Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Siddha Home Remedies: Medicinal Benefits of Bottle Gourd Flower

Bottle gourd, called suraikkai in Tamil, is used in the making of some tasty South Indian dishes. One of the oldest of cultivated plants, the bottle gourd plant is a climber which grows vigorously. The bottle gourd flower looks very tender and matures into bottle gourd. The flower is an excellent coolant. It can be taken raw.

The bottle gourd flower can be added to rice flour and made into an ‘adai’ (a thick dosai or sort of pancake). Taking this ‘adai’ for breakfast provides you with energy and freshness. Also you can soak a couple of these flowers in tender coconut water the previous night. The next day morning you can drink this flower soaked water. This is found to benefit your eyes and helps keep them cool.

A handful of soaked fenugreek seeds and four to five bottle gourd flowers can be ground to a fine paste and taken with milk before going to bed. This is said to cure ulcers in the stomach. Similarly you can make a paste of boiled split green gram and these flowers. This should be mixed in hot rice. A few helpings of this hot rice can help alleviate stomach ache due to “heat”, stomach irritation etc.

One way to cure toothache is to rinse your mouth with bottle gourd flower steeped water.

Thoroughly boil four or five bottle gourd flowers in two glasses of water and allow it to cool. Drinking this liquid is beneficial for those suffering from eye irritation or knee pain.

A couple of bottle gourd flowers along with garlic are sauté in sesame oil. One natural way to relieve abdominal gas is to take these sauté flowers and garlic. This also pacifies the stomach and other internal organs.

Bottle gourd flowers along with bottle gourd act as coolants. In India, you can find these flowers around February – April time. Regular intake of this flower during the hot summer season is found to be beneficial to the stomach.


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