The main benefits of black nightshade are hepatoprotective properties. Also, the plant has anti-inflammatory, antitoxic and sedative properties.
In relation to nightshade, an interesting fact is that only green berries are considered poisonous. They are rich in the compound solanine, which has a toxic effect on the human body. When fully ripe, solanine is destroyed, and ripe fruits are used as a therapeutic agent, as well as for making jam and pie fillings.
Nightshade is mistakenly considered a weed due to its unpretentiousness. The plant is found in ravines and ravines, on roadsides, on the outskirts of fields, grows among garden plants and in vegetable gardens. The plant's low requirements for soil allows it to grow on pastures and in weedy places.
The black species of nightshade is widespread in Russia. It grows everywhere, excluding the northern regions. Even in the southern part of Siberia, nightshade is common. It is considered a Eurasian plant, artificially introduced into the territory of North America. It adapts well to moderate climatic conditions, grows in France, Germany, Ukraine.
Black nightshade belongs to annual grasses. Unlike other species of this plant, black nightshade does not differ in the special beauty of flowers, and therefore is rarely grown on estates or cultivated for subsequent harvesting. As a rule, the needs for a plant are satisfied by the number of nightshade growing in natural conditions. The main characteristics are as follows.
The use of ripe nightshade fruits in food limits the specific and unpleasant smell. To get rid of it, they practice scalding the berries with freshly boiled water.
The chemical composition of nightshade is rich and diverse, which explains its many-sided effect on the human body. The main useful ingredients are as follows.
The composition of nightshade has not been thoroughly studied, however, in folk medicine, its complex beneficial effect on the human body is noted.
For medicinal purposes, you can use both young shoots of the plant, along with inflorescences and leaves, and fully ripe fruits. Harvesting black nightshade involves two stages.
With active flowering, nightshade grass is collected - its young shoots. They are harvested in three stages.
Starting in August, nightshade fruits are harvested. This requires five steps.
You can prepare black nightshade by making jam from berries. To do this, the berries are boiled whole in sugar syrup or cooked puree is boiled. If you freeze black nightshade for the winter, you will be able to preserve its beneficial properties with minimal losses.
You can store frozen berries until the next harvest. The dried fruits and grass of the nightshade are stored entirely in boxes, the bottom of which is covered with paper. Shelf life with good ventilation and protection from sunlight can be up to eight years.
The medicinal properties of black nightshade are used to eliminate many ailments. For healers and healers, the entire aerial part of the herb is valuable, which is used in the treatment of diseases in all sorts of ways. An interesting fact is the selectivity of the action of the plant when preparing its preparations in the same way. Thus, the infusion can be useful for both internal and external use.
Black nightshade herb has the following actions:
The properties of preparations from nightshade herb are used in the following cases:
The nightshade herb has anthelmintic and antibacterial properties. Water extract from the herb cleanses the blood in case of furunculosis, lichen, allergies of unknown origin. Strong herbal infusions are added to medicinal baths. They relieve pain when:
The nightshade herb also has bronchodilatory and expectorant effects, and therefore is used for bronchial asthma, bronchitis, colds, tuberculosis.
Nightshade fruits are used to treat a variety of diseases.
The people of nightshade are assigned the ability to heal from tumors of a malignant nature, including blood cancer. With oncology, extracts from fruits or flowering grass are often taken. It is believed that the plant also treats cirrhosis, as well as hepatitis of any origin, including alcoholic and medicinal. The hypoglycemic effect of nightshade has a positive effect on blood sugar levels in diabetes mellitus.
Healers often use nightshade for the preparation of drugs for prostatitis, impotence in men, nocturnal emissions. The use of black nightshade for ladies takes place with violations of the cycle and frigidity. Dried fruits in ancient times were steamed and used for lotions for headaches, brain tumors.
At home, you can prepare effective medicines from nightshade if you follow the following recipes.
Peculiarities . Nightshade is used to treat any skin damage: mechanical, infectious, trophic, allergic, autoimmune. For the best effect, the ointment is applied under the bandage, the exposure time is two to four hours.
Preparation and application
Peculiarities . It is used for ascites, edema, hypertension, as well as for external use with a cold, diseases of the skin, mucous membranes.
Preparation and application
Peculiarities . It is used as an antitussive, antispasmodic, analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anti-allergic agent.
Preparation and application
Peculiarities . It is taken orally as an anti-cold, anti-inflammatory, choleretic, diuretic.
Preparation and application
Peculiarities . Nightshade infusion is used to treat headaches, joint pains, stomach pains, as well as disorders of the nervous system. From a warm extract, make external lotions for wounds, ulcers, boils.
Preparation and application
Peculiarities . Increases the body's resistance during the cold season, relieves muscle and joint pain. Eliminates extensive allergic rashes, helps fight psoriasis, eczema.
Preparation and application
Treatment of diseases with black nightshade, if drugs from it are taken orally, it is better to agree with your doctor. This rule is especially true for people suffering from chronic ailments.
Contraindications for black nightshade include pregnancy, childhood, individual plant intolerance. You can not use it with breastfeeding. Even external use can provoke adverse effects. Side effects of nightshade include:
According to reviews, the negative effect of the plant is extremely rare and only if the recommended dosages are exceeded. Failure to comply with the doses is fraught with intoxication of the body, which, in the absence of qualified assistance, can end fatally, since the harm of black nightshade is due to the content of potent substances in it. There is an opinion among the people that ordinary bee honey quickly and effectively eliminates the side effects of nightshade.
The beneficial properties of black nightshade are so extensive that it is simply surprisingly stubborn that they are not recognized by official medicine. The inclusion of nightshade in the pharmacopoeias of France, Portugal, Holland, England, Turkey, as well as the centuries-old experience of using the herb by the famous ancient healers Avicenna and Hippocrates can serve as evidence of the plant's medicinal value.
Among the people, bittersweet nightshade has many names - wolf, bear, dog, viper berries, worm, etc. It is also called red, according to the color of the berries. This helps distinguish it from black nightshade. The plant has an ancient magical history. In the old days, they put him under the pillow in order to quickly forget the unhappy love, they washed themselves with broth to get rid of melancholy.
But this wild-growing shrub possesses not only magical properties. It has long been used to treat all kinds of ailments. You just need to be careful when handling it. All parts of it are poisonous, especially the alluring red berries. And it is possible to be treated with it only under the guidance and constant supervision of an experienced specialist.
What are the properties of bittersweet nightshade, alcohol tincture and water infusion, how are they properly prepared from it? Let's talk for the readers of "Popularly about health" about all this in more detail:
Description of nightshade
It is a graceful, curly shrub with sweet bark and bitter stems inside. The lower part is woody, herbaceous stems. During flowering, from June to August, it is covered with purple flowers with yellow stamens. Fruits - juicy, red ovoid berries, eye-catching. Ripen in early summer.
Sweet nightshade can often be found in damp places along the banks of rivers, lakes and swamps, in shaded thickets of bushes. All parts of the plant, especially the berries, are poisonous and can seriously harm your health.
However, in certain dosages, the plant is used in traditional and folk medicine for the manufacture of medicines and medicinal products.
Bittersweet nightshade - useful properties and application
The steroid compounds present in the plant are used by traditional medicine to synthesize adrenal cortex hormones - prednisone, cortisone, etc.
An alcoholic tincture is made, which has an antitumor effect, which has recently been scientifically confirmed. Alkaloids, which are present in large quantities in the composition of the plant, help fight tumors.
Traditional medicine also uses it for medicinal purposes. In particular, funds based on it are used in the treatment of bronchial asthma, inflammatory diseases of the bladder, diarrhea, and many skin diseases. Young shoots are used as a wound healing and anthelmintic agent.
Let's talk in more detail about the medicinal use of bittersweet nightshade:
Dermatoses, burns, wounds that do not heal for a long time. Apply gruel from crushed fresh leaves and berries, alcohol tincture.
Exudative diathesis, eczema, psoriasis, scabies, erysipelas of the skin, as well as scrofula and dermatomycosis. I use a decoction of the stems and berries externally, and an alcohol tincture inside.
Joint diseases (arthritis, polyarthritis, gout, rheumatism, etc.). Use externally and internally a decoction, alcohol tincture from the aerial part.
Colds, flu, pneumonia, bronchial asthma, bronchitis, whooping cough, fever. Prescribe a decoction of flowers, take alcohol tincture. They take baths with nightshade decoction.
Hysteria, hypochondria, amenorrhea and dysmenorrhea, venereal diseases. A decoction of the stems, alcohol tincture are taken inside.
Epilepsy, headaches, helminthic invasions. Assign to take a decoction of the fruit, alcohol tincture.
Preparation of medicinal products
Effective remedies are made from young shoots and stems, as well as flowers, berries, which are included in the treatment of many diseases. Most often, in folk medicine, an aqueous infusion and alcoholic tincture are used.
Bittersweet nightshade tincture:
Put the crushed shoots, stems, leaves into a jar, fill with alcohol, observing the proportion of 1x10. Close tightly, place in a cool, dark place. After 2 weeks, strain through several layers of gauze. The recommended intake is 5-10 drops with a small portion of water, 3 times a day, before meals (half an hour).
Water infusion:
Grind the aerial part. It will take a little - only 1 tsp of raw materials, which must be transferred to a thermos and filled with half a liter of boiling water. The infusion will be ready in 4 hours. Strain the finished product thoroughly. The recommended intake is 1 tablespoon, up to 4 times a day, before meals.
Milk whey remedy:
You can use cow's milk whey, but healers recommend cooking with goat whey. You need to add 1 tablespoon of chopped stems, shoots and leaves to half a liter. Then you can boil everything for 2 minutes, cool and use in treatment.
Or you can leave the mixture to ferment and take the resulting kvass. This agent enhances the effect of anticancer drugs, activates their cytotoxic effect.
Important!
Kvass, infusion of bittersweet nightshade, tincture is taken with caution, without violating the dosage. It must be remembered that the unripe berries of the red nightshade (which we talked about today) are extremely toxic. After maturation, this toxicity decreases slightly, but still remains. This distinguishes bittersweet nightshade from black nightshade.
It is enough to eat a few berries or a couple of leaves, so that symptoms of poisoning soon appear: vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain. If you do not take urgent measures, breathing difficulties appear, cardiovascular failure develops. The first emergency treatment is gastric lavage. Then the victim should be taken to a medical facility.
Of course, bittersweet nightshade, the description of which we have compiled today, is not as poisonous as its close relatives - dope, henbane and belladonna ... However, it can also cause significant harm to health. Therefore, any self-medication without medical supervision is absolutely contraindicated!
Solánum dulcamára
Poisonous!
Family - Solanaceae - Solanaceae.
The parts used are the upper part of the shoot.
The popular name is wolf berries, viper berries, bear berries, dog berries, magpie berries, worm.
Pharmacy name - nightshade stems - Dulcamara stipes (formerly: Stipites Dulcamar a).
Bittersweet nightshade is a perennial winding graceful shrub, ligneous from below, herbaceous above, 30-180 cm high with a creeping woody tuberous rhizome. Stems with a hollow heart, long, sinuous, angular, branched, climbing, woody in the lower part, glabrous or slightly pubescent.
Leaves usually with 2 lobes, oblong-ovate, pointed, often cordate at the base or have two small oblong lobes. The upper leaves are often tripartite or dissected. Fresh leaves give off an unpleasant odor. Inflorescences are cymotic paniculate, forked at the base, on long peduncles.
Fruit - juicy red berries have an ovoid or ellipsoid shape 1-3cm in length. Blooms from June to August. The plant is shade-tolerant.
Violet with yellow conical anthers of stamens, bisexual, regular, with double perianth. The calyx is five-toothed, small, saucer-shaped. Corolla spliced, lilac, rarely white or pink, wheel-shaped, with a folded five-sectioned limb (12-18mm in diameter).
There are 5 stamens; the anthers are narrow, accrete into a conical tube around the g of the column. One pistil, superior ovary, one column with capitate stigma.
It grows in damp thickets of bushes and meadows, along the banks of rivers and ponds, near lakes and swamps. Distributed in the European part of Russia, Western and Eastern Siberia, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and Central Asia.
Steroids, alkaloids, glycosidic bitters, saponins, tannins, phenol carboxylic acids, flavonoids, higher aliphatic hydrocarbons, higher fatty acids.
Collect the herbaceous tops of the stems at the beginning or during flowering, as well as 1-3 year-old stems of bittersweet nightshade, flowers and, finally, berries. The stems are harvested in the fall, after the leaves fall, or in early spring, before the buds open. Dried in the open air in the shade, also in ventilated areas, the stems are cut into pieces 10 - 15 cm. Store in boxes covered with paper, separately, like a poisonous plant.
The raw material for homeopathic remedies from nightshade is the shoots harvested during flowering. The essence is prepared from fresh raw materials and is used for influenza, hives, rheumatism, seizures.
It has an astringent, diuretic, choleretic, expectorant, blood-purifying, anti-inflammatory, analgesic and calming effect of the nervous system.
Traditional medicine uses young herbaceous shoots with leaves for various skin diseases, urticaria, rheumatism, convulsions, bronchial asthma, colds, inflammation of the bladder, diarrhea, irregular menstruation, as a wound healing and anthelmintic agent. The leaves are used for dropsy, whooping cough, externally - for scrofula and rheumatism, berries - for sexually transmitted diseases, epilepsy, migraine attacks, decoction of flowers - for pulmonary diseases.
The leaves and berries of bittersweet nightshade are poisonous; they should be treated only under the supervision of a doctor.
Recently I went to wild places near Kirovo-Chepetsk, to take water samples. And, behold, on the bank of the Prosnitsa River, overgrown with willows, I pour a sample of river water from a sampling bucket into a jar, unbend, and right in front of my face, at the height of human growth, I see a natural potato flower. On a willow bush. It is difficult to confuse this with something: a star-shaped corolla of lilac-violet color, a yellow column of accrete stamens in the center. And only then I notice a curling stem with leaves resembling an elongated heart, like a loach. What is this liana that grows in our places in the wild, from the nightshade family? As it turned out, this is a typical species of the family, bittersweet nightshade(lat. Solanum dulcamara), some consider it a liana, some a semi-shrub. But here he clearly used the willow thickets as a support. This is a poisonous (like most nightshades) plant, but used in folk medicine.
Bittersweet nightshade(lat. Solanum dulcamara) is a species of the genus Solanum of the Solanaceae family. The specific name of the plant is associated with its fruits - berries, which are first green, then yellow, and as they ripen, they turn red, and if you bite through them, you feel the taste first sweet, and then bitter. Popular names are generally discordant and do not cause much respect for this plant: privet berries, wolf berries, worm, viper grass. But there are also names that suggest its medicinal properties: scrofula, mother grass.
Bittersweet nightshade (Solanum dulcamara) belongs to the Solanaceae family and is distributed in temperate and subtropical regions of Europe, North Africa, East and West Asia and North America. In our country, it can be found throughout the European part of Russia (except for the extreme north, Trans-Volga and Lower Volga regions), in the Caucasus, in the south of Western and Eastern Siberia. The plant prefers rich and fertile soils in damp forests and thickets of shrubs, especially in willows and black alder stands, along the banks of reservoirs, in wet meadows, often in weedy places and near dwellings.
The life form of the plant is a shrub, but some authors consider it a liana. The rhizome is ligneous, creeping, strongly branched, in places lumpy-thickened. Climbing stems, perennial, 0.3-1.5 (2-3, up to 5) m tall, with a lignified lower part, up to 2-2.5 (5) cm thick. Young shoots are buffy-yellowish, older ones are covered with gray wrinkled bark, strongly branched at the base, with splayed branches, glabrous or covered with sparsely appressed hairs. Leaves are large, 2.5-12 cm long and 0.6-10 cm wide, alternate, oblong-ovate, entire, sometimes with ears at the base. Purple flowers, reminiscent of potato flowers, are collected at 8-18 in almost corymbose drooping inflorescences. Fruits are juicy, multi-seeded, ovoid, bright red berries. Blooms from May to September. The fruits ripen in July-September.
The plant is poisonous. Bittersweet contains the glycoalkaloid solanine and the glycoside dulcamarine, which dilates the pupils like atropine. In addition, carotene, starch, and protein substances are found in the leaves. Green berries contain up to 2% steroidal glycosides. Ripe fruits contain much less of them. But the old literature describes cases of fatal poisoning even with red fruits. Poisoning most often occurs when eaten (especially by children) attractive-looking red berries. Unlike black nightshade, red nightshade fruits do not lose their toxic properties when ripe. There are also cases of poisoning of careless lovers of herbal medicine.
Bittersweet nightshade is a medicinal, poisonous, insecticidal, tannid-containing, ornamental plant. Stems and leaves have an insecticidal effect, a decoction of them (5-6 kg of fresh stems per bucket of water) is used for spraying against caterpillars and larvae of various insect species. In folk medicine, young herbaceous shoots with leaves are used for therapeutic purposes for skin diseases, especially itchy eczema and inflammation, for bronchial asthma, colds, inflammation of the bladder, diarrhea, irregular menstruation, as a wound healing and anthelmintic agent. Leaves are also used for dropsy, jaundice, whooping cough; outwardly - with scrofula and rheumatism; berries - for sexually transmitted diseases, epilepsy, migraine attacks, decoction of flowers - for pulmonary diseases and catarrh of the respiratory tract. The leaves and berries of bittersweet nightshade are poisonous; they should be treated only under the supervision of a doctor. They contain the glycoalkaloid solanine, glucoside dulcamarine, starch, resin, protein substances. Dulcamarine is similar in action to atropine. Cases of poisoning of animals and birds are known. Poisoning with it disrupts the coordination of movements in cattle, causes diarrhea, palpitations.
Semi-shrub branched from the base; krsch. woody, creeping, strongly branched, in places tuberous thickened; Art. 0.3-1.5 (2-3) m height., At the base up to 2-2.5 (5) cm thick., Climbing, often curving, covered with gray, and younger ones with buffy-yellow, longitudinally wrinkled bark, woody at the base, perennial, strongly branched, with splayed branches, sparsely set with adpressed hairs or almost naked; l. 2.5-12 cm long and 0.6-10 cm wide. (b. h. 5-9 cm long. and 2.5-5 cm wide.), on both sides with sparse short hairs, less often naked or shortly downy, upper b. hours at the base are deeply dissected, often to the midvein, forming one or rarely two pairs of small, ovoid or lanceolate, pointed lobes; the apical lobe is large, ovoid or lanceolate, usually rather sharply narrowed above the middle, and then pulled into a pointed tip or gradually narrowed into a pointed apex; the rest l. whole, ovate or lanceolate, long pointed above the middle, usually with a truncated round or shallow (rarely deep) cordate or occasionally with a wedge-shaped base; sometimes all l. whole (var. persicum Dippel = var. indivisum Boiss. p. p.) or tripartite; chrsh. 1–3 times shorter than the plate. Stsv. extraaxillary, opposite to leaves, and b. m. displaced, of 6-25 (30) flowers, collected in the form of a drooping cymose panicle, once or twice forked at the base, forming curls at the ends; peduncles 2-5.5 cm long., with sparse adpressed hairs; col. 6-15 mm long., Thickened at the top, usually glabrous; cshh. five-toothed; ext. 12-18 mm in diameter., Lilac (rarely white or pink), 8.5-10 mm long., Five-part, its narrow lobes, about 9 mm long. and 3.5 mm wide, lanceolate, long pointed, at first extended, then folded back, below the base with two green, white-bordered spots; pln. narrow (6 times longer than width), fused, stamen filaments are short; the berry is bright red (rarely greenish-yellow), shiny, ovoid or elliptical, dull or sometimes pointed at the tip, dry (6) 7-12 mm long., (4.5) 5-8 mm wide; with. rounded kidney-shaped, flat, finely reticulated. Color 1/2 VI-IX; pl. VII-IX.
In damp forests and bushes, especially in alder groves, along the banks of rivers, lakes, ponds, in wet meadows. - Europe. h .: Kar.-Lapl. (very south), Dv.-Pech., Baltic., Lad.-Ilm., Upper-Volzh., Volzh.-Kam., Upper-Dnepr., Middle-Dnepr., Volzh.-Don., Upper-Dniester., Bess., Prichern., Crimea (very rarely on the southern coast, brought in?), Lower-Don., Rarely; Caucasus: Predkavk. (Taman - adventive?); Zap. Siberia: Obsk. (south-west), Upper-Tob. (zap. h.), Irt. (one location in the Barnaul phn., alien?); Wed Asia: Aral-Kasp. (very rare, adventive). Common distribution: Europe, all pH., Balk.-Maloaz .; all in. Am. in some places naturalized. Described from Europe. London type.
