Buzz
1. Peach Leaf Bellflower (Peach Bellflower)
Also known as leafy peach, this climbing plant is not just a culinary delight but also serves as a medicinal herb for various ailments, especially digestive disorders. In traditional medicine, it's recognized for its cooling and antibacterial properties. The leaves contain paederin, an organic compound beneficial for anti-inflammatory and cough relief purposes. Peach Leaf Bellflower is effective in dispelling wind-dampness, aiding digestion, relieving coughs, reducing pain, detoxifying, and improving blood circulation. It's commonly used to treat dysentery, colitis, and enhance digestion.
2. Mugwort
Mugwort, also known as Artemisia, is a perennial herb with alternate, feather-divided leaves that cling to the stem, creating a sheath. The leaves are dark green on top with a dense layer of white velvet-like hairs underneath. Not only used in cuisine, Mugwort has been utilized in folk and Eastern medicine for various ailments. Traditionally, it's used for irregular menstrual cycles, skin diseases, allergies, liver inflammation, deworming, regulating blood and energy, warming the meridians, easing abdominal coldness, nausea, and dysentery. Its cultivation in home gardens is encouraged for its daily culinary and medicinal uses.
3. Houttuynia Cordata
Houttuynia Cordata, a staple in many family meals, may initially challenge the palate but often becomes a craved flavor. Beyond its culinary use, this herb is recognized in traditional medicine for its therapeutic benefits. It's not only a favored seasoning but also a valuable medicinal plant capable of treating coughs, sore throats, bronchitis, vaginal inflammation, mastitis, otitis media, boils, irregular menstruation, and more.
4. Vietnamese Balm
Vietnamese Balm, a popular aromatic herb, is available in most markets and can be easily grown in home gardens. Beyond its use as a flavorful herb, it possesses potent medicinal properties. Also known by names such as Elsholtzia cristata, it belongs to the Lamiaceae herbal group. Vietnamese Balm is effective in treating fevers, reducing joint and bone pain, curing boils, and managing allergies. Additionally, it's beneficial for skin care, helping to keep pores clear, smoothing the skin, and preventing acne.
5. Garlic Plant
Garlic, a plant from the Onion family, is widely used as a spice, herb, and medicinal plant. It thrives in warm, humid environments. Besides its culinary uses, garlic is valued for its health benefits, including cancer prevention, cardiovascular health, blood sugar stabilization, and immune system enhancement. Additionally, it serves as an effective insect repellent.
6. Water Celery
Water Celery leaves, used to wrap meat, create a delicious dish familiar to many households. However, beyond enhancing flavor, Water Celery offers several health benefits. It's effective in treating indigestion, vomiting, dispersing blood clots, and is particularly good for sore throats and coughs caused by colds or phlegm. Therefore, consider growing Water Celery in your garden for its health advantages.
7. Betel Leaf
Betel Leaf is an easy-to-grow spice that produces leaves all year round. Used in stews, wraps, and as a popular addition to various dishes, Betel Leaf also boasts medicinal properties. It warms the middle burner and stomach, treats vomiting caused by cold qi, relieves abdominal pain, headaches, toothaches, constant nasal discharge, watery diarrhea, and bleeding. Commonly used by people to treat joint pain, excessive sweating in hands and feet, athlete's foot, and dysentery.
8. Basil
Basil, a member of the mint family, is widely used in food preparation for its distinct aroma, enhancing health benefits. It's an herb that aids in treating indigestion, lack of appetite, and healing cuts and scrapes. Using young basil leaves is highly beneficial for health.
9. Cilantro
Cilantro, also known as coriander or Chinese parsley, has a spicy, warm nature and is non-toxic. This herb aids digestion, treats rheumatism, facilitates urination, and helps in treating skin conditions like chickenpox, measles, and toxic swellings. For dysentery, roasting and grinding coriander seeds to a powder and consuming 7 to 8 grams with water twice daily is recommended. For bloody dysentery, mix with sugar water; for phlegm dysentery, mix with ginger water. For mouth ulcerations, combine cilantro with lemon basil, soak in diluted saltwater, chew well, and swallow the juice slowly.
10. Celery
Celery, a biennial plant from the Apiaceae family, grows up to 1.5 meters tall with a straight stem and longitudinal grooves. The base leaves are stalked, lanceolate or triangular, resembling bird's eyes, with a rounded tip. Celery is considered a clean, flavorful vegetable that suits many tastes. It offers significant health benefits, including treating high blood pressure and acting as a diuretic in cases of edema.
11. Sawtooth Coriander (Culantro)
Sawtooth Coriander (Culantro), also known as spiny coriander or Mexican coriander, is a flavorful herb that adds depth to dishes and possesses potent medicinal properties. Commonly found in wild, hilly areas, this plant can live for several years and reaches up to 50cm in height. Its leaves grow close to the base, are thin, serrated, spear-shaped, and narrow. Beyond its popularity as a culinary herb, Sawtooth Coriander offers numerous health benefits, including pain relief, bad breath treatment, abdominal pain, diarrhea, digestive disorders, and flu treatment.
12. Dill
Dill, also known as dill weed or aneth, is a common medicinal herb in Eastern medicine, often used to garnish delicious dishes. Dill seeds are spicy, moist, non-toxic, harmonize dishes, support kidney function, strengthen the spleen, relieve bloating, and treat abdominal and tooth pain. For frequent urination or painful urination: dry roast a handful of dill, grind to a powder, and consume with steamed rice cakes. This remedy is highly effective for those with uncontrolled urination or sharp pain. For those suffering from severe malaria after long periods in the forest, fresh dill seed juice or dried seed powder boiled in water is an effective traditional cure.
13. Lemon Tree
Lemon is utilized worldwide not just as an essential seasoning but also as a medicinal remedy effective against numerous ailments. In daily life, lemons serve as seasoning, help alleviate hangovers, provide refreshing drinks, remove stains on clothes, and eliminate odors in refrigerators. Beyond these familiar uses, lemons possess significant medicinal properties. Lemon juice promotes urination, treats rheumatism, scurvy (vitamin C deficiency), and is used in hair care for dandruff removal, smoothing hair, and exfoliating dead skin cells. Moreover, lemon is a source of citric acid. The seeds can be used as an anthelmintic, essential oils for making shampoo. Leaves are used for steam inhalation to treat colds or applied to the abdomen to relieve bloating. Roots and peels are used to treat coughs and aid digestion in the form of a decoction.
14. Perilla
Perilla, scientifically known as Perilla frutescens Britt., is a culinary herb that adds a distinctive flavor to food, along with its medicinal benefits. In traditional medicine, Perilla is warm and spicy, affecting the lungs, heart, and spleen without being toxic. It is used to treat colds, with seeds made into tea for reducing qi and branches used for pregnancy care. Perilla is considered effective for inducing sweating in cold-related illnesses, reducing fever.
15. Ginger Plant
Ginger, cultivated in various regions, is not only a key spice in culinary practices but also a versatile medicinal herb in Eastern medicine. Every part of the ginger plant is utilized for health purposes, with the rhizomes being used both fresh and dried. Ginger's hot and warm qualities make it effective in entering the lung, spleen, and stomach meridians, dispelling cold, warming the stomach, stopping nausea, transforming phlegm, stopping coughs, promoting urination, and detoxifying. It is commonly used to treat cold-induced illnesses, speech impediments due to stroke, high fever, headaches, chills, nasal congestion, abdominal pain due to cold, bloating, indigestion, coughs with phlegm, bronchitis, edema, and urinary difficulties.
16. Pennywort
Pennywort, recognized for its creeping stems that are green or reddish-green with roots at the nodes, has kidney-shaped leaves with long stalks and rounded tips. With its cool, spicy, and bitter properties, Pennywort is not only a culinary herb but also has remarkable health benefits. It's known for reducing blood pressure, serving as a nourishing tonic for overall health improvement (enhancing memory, vision). Topical applications of its leaves can treat pain and reduce fever. It's used to treat edema; laryngitis, venous and bronchial conditions; hemorrhoids, scabies, eczema, psoriasis; as well as detoxifying after food poisoning and promoting urination.
17. Vietnamese Coriander
Vietnamese Coriander, also known as polygonum, has a spicy, warm nature and is non-toxic. This herb aids digestion, treats rheumatism, facilitates urination, and helps in treating skin conditions like chickenpox, measles, and toxic swellings. For dysentery, roasting and grinding coriander seeds to a powder and consuming 7 to 8 grams with water twice daily is recommended. For bloody dysentery, mix with sugar water; for phlegm dysentery, mix with ginger water. For mouth ulcerations, combine cilantro with lemon basil, soak in diluted saltwater, chew well, and swallow the juice slowly.
18. Chili Pepper
Historically known just as a spice enhancing flavor, the health benefits of chili pepper are less known. Research indicates that the capsaicin in chili triggers a strong stimulation in the brain, reducing pain and producing a sense of pleasure. Chili contains compounds improving blood circulation, preventing blood clot formation which can lead to heart attacks. It also helps in preventing high blood pressure and reducing weight. However, moderation is key as excessive consumption can harm health. Capsaicin can irritate the stomach lining, causing abdominal pain, diarrhea, and bleeding in cases of hemorrhoids. People with chronic throat inflammation, gastric ulcers, or hemorrhoids should limit or avoid chili consumption.
19. Lemongrass
Lemongrass is a popular spice in Vietnamese cuisine and is easily grown, even in ornamental pots. Known for its fragrant aroma, it stimulates digestion. Lemongrass leaves can repel mosquitoes, snakes, and when boiled, provide a fragrant hair rinse. Its medicinal benefits, especially during cold seasons, are less known. In traditional medicine, lemongrass, with its spicy and warm properties, enters the lung and stomach meridians to aid digestion, promote fluid drainage, and clear phlegm. It is used for poor appetite, slow digestion, bronchitis, sore throat, coughs with phlegm, fevers, bloating, and diarrhea.
