Can you drink fresh cabbage juice or does it have to sit for awhile?

[hootiehoo]

I want to start drinking cabbage juice for my stomach and digestive tract, will I reap the maximum benefits from fresh juice? I've read that if it sits for a few days it develops probiotics. Do they mean sit out in room temperature uncovered or refrigerated?

Any tips would be welcome. I just blended a wedge of cabbage and strained it and it was okay. Waiting on superpowers now...

[Arky]

Hi, your post is a little ambiguous - it's not clear whether you just wish to support the general health of your digestive tract, or if you have actual inflammation problems or 'leaky gut' syndrome etc. Consequently, I'll answer your question so as to encompass both possibilities, then you can just take from my answer whatever is relevant and leave what isn't. The information may benefit someone else in the future, so it's worth posting it here.


Provided you tolerate lactic acid-rich foods OK (most people do), then your best bet is to make your own sauerkraut. Some people with gastrointestinal inflammation, however, do not tolerate lactic acid-rich foods well (experienced this myself, in the past, but don't experience inflammation from it now). Provided you tolerate it OK, sauerkraut can be profoundly healing, it really can. However, please understand, from the outset, that you absolutely must not try to use shop-bought sauerkraut as it is pasteurised (meaning the probiotic benefits are destroyed) and, worse still, many commercial sauerkrauts are a disgraceful fake, made without proper fermentation and instead being just shredded cabbage with health-damaging acetic acid vinegar, to mimic the taste.

Therefore, if you're considering eating sauerkraut, then you'll need to make the effort to make it at home, using either a traditional crockpot or a jar to which a brewers airlock has been fitted:

http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/yhst-19967182972018_2232_8917284

The reason for this is that it is best to minimise oxygen during the fermentation process (i.e., we're aiming for as close as we can reasonably get to an anaerobic fermentation process)

Note that you can, if you wish, sprinkle two or three probiotic capsules into your shredded cabbage, prior to fermentation, but this is entirely optional, not necessary. If you decide to add probiotic of some sort, then one of the best is Ohhira's (AKA 'OMX').

I would not recommend simply leaving cabbage juice lying around (even if it's in the fridge) as it will oxidise and taste awful.

Either drink the juice fresh (still very healing to the digestive tract), or ferment it, as per above. If you tolerate it, I recommend adding some beetroot (solid or juiced), and perhaps also some carrot, to your fermenting cabbage, as it will add to the healing properties. Many inflammatory digestive disorders can be linked, to varying degrees, to an inability of the liver to detoxify certain inorganic and/or food elements, the knock-on effect of which is that the immune system then starts trying to 'fend off' the undetoxified elements as they make their way through the digestive tract. When such a situation becomes chronic (longterm), the immune system has a tendency to rely upon a more-generalised inflammatory response, which you may perhaps be intimately familiar with, on an experiential basis, as am I. Beetroot is supportive of liver detoxification, as is carrot.

Whether fermented or just juiced, as I'm sure you know, it is the glutamine content of cabbage which has led to its naturopathic use for gut healing. The probiotic aspect, arising from fermentation, is merely a bonus (and a very worthwhile one, at that).

Also, please consider getting some labtests done, preferably under the guidance of a qualified practitioner, to seek to identify any possible toxic elements in your system which may be giving rise to your bowel inflammation. A hair test is an economical and generally effective way to check for heavy metals intoxication, for example (but: *very important* - it must be interpreted appropriately, since the levels quoted on a hair analysis do not necessarily reflect actual levels within the body - they can vary according to certain cellular processes which can be influenced by metal intoxication itself. Therefore, if interpreted naively, at face value, one can completely misinterpret what is actually going on. See Andrew Hall Cutler's books for appropriate information on this).

And/or consider the possibility of a chronic source of infection - one example of which could be a dental infection, not necessarily visible above the gumline - could be within a tooth root or whatever. Over time, this can stress and aggravate the immune system, not just locally within the mouth but even lower down the alimentary canal, in the duodenum and/or bowel (potentially even in the cardiovascular system).

If you dig through my posts on the forum, you'll find I frequently discuss such toxicity issues and their relationship to physiological function (esp. the liver).

Lastly, if you can afford it, a CDSA (Comprehensive Digestive Stool Analysis) can be helpful in establishing what physiological processes may be involved in a given individual's inflammatory bowel condition - for example, compromised pancreatic function can lead to food being insufficiently digested, and undigested food particles can stimulate the immune system into an inflammatory response. Also, a CDSA should include some testing for parasites, as these, too, can lead to inflammation of digestive tract tissues, and/or can obstruct bile flow to some extent.

I know it's a lot to take in, but gut inflammation needs to be approached logically or one is unlikely to succeed in finding the root cause. I've provided a valuable outline of some of the possible things that might be involved in any given case of inflammation of the digestive tract - you're getting the benefit of my own search for answers, as I found many, many sources of information on the topic are frustratingly narrowly focused and incomplete.

I appreciate that you didn't specifically mention bowel inflammation, just cabbage juice, so, as I said, just take or leave whatever you like from this post and if, by chance, you should happen to need any more pointers, let me know.

[DeniseJones]

I'd just like to thank Arky for this very informative reply. I'm fairly new to this forum but I am learning so much already and it's replies like this that really do help to educate people about what are very complex issues.

[Arky]

You're most welcome, Denise.

Like many here on RFT, I have much to learn and I never stop learning about the human body and its various interactions with toxins and food substances / herb substances. It's endlessly complex.

I've learned what I've learned, along the way, purely out of necessity, since so many doctors these days seem to lack any significant depth of understanding on how foods and herbs interact with the body. They also generally have extremely poor (even potentially dangerous) understanding of toxicological issues. Modern allopathic medicine is fabulous for acute emergency conditions, but it's a sad indictment of allopathic medicine that, all too often, it tends to approach chronic health issues from a standpoint of symptom suppression (using pharmaceuticals) rather than from a truly in-depth examination of how the chronic health issue(s) may have arisen in the first place.

I don't mean that to sound arrogant. Not at all. I know a great deal less than a qualified allopathic practitioner with regard to a heck of a lot of anatomical and pharmaceutical details, but, I have, nonetheless, been failed by allopathic doctors many, many times over the past decade or so. Literally more times than I can keep count of. So, I had to learn, for the sake of my health, many of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which these practitioners are surprisingly ignorant of.

If you find yourself in such a position, then never doubt yourself that you can find the answers, provided you are determined and diligent enough to never stop seeking until you find them.

All the best.

[marflo]

I want to start drinking cabbage juice for my stomach and digestive tract, will I reap the maximum benefits from fresh juice? I've read that if it sits for a few days it develops probiotics. Do they mean sit out in room temperature uncovered or refrigerated?

Any tips would be welcome. I just blended a wedge of cabbage and strained it and it was okay. Waiting on superpowers now...

To everyone who use juicing, DO NOT LEAVE THE JUICE TO BE DRUNK LATER ; drink it right a way; you can get lots of problems, read ERNEST GUNTHER book, Raw food, or Living food i dont know how to translate from romanian HRANA VIE.
I am not a doctor so i cannot tell you why but he was.

[noodle]

I just juiced a full cabbage with 5 apples..my stomach is unsure right now. Should I use less cabbage next time? Should I mix it with something else?

[Aleesha Sattva]

i never juice cabbage so i have no opinion but... that does seem like a LOT to me.

rejuvelac is lovely and tastes kinda like sauerkraut juice and is great for the digestive tract.

[noodle]

I gave a green cabbage with apples a chance, and I tried purple cabbage with kale, celery and lemon a whirl.. yuck. I will stick with it raw or fermented

[Arky]

I gave a green cabbage with apples a chance, and I tried purple cabbage with kale, celery and lemon a whirl.. yuck. I will stick with it raw or fermented

I'd forgotten about this thread, but since it's been 'bumped', I may as well add a link to a recent thread, on the fermentation side of things:

http://www.rawfoodtalk.com/showthread.php?71549-Sauerkraut-in-mason-jars&highlight=mason