Bitter gourd is the fruit of an annual climbing herb of Cucurbitaceae. Leaves alternate, palmately 5-7-parted. The flowers are small, unisexual, monoecious and yellow. The length does not exceed 2 cm. Fruit spindle-shaped, with tumor-like processes. When ripe, it is orange yellow, bitter, bright red and sweet. It is cultivated all over China.
Bitter gourd was not recorded in medical books before the Ming Dynasty, but was included in Disaster Relief Materia Medica and Compendium of Materia Medica in the Ming Dynasty. It is suspected that Sambo eunuch was transplanted from Nanyang Islands when he went to the Western Ocean. In Qing Dynasty, Wang Mengying's "Diet Spectrum with Interest" said: "Bitter gourd is bitter and cold in Qing Dynasty; Clearing heat, improving eyesight and clearing heart. This sauce can be pickled. ┅┅ People with moderate cold (cold bottom) should not eat it. When cooked, it is red, sweet and flat, nourishing blood and softening the liver, strengthening the spleen and tonifying the kidney. " In other words, when the melon is ripe, the color is red, the bitterness is reduced, the coldness is reduced, and the nourishing effect is obvious. Compared with late ripening, it is mainly based on clearing and replenishing. In fact, eating bitter gourd is delicious only when the color is blue and yellow, and it has the effect of clearing away heat and relieving summer heat.
Bitter gourd tastes bitter, and southerners eat more vegetables. Bitter gourd can be eaten in summer and autumn, and eaten with Mo as a meal, but it is delicious and not bitter. Cantonese in China sliced bitter gourd, dried it and used it as medicine, which is the dry bitter gourd for treating colds in summer.
Cooking home-cooked dishes with bitter gourd, such as "fried frog with cold melon", "ribs with cold melon" and "stuffed cold melon", is meaningful to eat. But people in Jiangsu and Zhejiang don't know the taste and eat less bitter gourd. Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian are rich in bitter gourd, while other provinces enjoy it in potted plants.
Bitter gourd is named after its taste, and the bitter word is not pleasant to listen to. Cantonese also call it cold melon. Bitter gourd is shaped like a tumor, also called melon; Melon has wrinkles, like litchi, so it is also called brocade litchi.
Sexual taste and meridian tropism:
Bitter and cold. Enter spleen, stomach, heart and liver meridians.
Efficacy:
Clearing away heat and heart fire, detoxifying and improving eyesight, invigorating qi and essence, quenching thirst and relieving summer heat, and treating carbuncle.
Clinical application:
1. Used for upset, thirst, heatstroke, etc.
Hot thirst: 1 fresh bitter gourd, pulp cut, sliced and decocted in water;
Heatstroke: Take 1 fresh bitter gourd, cut off the pulp, add it to tea, then add it, hang it in a ventilated place and dry in the shade, 6-9g each time, and take it with water or soak it in boiling water instead of drinking tea.
2. Used for carbuncle and dysentery.
Carbuncle swelling: take fresh bitter gourd and mash it and apply it to the affected area;
Dysentery: take fresh bitter gourd juice and take it with boiling water; Or a fresh bitter gourd, mashed to get juice, washed with boiling water or dried with bitter gourd vines and ground into powder, 3g each time, once every 6 hours, washed with boiling water.
3. Used for liver heat, red eyes or pain.
Boil soup or juice for drinking;
Or dry bitter gourd 15g, chrysanthemum 10g, decocted in water.
4. Used for cold and fever, body pain and bitter taste in summer.
Dry bitter gourd 15g, onion 10g, ginger 6g, decocted in water.
5. Used for stomachache.
Bitter gourd is burnt into charcoal and ground into powder, each time 1g, washed with boiling water, 2-3 times a day.
Dosage and usage:
6- 15g。 Boil soup, wring juice or stir fry.
Appropriate amount for external use, tamping.
Precautions for use:
People with spleen and stomach deficiency and cold should not eat raw food, which makes people vomit, diarrhea and abdominal pain.
Pregnant women are not suitable.
References:
Herbal Medicine in South Yunnan: "Treating Dan fire poison gas, furuncle poison, or sesame boils all over the body is unbearable." Purging six meridians to strengthen fire, clearing heat and relieving summer heat, benefiting qi and quenching thirst. "
Life Sutra: "Eliminating pathogenic heat, relieving fatigue, clearing heart and improving eyesight."
Seeking truth from materia medica: "except pyrolysis."
Wang Qing Meng Ying's Diet Spectrum with Interest: "Bitter gourd is bitter and cold when it is clear; Clearing heat, improving eyesight and clearing heart. This sauce can be pickled. ┅┅ People with moderate cold (cold bottom) should not eat it. When cooked, it is red, sweet and flat, nourishing blood and softening the liver, strengthening the spleen and tonifying the kidney. "
Toxic and side effects:
Modern research:
Bitter gourd contains bitter gourd, 5- hydroxytryptamine and glutamic acid, alanine, proline, γ -aminobutyric acid, citrulline, galacturonic acid, pectin, sugar, trace fat, protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, carotene, vitamin B 1, vitamin B2, vitamin C and so on.
Bitter gourd juice or bitter gourd can lower blood sugar.
Bitter gourd kernel (seed) tastes bitter and sweet, but it can "replenish qi and strengthen yang" The aphrodisiac here almost refers to the accumulation of heat in kidney fire, and sexual intercourse will be discharged at the touch, so bitter gourd kernel will dispel its evil heat, and sexual intercourse will be balanced and return to normal, so it can strengthen yang. If impotence is weak and cold, it will aggravate impotence.
According to animal experiments, pregnant rats fed with bitter gourd juice will cause uterine bleeding and die within a few hours, so pregnant women should not eat bitter gourd.
It comes from Momordica charantia of Cucurbitaceae, and is used as medicine with melons, roots, vines and leaves. Collect in summer, treat separately, and dry in the sun.
Nature and taste belong to melons, roots and leaves: bitter and cold.
Function is mainly used for clearing away heat and toxic materials. Used for heatstroke, fever, toothache, enteritis, dysentery and bloody stool; Topical treatment of miliaria, boils, boils.
Usage and dosage: melon, root and grade: 2 ~ 3; Appropriate amount is applied externally, mashed or rubbed on the affected area.
Excerpted from the National Collection of Chinese Herbal Medicine
Cultural appreciation
Shen Peng, Qing Ye. "Broken Magnolia Brocade Litchi": "Yellow leaves are green, the wind on the fence attracts butterflies, the fruit is separated, and the small print steals the brocade litchi. However, if you want to be handsome, you don't have to laugh at his concubine. Rattan pulp, is it eighteen niangs in southern Fujian? "
Folklore: Bitter gourd has a characteristic of "not passing on its own bitterness to other things", that is, it is fried and cooked together with any dish such as fish and meat, and it will never pass on its own bitterness to each other. Therefore, some people say that bitter gourd "has the virtue and merit of a gentleman" and is known as "the dish of a gentleman".
Folk proverb: "People say bitter gourd is bitter, but I say bitter gourd is sweet. You can choose whether it is bitter or not. There is no sweetness without bitterness. "
Healthy diet
1. Bitter gourd mixed with celery each150g, sesame paste and garlic paste. Peel the bitter gourd, remove the pulp, cut it into filaments, blanch it with boiling water, rinse it with cold water, drain the water, then mix celery and bitter gourd, add seasoning and mix well. This dish has the effect of cooling liver and lowering blood pressure, and is suitable for hypertensive patients with hyperactivity of liver yang.
2. There are 1 bitter gourd in balsam pear tea, and appropriate amount of green tea. Cut the upper end of bitter gourd, dig out the pulp, add green tea, and hang the melon in a cool and ventilated place; Pick bitter gourd dried in the shade, wash it, chop it with tea leaves, mix it evenly, put 10g into a cup, and brew it with boiling water for drinking. The tea has the effects of clearing away heat, relieving summer heat, promoting diuresis and relieving restlessness, and is suitable for heatstroke, fever, thirst and irritability.
3. Bitter gourd juice 500 grams of fresh bitter gourd. First, wash and slice the bitter gourd, add 250 ml of water to the pot and cook for about 10 minute until the melon is ripe. Eat melons and drink juice. This fruit juice has the effect of clearing away heat and improving eyesight, and is suitable for people with liver fire and red eyes and pain.
4. Bitter gourd mud juice raw bitter gourd three, sugar 60 grams. Wash the bitter gourd first, mash it into mud, add sugar and mix well. After 2 hours, squeeze out the water and cool it once. This juice has the effects of clearing away heat, promoting diuresis and inducing resuscitation, and is suitable for deafness, ear swelling and pain, red tongue with yellow fur, and short and red urine caused by disturbance of damp heat.
Note: Bitter gourd is cool, and it is not suitable for people with spleen and stomach deficiency.
Common diseases of bitter gourd
Bitter gourd white silk disease
Pathogenic characteristics:
The whole plant withered, the stem base was wrapped by tremella rope or rapeseed-like brown sclerotia, and the affected part was brown rot. A large number of white bands and brown sclerotia can be seen on the soil surface.
Law of occurrence:
Pathogenic bacteria overwinter in the soil with the bacterial rope and sclerotia left by the diseased residue, spread through irrigation water and rainwater, and invade from the wound to cause disease. After the onset, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum spreads through running water or comes into contact with neighboring plants through mycelium climbing. Hot and humid weather is conducive to the onset. Continuous cropping, acid soil and sandy loam with good permeability often cause serious diseases by using raw soil and miscellaneous fertilizers.
Prevention and control methods:
(1) Avoid continuous cropping seriously.
(2) timely inspection found that the diseased plants were pulled out and burned in time, and diluted 150 kg of water with mycorrhiza near the diseased site, and the roots were irrigated.
(3) Prevention first and comprehensive treatment.
Bitter gourd perforation:
Pathogenic characteristics:
Mainly harmful to leaves. The leaf spot is nearly round, yellowish brown to yellowish white or grayish white, with a transverse diameter ranging from 1 mm to several mm, and small black spots as big as needles appear on the spot surface. In the later stage, the lesion tissue is easy to fall off into leaf perforation, and necrotic tissue remains around the perforation spot. The disease is similar to Cercospora leaf spot, but the difference is that the disease is characterized by small black spots rather than mildew, and most of them are perforated spots.
Law of occurrence:
All pathogens overwinter in the soil, mycelium and conidia are left with the sick and disabled, and conidia are used as inoculum for primary and re-invasion, spreading infection and causing diseases by rainwater sputtering. Warm and humid weather is conducive to the onset.
Prevention and control methods:
(1) Selection of disease-resistant varieties.
(2) Combined with comprehensive control of anthracnose.
(3) Spray 50% Enrique 800 times solution.