40. DRUMSTICK

                                               DRUMSTICK

Drumstick is fruit of the tree. It is long and thin and hence it looks like a drum stick. It is cooked like a vegetable in curry. Its leaves and flowers are also cooked and eaten. The leaves have many medicinal values. Tender leaves are used to garnish many dishes. The leaves are a bit sour and have less fat but a lot of minerals and vitamins. It has vitamin A, C, iron, calcium and potassium. It also has lot of fibre. You can wash the tender leave and make juice. You can drink it raw or boil it and add salt and black pepper. Drink it like soup.

Benefits:

1. Juice of leaves is good for all types of diseases. It is tonic.

2. Diarrhoea: To the juice from drumstick leaves add honey and tender coconut water. Drink three times a day. This is good a cure for blood in stools.

3. Jaundice: Mix 2 spoons of leaves juice with coconut water. Drink this twice a day on empty stomach.

4. Cough and cold: Mix salt, black pepper powder and lemon juice with leaves juice. Drink on empty stomach early in the morning.

5. The juice is very good for children. They will not catch cold.

6. Ladies who have period problems and calcium deficiency: Mix the juice with milk and drink daily.

7. Urinary problems: Add carrot and cucumber juice to drumstick leaves juice and drink once a day.

8. Diabetes & obesity: Powder the leaves. Mix with honey and eat before lunch.

9. Pimples: Mix lemon juice with drumstick leaf juices and make a face pack. Apply on face.

10. Breast milk: Eat drumstick in food to increase the production of milk.

11. The leaves are used to make ‘polvoron’ candy, as bio-fuel and moring oil.

12. The leaves have calcium equal to four glasses of milk, vitamin C equal to that in 7 oranges, potassium of 4 bananas, 3 times the iron of spinach, 4 times the vitamin A in carrot and two times the protein in milk. They are dried, crushed and used.

13. The leaves are used to purify water.

14. The bark, root, leaves, fruit, flowers, gum, seeds are all used in medicines. They are used as antiseptic and in treating rheumatism, venomous bites, etc.

15. The seeds are believed to increase the sexual libido in men. They are used as sexual virility drug for treating erectile dysfunction in men and also in women for prolonging sexual activity.

16. The roots are used as condiment but they contain alkaloid spirochin, a potentially fatal nerve paralyzing agent.

17. Ben oil: Oil extracted from the seeds is called Ben oil because it is rich in behenic acid. The substance left over after extraction of oil is used as fertilizer or as a flocculent to purify water.

18. The sap is used to prepare blue dye.

Danger: Too much drumstick leaf juice will increase heat in the body. Roots are poisonous.