. I recommend that you follow your doctor’s advice and take medication as prescribed. Err on the side of caution and do not act on this information without the supervision of a doctor who knows you, who understands your current level of health, and is aware of the many other health and medical factors that are unique to you.
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Dr. Cheney went on to publish more studies in the 1950s showing the therapeutic effects that cabbage juice has on ulcers in the digestive system. In 1952, Cheney published a study with a sample size of 100 patients that found drinking a quart of cabbage juice per day seemed to be effective in promoting the rapid healing of uncomplicated peptic ulcers compared to standard ulcer therapy (2). Dr. Cheney attributed the ulcer healing factor of cabbage juice to what he called Vitamin U, the U stands for ulcer. Vitamin U is not actually a vitamin, it’s a derivative of the amino acid methionine known as S-methylmethionine (3). The mechanism of action for S-methylmethionine is still not fully understood and requires further research. However, some more recent studies suggest that S-methylmethionine may have potential as a skin wound-healing agent due to its ability to activate dermal fibroblasts which are necessary for skin wounds to heal (4).
When I was still very sick in 2015 I learned about a version of this cabbage juice routine from a YouTube video, and I decided to give it a try. At this point I had been in a two month flare that consisted of sprinting to the toilet 10-12 times per day with horrible urgency, and I was passing only watery diarrhea with mucus and periodic bleeding. I had not had a formed stool since the flare started. I was extremely desperate for some sort of relief. Anyway, I started this cabbage juice routine and began drinking 32 oz of fresh green cabbage juice per day and eating two meals per day. Thirty-two oz of cabbage juice is roughly equivalent to the amount used in Dr. Cheney’s two studies that were previously referenced. For the first three days all I remember is burping up a cabbage-like smell, feeling bloated and having worse diarrhea than I did when I started. But, on the third night, for the first time in two months, I passed a soft formed stool instead of diarrhea. It was painful and bloody, but it had form. I was so excited about the results that I took a photo of it and sent it to all my friends to tell them that the cabbage juice was working. Over the next few days I continued to have soft formed, fluffy stools with ragged blood tinged edges. My digestive health continued to improve and the stools were getting firmer every day and the other symptoms were decreasing. Now, I hated the taste of the cabbage juice, but because I was continuing to see improvement in my digestive health, I decided I would diligently follow this routine for 30 days. At the end of those 30 days I was having 2-3 mostly normal bowel movements, with a huge decrease in pain, urgency, mucus, and bleeding. I was still experiencing these symptoms on a minor level, but the flare was over and I felt like there was an overall 70% decrease in the intensity and frequency of the symptoms I was experiencing.
Over time, I eventually achieved full clinical remission from IBD by following a gut microbiome optimizing nutritional protocol. But, I want to show you the exact cabbage juice protocol that I followed because of the interesting therapeutic effects it seems to have on ulcers and because of how quickly I personally saw results while following it. I also think that a short term cabbage juice routine combined with a gut microbiome optimizing protocol would compliment each other very well. If you’re looking for resources on the gut microbiome optimizing protocol that I followed I recommend you check out my free Boot Camp series on YouTube or my online course Biome Optima™ that is more in-depth and provides a downloadable 5 week sample daily routine and meal plan.
Now the protocol I followed was based on the original YouTube video that I watched in 2015. And that YouTube video was based on Dr. Cheney’s studies. I’m going to explain Dr. Cheney’s exact routine from his study and then show you the way that I modified the routine based on the YouTube video that I watched. In Dr. Cheney’s study, fresh cabbage juice was prepared twice a day, in the morning about 10 AM and in the afternoon around 2:00 PM (1). The patients in the study were served 200 mL of cabbage juice five times per day. The cabbage juice was refrigerated and served well chilled at 10:30 AM, at lunch, at mid-afternoon, at supper, and in the early evening. Some of the patients also added celery juice to the cabbage juice to make it more palatable (1). It’s stated in the study that celery juice was found to also contain the anti-peptic ulcer factor that cabbage juice contained. The patients who added in the celery juice did so in a ratio of 25% celery juice and 75% cabbage juice. The study also states that seasoning with salt and pepper and an addition of tomato juice was encouraged, as was the ingestion of crackers or other food along with the cabbage juice. Some notable side effects that about ⅓ of the patients experienced while drinking the cabbage juice were mild abdominal distress and some constipation (1). I experienced the abdominal distress, but I had diarrhea instead of constipation, and these symptoms resolved in my case after a few days on the protocol.
So that was how Dr. Cheney utilized the cabbage juicing protocol in his studies. The protocol I followed was slightly modified. The first thing I did every morning was take between 2-4 capsules of a high quality probiotic supplement. I used Floracor-GI by AST enzymes, but I think the important thing is to just take a high quality probiotic supplement. Then I would wait between 30 minutes to one hour at least before drinking my first increment of organic green cabbage juice. Instead of drinking 200 mL increments of cabbage juice five times per day, I drank 8 oz increments of cabbage juice, juiced fresh each time, four times per day. I usually ended up drinking a little more than 8 oz each time, but 8 oz was always my minimum. So for the first increment all I did was chop up the cabbage. Feed it to the juicer, and measure out 8 oz. I went the fresh route each time because I didn’t want the cabbage juice to oxidize and potentially lose some nutritional value, though that doesn’t seem to be all that important per the study (1). It’s much more convenient to juice twice, or even just once per day, and store it in the fridge instead of juicing the cabbage fresh four times per day. I didn’t do this when I was following the protocol in 2015, but now anytime I drink cabbage juice I try to make sure to consume some fat along with it, such as coconut oil, so that I absorb the vitamin K that is also found in cabbage (5).
After my first 8 oz increment of cabbage juice, I would wait about an hour or two and then drink my second 8 oz increment of cabbage juice. So I repeated the same process. I wish I’d read Dr. Cheney’s studies before I followed this routine the first time, because I would have had the second increment with my first meal instead of drinking it on an empty stomach. If I consumed cabbage juice with a meal, I wouldn’t need to take something like coconut oil as long as there is some fat in the meal. I aim to consume around 10 grams of fat when I drink cabbage juice now. After my second 8 oz increment, I would wait another hour or so and then have my first meal of the day. During this time, I almost exclusively ate baked chicken, steamed white rice, and steamed yellow squash or zucchini. I generally ate this meal twice per day and that was it. I still think this is a pretty excellent meal choice that falls in line with phase one of the Biome Optima™ protocol. The only change I would really make to this specific meal is the addition of fermented vegetables for the added probiotic microorganisms. But overall, if I could do it over again, I would diversify my meal choices a little bit so that I wasn’t always eating the exact same thing and I would make sure they were specifically designed to improve the composition of the gut microbiome. And again, the Biome Optima™ meal plan offers several great example recipes that are meant to do exactly that, to improve the composition of the gut microbiome, which I think compliments the cabbage juice routine very well.
After my first meal, I usually waited 2-3 hours before drinking my third 8 oz increment of cabbage juice. I generally exercised during those hours and then would consume the cabbage juice when I got home. And again, a change I would make now is to make sure to consume around 10 grams of fat for vitamin K absorption- unless I consume the cabbage juice with a fatty meal. Then I would wait about an hour after that and eat dinner. Which was again the baked chicken, steamed white rice, and steamed squash or zucchini. Retrospectively, besides incorporating at least a few more of the Biome Optima™ recipes, one more change I would make would be to drink my last 8 oz increment of cabbage juice with my dinner. I didn’t do that however, and instead, I ate dinner and then would wait about an hour or so after dinner before consuming my last 8 oz increment of cabbage juice. And this last increment finally got me to 32 oz total of cabbage juice for the day. The last thing I did before bed was take another 2-4 capsules of a high quality probiotic, again I took Floracor-GI by AST enzymes.
And that’s it. If you choose to follow a version of Dr. Cheney’s cabbage juice routine, there are different ways you can do it. The main thing is drinking about 1 liter of green cabbage juice, that’s what seems to be the necessary volume to get the dose-dependent therapeutic effects from the cabbage juice, per Dr. Cheney’s work and from my own anecdotal experience (1,2,6,7). Some individuals like to split the total dose into morning and evening increments of about 16 oz of cabbage juice each, that way they only have to drink the juice twice during the day. Some people like doing it the way I did in four increments of 8 oz, and then it can also be done the way it was in Dr. Cheney’s study where 200 mL of cabbage juice is consumed five times per day (1). I personally would not recommend drinking the full one liter in one sitting, as that may cause some significant digestive distress. But other than that, I think the cabbage juice routine is pretty modifiable. Celery juice and tomato juice can be added to the cabbage juice per Dr. Cheney’s study, and some individuals like to add apple juice to make the cabbage juice more palatable (1). And then just to be extra clear, you are supposed to be eating actual food in addition to the cabbage juice based on the study (1). This is NOT a routine where you just drink cabbage juice and consume nothing else.
I personally benefited greatly during the 30 days that I drank cabbage juice in 2015. Now, while following a gut microbiome optimizing protocol is what allowed me to finally achieve the level of health I was looking for, I think cabbage juice is an incredible tool. And, I wish I had implemented it more when I was still recovering because I think that drinking 32 oz of cabbage juice per day for a period of time in combination with a gut microbiome optimizing protocol would be a very effective nutritional strategy to combat something like IBD. Based on what I’ve studied, I think that the cause of IBD is a compromised gut microbiome, so the combination of the two is really exciting to me because it utilizes the fast acting ulcer healing properties of cabbage juice while also correcting the underlying dysbiosis of the gut microbiome (8).
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