48 Achieving pH Balance to Treat Specific Ailments
She relieved her painful gallbladder attacks, brought on by gall-
stones, with a hot water bottle, and the nausea that accompanied these
attacks with an alkaline concoction made up of peppermint, spirits of
ammonia, and sodium bicarbonate in water. A surgeon, a friend of the
family, talked her into having her gallbladder removed by assuring her
that, because the gallbladder’s only function was storing bile, it was
expendable. (In fact, when the gallbladder is removed, the liver inter-
prets this act as a sign that bile is no longer needed to digest fats, so it
curtails its production of bile.) After removing the gallbladder, the
surgeon did some exploratory surgery and discovered, much to his
horror, that every inch of the lining of her stomach and duodenum
(the upper part of the small intestine) was covered with ulcers. He told
my mother after the operation that he regretted having taken out her
gallbladder—despite the pain her gallbladder, left intact, would con-
tinue to give her—because the diet for ulcers (at the time) emphasized
milk, butter, and cream. These dairy products can be digested only
with the help of the large quantity of bile that can be stored in the
gallbladder, so without her gallbladder my mother wouldn’t have
enough bile to break down the fat in butter and cream. And without
this fat her ulcers wouldn’t heal—or so the medical profession thought
at the time. The result was that her gallbladder attacks worsened and
her ulcers became seemingly permanent fi xtures in her stomach and
duodenum.The Healing Quality of Raw Cabbage Juice
When my mother was in her late eighties, she fi nally agreed to try a
natural cure for her ulcers and gallbladder attacks—raw cabbage juice.
Reluctantly, she began drinking two pints of it a day, sometimes adding
carrots. In only two weeks she began having fewer stomach upsets. Two
months later she stopped having them altogether.
The effectiveness of raw cabbage in healing ulcers—as well as elimi-
nating gallstones—proves that foods that contain more acid-forming
minerals than alkaline ones, despite the claims otherwise, can heal the
body. Raw cabbage cleans out the acid waste in the stomach, allowing
ulcers to heal and the mucous membrane lining in the stomach to
rebuild itself. The benefi cial action of a food like cabbage on acid indi-
gestion—with its acid-forming minerals, chlorine, phosphorous, and