Hello and welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast. I'm your host Monica Reinegel. I received

an email this week from a new listener who wrote to me saying, I just found your podcast

this year and I'm working through all the episodes. I'm currently on the episodes

from 2010 and I've been learning lots of new and interesting ways to eat better and

feel fabulous. I recently saw a video on vitamin U. Would you do an episode on what this

is and why it's good for you? Well, first of all, welcome to the podcast. I'm so glad

that you found it. And you know what? After 13 years of doing this podcast, there aren't

that many nutrients that I haven't mentioned at least once, but I have never talked about

vitamin U. So I think it's time to set the record straight. Vitamin U is not a true vitamin.

It's actually a sulfur containing compound that's found in cabbage and other vegetables

in the Brasica family. Its chemical name is S. Methyl methionine. In the 1950s, it was thought

to be an effective treatment for peptic ulcers, which is why it was dubbed vitamin U, U for

ulcers. Back then, we believed that painful stomach ulcers were caused by stress and spicy

foods. And the standard treatment for them was to follow a bland diet and take ant acids.

And that did help somewhat. But apparently, not merely as much as cabbage juice, there

are a handful of studies from this time, including one that was conducted among inmates at San

Quentin Prison. Anyway, these studies found that drinking raw cabbage juice relieved

pain and healed ulcers more quickly than the usual approach of the bland diet and the

ant acids. And it was a lot of cabbage juice. In these studies, patients were typically

drinking one quart of raw cabbage juice a day. So just imagine that for a second. Well, today

we know that while stress and spicy food can certainly exacerbate symptoms if you already

have an ulcer, they don't actually cause ulcers. So what does? There are certain medications

...