Burdock roots: application in folk medicine

Burdock has several names: burdock, burdock, lopushnik. Describe the plant is not necessary, it grows everywhere and everywhere, like weed grass. However, its useful properties can not be overestimated. In some countries, burdock is even grown specifically as a vegetable crop. For consumer and medicinal purposes, the leaves and roots of burdock are used. The use of plants helps with many diseases. All its parts are used for food in the form of salads and vegetable soups. But the burdock roots are famous for the particularly rich content of vitamins (groups A and B, C, E, P) and trace elements (calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, zinc, selenium).

Application for medicinal purposes

It can be called without exaggeration an "ambulance". With a headache, for example, it is enough to pass a fresh sheet of boiling water and attach it to the back of the head. If the pain is caused by cervical osteochondrosis, a hot compress with a burdock should be fixed on the neck-collar zone, covered with a film and a warm kerchief. If you do these simple procedures on a regular basis, the painful sensations noticeably weaken. The same compresses are made on the painful joints and lower back with rheumatism, radiculitis, arthritis and arthrosis. Treatment with burdock root is effective for stomach diseases - gastritis and ulcers. Excellent results are noted after taking the infusions and infusions of this plant with urolithic and cholelithiasis, with gout, with endocrine system diseases, in particular diabetes mellitus. Decoction of burdock root is traditionally prepared in the following way: four tablespoons of crushed and dried roots pour two cups of boiling water and leave for 12 hours to infuse. Then the infusion should be filtered and boiled, cooled and kept in the refrigerator.
Take three times a day on a tablespoon. Tincture is prepared even easier: the raw material is placed in a dark glassware and filled with alcohol or vodka. It is not necessary to filter. This means is perfectly treated for skin diseases - eczema, boils and other inflammations of the skin. Juice from the stems and roots of burdock is recommended for taking with allergies. A curative effect on the hair condition of any broths, infusions and oils on the basis of this amazing healing plant is known to people for several centuries.

As a product

The food consumed fresh annual leaves and burdock roots. The use of plants as vegetables, seasonings, greens for salads is very popular in many countries. Young roots are added to vitamin soups instead of potatoes or together with it, as well as with carrots, cabbage, greens. Slightly bitter leaves add spice to any salad. Many of them even scrape and marinate for the winter. The roots go to the food raw or stewed, baked or as a seasoning.

How to harvest burdock roots

The application of the roots of a plant for one or another purpose dictates the features of the preform. So, for use in food attention deserves young annual plants. Fresh, juicy root, as already mentioned above, goes to all sorts of fresh salads, added to soups. But for medicinal purposes, well-suited two-year-old roots of burdock. Useful properties of their intensified by the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, when the plant has already blossomed and ripened, strength and priceless vitamins and trace elements accumulated. Burdock should be excavated, cut off the roots and let them dry. It is not recommended to wash them. The dried dirt is easily brushed off. Then the roots should be thoroughly wiped with a damp cloth. Then the raw material should be dried in the fresh air in the shade, and even better - just podvyalit them in the oven and let it go already in the draft. To the roots dried faster and do not wander, they need to be cut or grated on a large grater. The burdock leaves are harvested a little earlier, in July-August, and dried in the usual way in the shade.