"Benefits of Cabbage Leaves for Relief of Engorged Breasts"
In response to a photo showing a woman
taping a cabbage leaf onto her knee
to help with her osteoarthritis,
doctors wrote in asserting that cabbage leaves
can help inflammation of any body part.
You may even find that there is
a cache of cabbage in the fridge
of your local maternity unit.
Why?
Well, not only is cabbage cheaper than gel packs,
but knees are not the only anatomical shapes
that the leaves conform well to.
Breast engorgement, when the breasts become
overfilled with milk during breastfeeding,
becoming hard, tight, and painful,
can negatively impact both
mother and infant alike.
So, why not put cabbage leaves on them?
A lactation consultant in a
breastfeeding journal suggests wearing
cabbage leaves.
Evidently works like a charm,
and once the swelling goes down,
frequent breastfeeding should help
them from refilling too much.
Where did she even get the idea for this?
Well, her son got in a car accident,
she wrapped his leg in cabbage, and the rest is history.
The only adverse side effect identified
was a complaint from the son
who felt “like a vegetable.”
Based on the information she collected,
she concluded that cool green cabbage
compresses have anti-inflammatory,
anti-edema—anti-swelling,
and anti-infectious properties,
but you don’t really know, until you…
put it to the test.
Yeah, but who's going to do a randomized,
controlled study of cabbage leaves?
Scientists, that’s who.
Do cabbage leaves prevent breast engorgement?
Let’s find out.
120 women randomized to apply cabbage leaves
to their breasts or not, and...
Though the cabbage group tended to report
less breast engorgement,
the trend was not statistically significant,
though one of the big things you care about
is premature weaning,
and the cabbage group did seem to
be able to extend the time they were
exclusively breastfeeding.
So, while they couldn’t rule out
the possibility that cabbage leaves
had a direct effect on breast engorgement
that may have contributed to the
increased breastfeeding success
in the experimental group.
They consider the positive effect
to be more likely due to
psychological mechanisms,
in other words, the placebo effect.
They did weed out some of the true believers,
though, as some women refused to join
the study out of fear they might end up
in the control group
and not be able to use them.
A similar study performed recently found
that, while adding cabbage leaves to early
breast care didn’t significantly reduce pain,
it did seem to significantly reduce
breast hardness.
Since it probably can’t hurt,
some women might want to just give it a try,
but it would be nice to get some more
concrete answers.
Like, how about a treatment trial
instead of just prevention?
You could try hot cabbage leaves
versus cold cabbage leaves.
To control for the placebo effect,
you could use placebo cabbage,
like iceberg lettuce leaves or something?
In fact, since both breasts are affected,
women could act as their own controls,
with cabbage on one breast and turning over
a new leaf on the other.
How about a comparison of chilled
cabbage leaves versus chilled gel packs?
Just cold alone decreases blood flow
and might, therefore, decrease engorgement.
On the other hand, maybe cabbage leaves
contain some component
that the mother’s skin
absorbs that somehow helps?
You don’t know, until you…
put it to the test.
Thirty-four lactating women
with breast engorgement:
one breast got the cabbage;
one breast got the gel pack.
Their pain levels were established
before and after, and there was
no difference.
They both appeared to work about just as well,
with two thirds reporting relief within hours,
either way, though interestingly the majority
of mothers preferred the cabbage leaves.
The similarity in the effect may have been
caused by the fact that both applied cold,
although you’d think the effects of the cold
of the cabbage leaves would have been transitory.
So, hey, maybe there is something
special in cabbage leaves after all.
What you’d have to do is like a comparison
of chilled versus
room temperature cabbage.
OK, here you go!
One breast gets the chilled cabbage leaf,
and the other gets a room temperature cabbage leaf, and...
there was no difference between the two;
they both seemed to work,
suggesting that it’s not the cold itself that’s doing it.
But, we still don’t know what the role
the placebo effect is playing.
If you were going to design a study
to determine if there was some special
compound in cabbage that could decrease
breast engorgement, what would you do?
You could try the iceberg lettuce,
but if women heard about the cabbage effect,
they might have an expectation bias
in favor of the cabbage.
Aha!
How about using a cabbage leaf extract?
Then, you can finally do a double-blind experiment
where women don’t know which breasts
are exposed to the cabbage by asking them
to rub on a cream containing a cabbage leaf
extract versus a placebo cream.
They added some rosewater to both creams
to try to camouflage any residual cabbage odor, and...
no difference in relief.
Now, the decrease in discomfort produced
by the cream was not as strong as that
produced by the real cabbage leaves
in the previous studies.
The superiority of the whole leaves
might be explained by a failure
of the extract to contain the potentially
active chemical, or maybe the chemical
broke down, or maybe it wasn’t concentrated enough,
or maybe there was just a powerful
placebo effect of wearing cabbage leaves.
The bottom line is that, even though
no active pharmacological substances
in cabbage leaves have been identified,
the convenient shape of cabbage leaves,
their low cost, wide availability,
and purported soothing effect
make it a sought-after treatment.