Useful and medicinal properties of licorice smooth( ordinary liquorice)

Perennial herbaceous plant up to 1-1.5 m tall. Rhizome multigloss, powerful. The leaves are regular, complex, odd-pinnate, sticky, with deciduous stylized stipules. Flowers small, axillary, in spicate brushes, pale purple or lilac. Fruit - bob smooth or glandular-hairy, squeezed from the sides. Blossoms in June-July.

Licorice is a fairly common plant in the South-East in the steppe regions, on the left bank of the Ural River. Distributed in the North Caucasus. It grows along river floodplains, along canals and along steppe depressions.

At collection, do not mix with licorice licorice, in which the flowers are collected in the head-shaped inflorescences and the fruit-beans are short subulate.

The medicinal raw materials are roots and subterranean shoots cleared from the outer crust, 25-40 cm in length and 8-12 mm in thickness, excavated in early spring, in March-April( or in the fall with the onset of aging of plant parts), until the development of new stems. The smell is missing, the taste is burning, sugary and sweet, slightly irritating. Shelf life.

The raw material contains glycosides-liquidoritide and glycerol-risin, sucrose, glucose mannitol, bitterness, gum, asparagine, starch, proteins, traces of essential oil, mineral salts, pectin substances.

The presence of a large number of mucous substances and gums makes it possible to use licorice as a weak

and detoxifying agent and included in the thoracic elixir and breast collection.

There are indications of the ability of licorice root to affect water-salt metabolism. The efficacy of the extract and juice of the licorice root in gastric and duodenal ulcer is associated with the presence of glycercurinic acid in the preparation.

Due to the gum, licorice has a laxative effect and is part of a complex liquorice powder.

When a 5% solution of licorice root is injected into the stomach, hydrochloric acid secretion and total acidity increase. Drug licorice drugs are used for pulmonary tuberculosis and dry bronchitis, as an expectorant emollient, as an antidote for poisoning with meat and mushrooms, as a diuretic, with chronic constipation, diseases associated with disruption of water and mineral metabolism, hemorrhoids, gastric ulcer and duodenal ulcer, withcancer.

In Chinese medicine, it is believed that the root of licorice in its value is not inferior to ginseng and is used as an anti-febrile, analgesic, enveloping, expectorant, mild laxative and with eczema, lupus erythematosus, psoriasis, which is obviously due to the presence of glycerisin in the licorice.

The licorice root, according to Chinese doctors, rejuvenates the body. In Tibetan medicine licorice roots are used in the treatment of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis, diseases of the cardiovascular system and as an anti-inflammatory drug, with tuberculosis of the adrenal glands.

There is evidence of a successful application of the root of the plant in the Addison-Birmer disease.

Licorice preparations( elixir, extract, syrup and complex powder) are used in small doses with interruptions, as it is noted that with long-term use of

, glycerisin can cause electrolyte-water balance disturbance and lead to edema formation.

In the food industry, licorice roots are used to sweeten beer, lemonades, kvass, while dripping apples.

Application

Decoction: 15 g of ground root into 1 glass of water, boil for 20 minutes, take 1 tbsp.spoon 4-5 times a day.

Found that licorice has an anti-cancer( inhibits tumor growth), bactericidal and protistosticheskim action.

Licorice is contraindicated in hypertension, obesity, heart failure and pregnancy.