The efficacy of seven vegetable sprouts

Traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes dietary supplements. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that the nutrition obtained through diet therapy cannot be supplemented by medicine. At the same time, traditional Chinese medicine believes that all medicines are toxic, and does not support taking medicine immediately after getting sick. Western medicine can treat diseases quickly and effectively, but it also has severe side effects. Long-term use of the medicine can damage kidney and liver functions. Dietary supplements can both replenish the body and prevent side effects.

Seven vegetable sprouts are what we usually call small thistles. Small thistle, commonly known as prickly horn bud and prickly horn, is a plant of the genus Thistle in the Asteraceae family. Thistle is distributed in most parts of China, and is also found in Central and Eastern Europe, eastern Russia, Japan, North Korea and other regions. It grows in areas with an altitude of 140 to 2,650 meters, and generally grows wild in wastelands, grasslands, hillside forests, roadsides, bushes, fields, forest edges and streams. It is cultivated artificially for medicinal purposes. Thistle cools blood, stops bleeding, removes blood stasis and reduces swelling. Used for epistaxis, hematemesis, hematuria, bloody stool, metrorrhagia, bleeding from trauma, carbuncles and sores.

1. To treat heart heat, vomiting blood and dry mouth: 2 cups of raw lotus root juice, raw burdock juice, raw rehmannia juice, and small thistle root juice, each with 1 spoon of white honey. Mix the above medicines together, stir until evenly mixed, and sip it slowly at any time. (Taiping Shenghui Fang)

2. To treat bleeding on the tongue and epistaxis: Take a handful of thistle, grind and squeeze out the juice, and mix it with half a cup of wine to drink. If there is no raw juice, just grind the dry juice into powder and add 15 grams of it with cold water. (Qingxin San from Shengji Zonglu)

3. Treatment of metrorrhagia: Grind one cup of juice of stems and leaves of thistle (wash and cut), add one cup of Rehmannia root juice and 25 grams of Atractylodes macrocephala, boil until reduced by half, and drink while warm. (Prescriptions for Emergencies Worth a Thousand Gold Pieces)

4. Treatment of continuous bleeding after miscarriage: 250 grams each of roots and leaves of thistle (crushed) and motherwort (remove the roots and chop). Use three bowls of water to boil the two ingredients until they are well-cooked. Remove the residue and reduce the amount to one bowl of water. Boil the ingredients in a copper vessel until one cup remains. Divide the ingredients into two doses and take them all within a day. (Small Thistle Drink from Shengji Zonglu)

Dietary value

The root or young whole herb of the herbaceous plants Cirsium cyrtonema and Echinops catechu, which belong to the Asteraceae family. It is also known as cat thistle, green thistle, prickly thistle, prickly tea, gun knife thistle, and little evil hens. Root, also known as prickly radish. Ancient prescriptions often use roots. It is found wild in most parts of China. In autumn, the roots are harvested, the stems and leaves are removed, washed and used fresh or dried and cut into segments; in spring and summer, the young and tender whole plant is harvested, washed and used fresh.

[Properties] The leaves are sweet and cool in nature. It can cool blood and stop bleeding, detoxify and eliminate carbuncle, clear away heat and relieve restlessness.

[Reference] The whole plant of thistle contains bile alkaloids, catecholamines, saponins, bioalkaloids and other ingredients. The whole plant of Eupatorium encausticum contains volatile oil, inulin, bioalkaloids, flavonoids, coumarin derivatives and other ingredients.