Water chestnuts can be eaten as both a fruit and a vegetable. They are one of the most common health foods that are also medicinal in daily life. Proper consumption is more beneficial to health. Let's take a look at the effects of water chestnuts and the precautions!
I. The Effects of Water Chestnuts
1. Treating Respiratory Diseases
During the season with more respiratory infectious diseases, eating fresh water chestnuts helps prevent and treat meningitis, measles, pertussis, and acute pharyngitis.
2. Laxative and Diuretic Effects
Water chestnuts contain crude protein and starch, which can promote intestinal peristalsis. Clinically, they are often used to treat food stagnation, bloating, and dry stools caused by pathogenic heat. The decoction of water chestnuts has a diuretic effect and is a good dietary remedy for patients with urinary tract infections.
3. Treating Diabetes
Water chestnuts are tender and juicy, can promote the production of body fluids to quench thirst, and have a certain auxiliary therapeutic effect on diabetic patients.
4. Clearing the Lungs and Resolving Phlegm
Water chestnuts are sweet and cold in nature, which can clear lung heat. They are also rich in mucilage, which has the effect of promoting fluid production, moistening the lungs, and resolving phlegm. Therefore, they can clear phlegm-heat and treat symptoms such as lung-heat cough with yellow, sticky, and thick sputum.
5. Functional Uterine Bleeding
Functional uterine bleeding often manifests as irregular menstrual cycles and abnormal uterine bleeding. Modern medicine generally classifies functional uterine bleeding into two main categories: ovulatory and anovulatory. Ovulatory bleeding is common in women of childbearing age, while anovulatory bleeding is more common in adolescents or menopausal women. It has been proven that using a medicinal diet of water chestnuts and shepherd's purse for patients with uterine bleeding has a good effect on female functional uterine bleeding.
6. Other Common Clinical Uses
Water chestnuts are used to treat conditions such as red tongue with little saliva, dry throat and sore throat, and drowsiness from alcohol intoxication. Patients with hypertension, constipation, and hemorrhoids should eat fresh water chestnuts. Applying mashed water chestnuts externally can treat cracked nipples in women. If processed into water chestnut powder, it can be taken orally to soothe the throat and resolve phlegm, which is very beneficial for throat and vocal cord health. Boiling water chestnuts with jellyfish can treat goiter.
II. Precautions for Eating Water Chestnuts
Water chestnuts contain large amounts of protein, fat, crude fiber, carotene, vitamins B and C, iron, calcium, phosphorus, and carbohydrates. Due to their various nutrients, their therapeutic effects are excellent, but there are still some precautions to be aware of when consuming them.
1. Water chestnuts are considered a raw and cold food, so they are not suitable for people with a weak spleen and stomach, loose stools, or blood stasis.
2. Although water chestnuts are somewhat beneficial for the elderly, eating too many can cause shortness of breath and heart palpitations.
3. It is best not to eat raw water chestnuts frequently. If raw water chestnuts are often eaten, the fluke parasite in them can enter the human body and attach to the intestinal mucosa, causing intestinal ulcers, diarrhea, or facial swelling.