What are the main benefits and effects of peach kernel?
Peach kernel is the dried mature seed of the peach or mountain peach, plants of the Rosaceae family. The seeds are taken out after the fruit ripens, the flesh and shell are removed, and the seeds are collected. Used as medicine, it has the effects of activating blood and removing stasis, moistening the intestines and relieving constipation, and relieving cough and calming wheezing. It has a therapeutic effect on conditions such as amenorrhea and painful menstruation, abdominal masses and lumps, lung abscess and intestinal abscess, traumatic injuries, dry-intestine constipation, and cough with wheezing. Let us take a look at the benefits and effects of peach kernel below!
Medicinal Effects of Peach Kernel
[Nature and Flavor] Bitter and sweet in flavor, neutral in nature.
[Meridians Entered] Heart, liver, and large intestine meridians.
[Effects] Activates blood and removes stasis, moistens the intestines and relieves constipation, relieves cough and calms wheezing. Mainly treats amenorrhea and painful menstruation, abdominal masses and lumps, lung abscess and intestinal abscess, traumatic injuries, dry-intestine constipation, and cough with wheezing.
[Contraindications] Use with caution in pregnant women and those with loose stools.
Medicinal Discussions on Peach Kernel
1. "Compendium of Materia Medica": Peach kernel moves blood, and is best used raw with the skin and tip retained. To moisten dryness and activate blood, it is best soaked in water, peeled, tips removed, and fried until yellow. It may also be fried together with wheat bran, or burned until its nature is retained, each according to the formula. Double kernels are toxic and must not be eaten; see the entry under apricot kernel.
2. "Shennong Bencao Jing": For blood stasis and blood blockage, abdominal masses and pathogenic qi, and to kill small worms.
3. "Bielu": Relieves cough and upward-rushing qi, disperses hardness below the heart, eliminates sudden violent blood strike, frees the menstrual flow, and stops heart and abdominal pain.
Pharmacological Effects of Peach Kernel
1. Blood-stasis-removing effect: Peach kernel has the effect of relaxing blood vessels, increasing femoral artery blood flow and reducing vascular resistance, and has a direct dilating effect on the vessel wall. In addition, peach kernel can also inhibit blood coagulation and have a hemolytic effect, improve the circulatory system, and can promote uterine contraction and uterine hemostasis in postpartum women, with obvious effects.
2. Anti-inflammatory effect: Experiments have proven that peach kernel has an absorbing effect on inflammation, and the amygdalin it contains has a resisting effect. Through experiments on laboratory mice, it was found that the water extract of peach kernel can consistently inhibit the production of skin-allergy antibodies in mouse serum and hemolytic cells in the spleen of mice. It can be used alone for treatment or in combination with other drugs, and in both cases has an inflammation-improving effect, achieving obvious therapeutic results.
3. Destroying tumors: The hydrolysis products of amygdalin contained in peach kernel, hydrocyanic acid and benzaldehyde, have a synergistic destructive effect on cancer cells. Amygdalin can help trypsin in the body digest the hyaline mucoprotein coat of cancer cells, enabling white blood cells to approach and phagocytize cancer cells. The further metabolites of its hydrolysis products hydrocyanic acid and benzaldehyde also have certain effects on improving the patient's anemia and alleviating the pain of tumor patients, respectively.
4. Other effects: The amygdalin in peach kernel has an antitussive effect. Its fatty oil (almond oil) also has a deworming effect, with an efficacy of 80.8% against pinworms and 70% against roundworms.
Medicinal Prescriptions of Peach Kernel
1. To treat women, married or unmarried, with blood blockage and five-center heat: Peach kernel (roasted), safflower, angelica (washed and roasted), and eucommia-bark-acebark-knotweed-root in equal parts, ground into powder. Take three qian each time, mixed with warm wine, on an empty stomach before meals.
2. To treat postpartum abdominal pain, with dry blood lodged below the navel, and also for unfavorable menstruation: Rhubarb three liang, peach kernel twenty pieces, ground beetle twenty pieces (boiled, feet removed). The above three ingredients, ground into powder, kneaded with refined honey into four pills, boiled one pill in one sheng of wine, take eight ge. Take all at once; fresh blood will descend like pig liver.
3. To treat postpartum blood blockage: Peach kernel twenty pieces (peeled, tips removed), one piece of lotus root. Decoct in water and take.
4. To treat postpartum lochia that does not stop, with a wiry, sluggish and astringent pulse: Peach kernel three qian, angelica three qian, red peony and cassia heart one and a half qian each, granulated sugar three qian (fried to charcoal). Decoct in water? Remove the dregs and take warm.
5. To treat blood disorders with incessant dripping: Peach kernel (peeled, tips removed, boiled), peony, cassia twig, poria, and tree peony (core removed) in equal parts. The above five ingredients are ground into powder and kneaded with refined honey into pills the size of rabbit droppings. Take one pill before meals each day; if no effect, increase to three pills.
6. To treat unresolved Taiyang disease, with heat bound in the bladder, the person behaving as if mad, and acute binding in the lower abdomen: Peach kernel fifty pieces (peeled, tips removed), rhubarb four liang, cassia twig two liang (peeled), licorice (honey-fried) two liang, mirabilite two liang. The above five ingredients, with seven sheng of water, boil down to two and a half sheng, remove the dregs, add mirabilite, put back on the fire until it just boils, then remove from the fire. Take five ge warm before meals, three times a day; there should be mild diarrhea.
7. To treat cold-damage accumulated blood, with fever and madness-like behavior, fullness and hardness in the lower abdomen, and normal urination: Peach kernel twenty pieces (peeled, tips removed), rhubarb three liang (washed with wine), leech (boiled), and gadfly (wings and feet removed, boiled) thirty pieces each. The above four ingredients, with five sheng of water, boil down to three sheng, remove the dregs. Take one sheng warm; if there is no bowel movement, take again.
8. To treat heat pathogen invading the blood aspect, with bloody urine and accumulated blood: Peach kernel three qian (ground into a paste), moutan bark, angelica, and red peony one qian each, donkey-hide gelatin two qian, talc five qian. Decoct in water and take.
9. To treat upward-rushing qi and cough, with stuffiness and fullness in the chest and diaphragm, and wheezing: Peach kernel three liang, peeled, tips removed, ground into juice with one large sheng of water, mixed with two ge of japonica rice, and cooked into porridge to eat.
10. To treat deficiency constipation in the elderly: Peach kernel, arborvitae seed, hemp seed, and pine nut in equal parts. Grind together, melt white wax and form into pills the size of firmiana seeds, and take with a little coptis soup.
11. To treat tenesmus with difficult bowel movements: Peach kernel (peeled) three liang, evodia two liang, salt one liang. The above three ingredients, fried together until cooked, remove the salt and evodia. Take only the peach kernel, on an empty stomach at night before sleep, at any time, chewing five or seven pieces up to one or twenty pieces.