Thursday, August 20, 2009

Siddha Home Remedies: Ammaan Pacharisi

Ammaan Pacharisi is the Tamil name of the herb Euphorbia Hirta, the commonly known asthma weed/snake weed. Since there are a good number of snake weed varieties, due care should be exercised in identifying this Euphorbia Hirta. It has a whitish, reddish tinge and grows lusciously during the rainy seasons.

The herb looks like a climber and can be found in plenty in the banks of rivers and lakes and damp places. This herb is found in India, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Philippines and most of the East Asian countries.

The Siddhars are in praise of this herb’s curative properties. It is used extensively in both Siddha and Ayurveda preparations.

Collect a handful of the fresh leaves of this herb and sauté with ghee and green gram. The sauté leaves is an excellent remedy for mouth ulcers, chapped lips and ulcers of the stomach. It is also effective in treating anal fissures.

The flower of this herb is useful for lactating mothers. For this the flowers are collected and ground to a fine paste using milk. This is then mixed in a glass of milk and taken in the mornings alone for a week. This is found to help in improving milk secretion.

The leaves of the herb are sauté along with garlic and shallots. Make a fine paste of this. This paste (thuvaiyal in Tamil) is taken with rice. This is found to cure constipation and bring down the body ‘heat’.

Application of the paste of the leaves on boils and swellings is found to cure them rather quickly.

White discharge in women can be cured with this herb. Leaves of the herb are ground to a paste and then mixed in a glass of buttermilk. This should be taken on empty stomach in the mornings for five days. This is found to cure white discharge.

The herb secretes a white substance when cut. This substance is applied on warts and they fall off in a couple of days.

These are some uses of the amman pacharisi herb.