What are the benefits and effects of reed root?
Reed root is the rhizome of the reed, a tall perennial aquatic or hygrophytic grass of the genus Phragmites in the grass family. Used as medicine, it has the effects of clearing heat, promoting fluid production, relieving restlessness, stopping vomiting, and promoting urination, and it has therapeutic effects on conditions such as fever with restlessness and thirst, lung-heat cough, lung abscess with purulent sputum, and painful strangury with heat. Let us take a look together at the benefits and effects of reed root below!
Medicinal Value of Reed Root
[Nature and Flavor] Sweet in flavor, cold in nature.
[Meridians Entered] Lung and stomach meridians.
[Effects] Clearing heat, promoting fluid production, relieving restlessness, stopping vomiting, and promoting urination. It mainly treats fever with restlessness and thirst, stomach-heat vomiting, lung-heat cough, lung abscess with purulent sputum, and painful strangury with heat.
Clinical Effects of Reed Root
1. Painful strangury with heat: Reed root has the function of clearing heat and promoting urination, and can be used to treat painful strangury with heat and scanty dark urine, often combined with cogongrass rhizome (Imperata cylindrica rhizome), plantain seed (Plantago seed), and the like.
2. Stomach-heat vomiting and retching: Reed root can clear stomach heat and stop vomiting and retching. Fresh product can be decocted with bamboo shavings (Bambusa tuldoides), fresh ginger, and the like, as in Reed Root Drink.
3. Fever with restlessness and thirst: Reed root is sweet in flavor and cold in nature; it can both clear and vent excess heat from the qi aspect of the lung and stomach, and promote fluid production to quench thirst and relieve restlessness. Therefore, it can be used to treat damage to fluids from febrile disease with restlessness, heat, and thirst; a thick decoction is taken frequently. It is often combined with dwarf lilyturf tuber (Ophiopogon japonicus) and trichosanthes root, or its fresh juice is taken with matsumoto aspergillus? No--with fresh juice of dwarf lilyturf, pear juice, water chestnut juice, and lotus root juice, as in Five-Juice Drink.
4. Lung-heat cough: Reed root enters the lung meridian and is good at clearing and venting lung heat. For treating lung-heat cough, it is often combined with skullcap root (Scutellaria baicalensis), thunberg fritillary bulb (Fritillaria thunbergii), and trichosanthes fruit. If treating wind-heat cough, it can be combined with mulberry leaf, chrysanthemum flower, and bitter apricot seed, as in Mulberry and Chrysanthemum Drink. If treating lung abscess with purulent sputum, it is mostly combined with coix seed and wax gourd seed, as in Reed Stem Decoction.
Medicinal Formulas of Reed Root
1. To treat lung abscess with vomiting of blood: Fresh reed root 1000 grams, stewed with pig heart and lung and taken.
2. To treat whooping cough and hemoptysis: Reed root 30 grams, selaginella 6 grams, oroxylum seed 6 grams, and cowhide jelly 7.5 grams. Decoct in water and take.
3. To treat swollen and painful throat: Fresh reed root, pounded and squeezed for juice, mixed with honey and taken.
4. To treat the five types of dysphagia, qi stagnation in the chest and diaphragm, restlessness, vomiting and retching, and inability to eat: Reed root five liang, chopped, with three large cups of water, boiled down to two cups, remove the dregs, and take warm without regard to time.
5. To treat stomach qi pain with vomiting of sour fluid: Reed root 15 grams, camphor wood root 9 grams. Simmer in water and take, 2 times a day.
6. To treat vomiting during pregnancy with inability to eat, accompanied by vomiting of phlegm and water: Raw reed root ten parts, tangerine peel four parts, fresh ginger six parts, areca seed two parts. With two sheng of water, decoct down to seven ge, and take hot on an empty stomach.
7. To treat bleeding gums: Reed root decocted in water, taken as a tea substitute.