What is Vitamin U?

I received an email this week from a new listener, who writes:

"I just found your podcast this year and I'm working through the episodes. I'm currently on the episodes from 2010. I've been learning new and interesting ways to eat better and feel fabulous, to borrow your catchphrase. I recently saw a video on vitamin U. Would you do an episode on what it is and why it's good for you?"

After 13 years of the Nutrition Diva podcast, there aren't many nutrients that I haven't mentioned at least once. But I have never talked about vitamin U. Let's set the record straight

What is vitamin U?

Vitamin U is not a true vitamin but rather a sulfur-containing compound found in cabbage and other vegetables in the brassica family. (Its chemical name is s-methylmethionine.) In the 1950s, it was thought to be an effective treatment for peptic ulcers—which is why it was dubbed vitamin U. 

Back then, we believed that painful stomach ulcers were caused by stress and spicy foods. Standard treatment was a bland diet and antacids, which helped somewhat. But apparently, not nearly as much as cabbage juice. A handful of studies from this time (including one conducted among inmates at San Quentin prison!) found that drinking raw cabbage juice relieved pain better and healed ulcers more quickly than the usual approach. 

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? 

Certain medications can injure the stomach lining and if you're taking one of those medications, that would be the first suspect. But aside from that, ulcers are almost always caused by an infection of h. pylori bacteria. The standard treatment is a course of antibiotics to knock out the bacteria, which is highly effective—not to mention a lot less unpleasant than drinking a quart of raw cabbage juice every day.

We've also learned that long-term use of antacids can have a lot of unintended consequences, including increased risk of osteoporosis and bone fractures, nutrient deficiencies, and intestinal infections. It turns out that maintaining an acidic environment in the stomach plays an important role in our health. So it's just as well that we no longer treat ulcers by chugging milk-of-magnesia.  

See also: How to Avoid Acid Reflux

What does vitamin U do?

We still don't know too much about how s-methylmethionine worked to heal ulcers—or whether something else in the cabbage juice may have been part of the effect. And now that we have a...

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