Bernard O'Shea: I tried my granny's cabbage water recipe to clear my bowels (2024)

The lettuce phenomenon has a trickle of science behind it in the form of "lactucarium". If you ever squeeze a crunchy lettuce leaf, you'll observe a milky white secretion oozing out from its cells. That secretion is lactucarium. According to the National Centre for Biotechnology Information: "In the 19th century, wild lettuce, especially the desiccated lactescent juice lactucarium, was used as a sedative and analgesic. It was used in kidney disorders, for ameliorating painful uterine contractures, and for generalised oedema and icterus, due to its diuretic effect."

However, as much as I wanted to try out this sleep-inducing phenomenon, there was no way I was going to increase my twice-nightly visit to the toilet. I'm just going to have to take the plethora of social media influencers' word that it works. The cabbage was a different story.

My granny used to drink buckets of cabbage water, and her generation used it as a cure-all for digestive health. Cabbage is full of fibre and water. So it's a pretty simple explanation as to why it's good to get the bowels moving. But cabbage water?

The internet is full of reasons why we should be gulping down gallons of the stuff. It's full of vitamins, especially Vitamin C, which is better than a can of co*ke and a bag of crisps to cure a hangover. It is supposed to boost your immune system into outer space and strengthen your bones. But unlike most home remedies, cabbage and lettuce do contain a lot of vitamins and an essential ingredient that has consistently made humans feel better for thousands of years, water.

The comedian Dara Ó Briain once quipped, "I'm sorry, 'herbal medicine,' "Oh, herbal medicine's been around for thousands of years!" Indeed it has, and then we tested it all, and the stuff that worked became 'medicine.' And the rest is just a nice bowl of soup and some potpourri, so knock yourselves out."

Ó Briain's observation is very accurate. Elements of Brassica leaves and roots have been tested and analyzed and thousands of other plants over centuries. We have mined out the essential properties and ingredients in modern medicine. Most of us know this, including myself, so why did I go on a two-day-long binge drinking session of cabbage water when I was constipated?. I could have just walked into the local chemist and asked for something that would have instantly cured me.

The one thing I hated about my granny's cabbage water was the smell. It's poxy. When I boiled up the cabbage in our house, my eight-year-old daughter ran into the kitchen and yelled, "Why are you doing this to us?" It was slightly overdramatic, but she didn't lick it off the stones.

When it cooled down, I drained it off, put it into a pint glass, and placed it in the fridge. My kids don't like cabbage, so I had it all to myself for two days. I don't mind cabbage. I hadn't had it for so long and declared, "Why don't I eat this every day." Enter stage left. "If you fill the house with that pong again, Dad, I will move in with Nanna and Grandad." Again with the hysterics.

Less than 24 hours later, after drinking a pint of cabbage water, everything on my digestive subway was back up and running smoothly. I told anyone who would listen about how my granny's homemade cure worked. These days, however, that's mostly my kids and my wife. They are not interested in my tales. My three-year-old, however, will listen to anything once you incorporate your story with a dinosaur reference.

Maybe that is why I made the cabbage water. I wanted to retell the story of my childhood to myself by incorporating those I remember. I remember watching my Granny ladling the pungent green water into jam jars. My sisters and I screamed the house down with disgust as we watched her drink it. We'd also laugh uncontrollably when she'd tell us, "that will get your bowels moving."

I knew I could walk into a chemist and get effective treatment. Still, I couldn't ask the pharmacist, "Could you reconnect me with the embedded memories that make me think fondly of loved ones that have passed away?"

There's comfort in nostalgia. I know people generations ago had to use home cures as medicine wasn't widely available. Still, I don't have to practice it. Yet I did. I did because it's keeping someone alive and giving me a self-conjured reason to tell my kids about their great-granny and the odd things she did. Like kissing a grazed knee better and telling you to count to 50 and the pain will be gone—something I do with my kids today.

I hope that in a thousand years, we will still reach for some homemade cure before we download some advanced chemical secretion from our brain into our nervous system because sometimes we want to touch and connect with the past, and sometimes even though it makes no scientific or medial sense it can make you feel better even if it smells poxy.