Source: Pranee's Thai Kitchen
You bite into it and your initial reaction is to scrunch up your face and squint, as your tastebuds tingle and go into high alert! The sweet-sour flavour festival in your mouth is all thanks to the bilimbi fruit that is available on our Juiced @ menu at the Wicket Bar in Cricket Square.
Why should Want a natural remedy for treating acne and pores? The oxalic acid, vitamin C and vitamin A found in bilimbi helps to reduce pimples, make the skin brighter and promote the production of collagen. Simply cut the bilimbi in half and apply to the affected areas 2-3 times daily.
Boiling pieces of bilimbi with one cup of water and drinking the strained solution, can help manage diabetes as it works to reduce blood sugar levels.
And then of course there’s the paste created from grinding the bilimbi fruit that is then used to treat skin fungus, ease pain due to rheumatism, and reduce the swelling caused by skin eruptions and insect bites.
Here a few other traditional uses of bilimbi:
- Bilimbi flowers are mixed with bird’s nest, milk, and steam to mitigate cough in children in Sarawak.
- Leaves are used externally to prevent itching in Thailand.
- Leaves are applied as a warm paste for pruritus or poultice on itches, swellings of mumps and rheumatism, and on skin eruptions in Philippines.
- Bilimbi combined with pepper in a preparation called “rujak mircha” is eaten to induce sweating when people are feeling “under the weather” in Java.
- Fruit is an astringent stomachic and refrigerant and its juice is made into syrup as a cooling drink for reducing fever in India.
Source: www.healthbenefitstimes.com
