Vitamin U - Essential Background Reading
Essential Background Reading
Vitamin U is found in raw cabbage and is thought to help with the healing of skin ulcers and ulcers in the digestive tract.
Explanation: Vitamin U is not a vitamin. Vitamins are essential nutrients that cannot be synthesized (either at all or in sufficient quantities) by a given organism and therefore must be taken with food for the organism's continued good health. The term "vitamin U" was coined because the compound is very effetive in the medical treatment of gastric ulcers. It is found in raw cabbage leaves and other green vegetables.
Keywords: cabbage, gastric disorders
Vitamin U is listed in the Merck Index as methylmethioninesulfonium chloride, a therapeutic agent for the treatment of gastric disorders. It was originally called vitamin U because of its usefulness against ulceration of the digestive system. Vitamin U is extracted from cabbages (hence its alternative name cabagin), and has a strong cabbage-like odour.
The traditional use of raw cabbage juice as the treatment of choice for peptic ulcers would seem to support the use of vitamin U supplements (or cabbage juice) as a healing aid for damaged and eroded intestinal mucosa, and this has been extensively confirmed by scientific research, particularly in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union.