Health Benefits of Coconut

Coconut contains important vitamins, fiber, minerals, and natural oil to provide a wide range of benefits- from keeping one’s body healthy to aiding weight loss and even playing an important role as a beautifying agent. Let’s look at these various beneficial facets of coconut in detail.

When it comes to physical health, coconut and coconut oil help in maintaining optimum cholesterol levels, aids in proper digestion and also provides relief from kidney problems. In addition, it helps in increasing immunity thereby preventing you from various infections.

Other diseases like heart problems, diabetes, HIV, and high blood pressure can be prevented and even treated naturally with coconut. It additionally helps in the treatment of urinary tract infections along with being a natural stress buster. Thus, coconut aids in enhancing the overall health of a person.

If you are wondering of ways to reduce weight, then coconut can help you out. This is because coconut increases the metabolic rate of the body, leading to fast burnout of excessive fat. In addition, coconut oil is widely used by athletes as it helps in boosting energy and endurance, thereby helping athletes to achieve greater efficiency and performance level.

After having discussed about the various health benefits of coconut, let’s look at how it can aid in beautification of a person. Coconut has been found to nature’s fruit of beauty as it helps in keeping the skin soft, supple and glowing. It also protects the skin from the harmful effects of sun, thereby preventing premature freckles, wrinkles and age lines.

Along with skin care, coconut oil is widely used for hair care treatments. It nourishes the scalp and revitalizes dry and dull hair to provide them with natural shine and health. Coconut thus helps in improving the overall health of a person along with being quite useful in natural beauty treatments.

http://www.ayushveda.com/womens-magazine/health-benefits-of-coconut/

Health Benefits of Dandelion

Nutritional
Used by some as salad component.
A rich source of vitamins A, B, C and D as well as minerals.

Folkloric
• Its multiplicity of uses rates it a herbal cure-all, especially for the treating hepato-biliary disease and as a diuretic.
• in Europe, widely used for gastrointestinal ailments. It is taken as broth with leaves of sorrel and egg yolk for chronic liver congestion.
• Used for its gently laxative effect and as bitter tonic in atonic dyspepsia.
• Promotes appetite and digestion.
• Root preparation used for a variety of conditions: fevers, diabetes, eczema, scurvy, bowel inflammation.
• Pounded poultice of leaves applied to wounds and cuts.
• As a drink: 20 gms of root to a cup of boiling water, take 3-5 glasses a day.
• Juice of the stalk used to remove warts.
• Powdered dried roots used with coffee, and a substitute for coffee when roasted and powdered.
• Extract of dandelion used as remedy for fevers and chills.
• Infusion used to treat anemia, jaundice and nervousness.
• Decoction of root herb taken for scrofula, eczema, scurvy and various skin eruptions.
• Used for eczema and acne.
• Native American Indians have used infusions and decoctions of the root and herb for kidney diseases, dyspepsia and heartburn.
• Traditional Arabian medicine has used it for liver and spleen diseases.
• Chinese medicine used it for hepatitis,bronchitis, pneumonia, as a topical compress for mastitis.

Excerpts from other source:

Dandelion Herbal use and Medicinal Properties

The whole plant is used as a medicinal herb internally and externally.

External Uses

The fresh juice of Dandelion is applied externally to fight bacteria and help heal wounds. The plant has an antibacterial action, inhibiting the growth of Staphococcus aureus, pneumococci, meningococci, Bacillus dysenteriae, B. typhi, C. diphtheriae, proteus. The latex contained in the plant sap can be used to remove corns and warts.

Internal Uses

Dandelion is also used for the treatment of the gall bladder, kidney and urinary disorders, gallstones, jaundice, cirrhosis, hypoglycemia, dyspepsia with constipation, edema associated with high blood pressure and heart weakness, chronic joint and skin complaints, gout, eczema and acne. As a tonic, Dandelion strengthens the kidneys. An infusion of the root encourages the steady elimination of toxins from the body. Dandelion is a powerful diuretic but does not deplete the body of potassium.

Research is revealing that the many constituents of Dandelion including Taraxacin, Taraxacoside, Inulin, Phenolic acids, Sesquiterpene lactones, Triterpenes, Coumarins, Catortenoids and Minerals, mainly Potassium and calcium, are very valuable in curing a number of disorders and illnesses. Dandelion is traditionally used as a tonic and blood purifier, for constipation, inflammatory skin conditions, joint pain, eczema and liver dysfunction, including liver conditions such as hepatitis and jaundice.

Other Uses

When placed in a paper bag with unripe fruit, the flowers and leaves of Dandelion release ethylene gas ripening the fruit quickly. A liquid plant food is made from the root and leaves. A dark red dye is obtained from Dandelion root. A cosmetic skin lotion made from the appendages at the base of the leaf blades distilled in water, is used to clear the skin and is effective in fading freckles.

Main sources:

http://www.stuartxchange.org/Dandelion.html
http://altnature.com/gallery/Dandelion.htm