I recently had the unfortunate but almost inevitable (if eating and drinking the local food) experience of getting gastroenteritis here in India, after giving in to multiple glasses of chai on the roadside in a rural village with some new friends (which is made with local water that evidently wasn’t boiled quite enough for my westerner stomach).
The Magic Of Bael Fruit
And although I do carry emergency antibiotics with me, I tend to only use them when in dire straits and natural remedies fail (which is very rare:) I decided I’d give an Ayurvedic fruit extract from the Bael fruit a try, after dong some research and reading some studies about how it works and what it’s used for here in India. As soon as one of my local friends, himself an Ayurvedic healer, suggested bael fruit powder. There are no major western research studies on this fruit, (not very surprising considering it’s not a drug and no one is making much money from making bael fruit capsules lol;) But there was enough evidence as well as local traditional use here by the Ayurvedic docs to convince me to give it a go.
And….. it worked, less than a day after starting to take it, my tummy felt almost back to normal, no more fever, antibiotics remaining stowed away in my emergency pack.
So I want to share with you a bit about what Bael fruit is, and how it’s used in India as a natural remedy for many digestive complaints, from diarrhea and parasitic gut infections to constipation (the ripe fruit) and stomach ulcers and how you can use it back in the west, where it’s now available at many health stores. The message here too is not that you have to use bael fruit specifically if you are back in North America or Europe if it’s hard to find because it doesn’t grow there. There will likely be a local herb or plant that has similar uses where you live. That’s the beauty of natural medicine–it’s everywhere if we just know where to look!
Bael Fruit Benefits
The Bael fruit has been used for thousands of years dating back to BC times for it’s many medicinal properties, and in recent scientific studies, it’s been proven to have anti-inflammatory and anti-infective properties-able to kill both viruses and bacteria gut infections. All parts of the entire tree have different medicine uses: the stem, bark, root leaves, unripe fruit, and ripe fruit. Masters of Ayurvedic medicine know what part of the plant to use for each symptom or illness, such is the art of herbal medicine!
How To Use Bael Fruit
For my particular complaints, I used an extract of the unripened fruit in powder form, from a local herbal supplier here in the Himalayas, which seemed to help me recover more quickly than otherwise expected. Eating the ripe fruit acts as a laxative–not what you want after food poisoning, so this is why I chose the unripe version for my symptoms.
There have also been proven in multiple animal studies and many case reports in humans to be able to heal stomach ulcers, one of the main traditional uses of bael fruit for millenia in India that continues today, despite the growing availability of western medicine drugs.
Bael fruit extracts, like most herbal medicines, doesn’t have the same fancy large-scale research trials behind it yet that the top western medicine drugs have, largely because no one is mass-marketing it yet and able to fund these very expensive studies that drug companies easily afford. However, it may be a useful, natural and handy option to help recover faster from bacterial or even viral gastroenteritis or the ‘stomach flu,’ and it definitely saved me here in India!
Yours In health,
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