Are you drinking Ginkgo Biloba Leaf Soaked in Water correctly?

This is the 3452nd article of Da Yi Xiao Hu

Ginkgo Leaf

When autumn comes and the butterflies have died, your green leaves will turn golden, and butterflies will fly all over the garden again.

——Guo Moruo, Ginkgo

Some people say: If you haven’t seen the ginkgo leaves in autumn, then talking about autumn is not enough. If the autumn wind gives autumn colors, then ginkgo is the most brilliant touch of autumn colors.

Ginkgo, as a "living fossil" plant in my country, has been planted as a garden tree since the Han Dynasty. In the Tang Dynasty, people gradually discovered the health value of ginkgo leaves and ginkgo nuts. In the Song Dynasty, the planting area of ​​ginkgo was expanded and the number increased. Therefore, there is a saying that "Tang Huai, Han Cypress, Song Ginkgo". The official record of the medicinal use of ginkgo can be found in the "Shaoxing Materia Medica Annotation" written by Wang Jiguang in the Southern Song Dynasty.

Ginkgo biloba leaf benefits and effects

Ginkgo biloba L is an economic plant resource unique to my country and is listed as a national key protected plant. At present, my country has rich ginkgo resources, accounting for about 75% of the world's total. In addition, only Tianmu Mountain, Shennongjia and Dabie Mountain in my country still have a small amount of pure wild ginkgo.

Ginkgo biloba is sweet, bitter, astringent and flat in nature. It enters the heart and lung meridians. It has the effects of promoting blood circulation and removing blood stasis, dredge meridians and relieve pain, astringe the lungs and relieve asthma, and remove turbidity and reduce fat. It is used for blood stasis blocking meridians, chest pain and heart pain, hemiplegia due to stroke, cough and asthma due to lung deficiency, and hyperlipidemia.

In recent years, the market consumption of ginkgo leaf extract preparations and health foods has increased year by year, and it has become one of the most popular varieties in the global herbal medicine market. It is mainly used to treat blood circulation disorders in the brain and peripheral areas, and has good therapeutic effects on dementia, vascular dementia, senile dementia, etc.

Modern pharmacological research has confirmed that ginkgolides and flavonoids are the main components of ginkgo leaves that exert pharmacological effects.

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Contraindications

Common ginkgo tea, ginkgo slices, etc. are all extracted from fresh ginkgo leaves through a series of scientific and standardized operations. They have been detoxified and meet national standards. The effective ingredients of ginkgo leaves, such as flavonoids and terpenoids, can only play a role after being extracted through a strict process.

Soaking ginkgo leaves in water directly will not only prevent the effective ingredients from taking effect, but may also cause some toxic substances to dissolve into it, such as ginkgolic acid. It can cause allergies, induce gene mutations, embryotoxicity, liver damage, kidney toxicity, neurotoxicity, etc. my country's current pharmacopoeia clearly stipulates that the total ginkgolic acid in ginkgo leaf extract must be less than 10 parts per million.

Another point to note is that many heart patients take low-dose aspirin for a long time. If they take it together with ginkgo leaves or ginkgo leaf preparations, the changes in blood rheology and coagulation function may be enhanced due to synergistic effects. Studies have shown that people who take aspirin for a long time and take 40 mg of ginkgo leaf preparations orally twice a day can cause iris bleeding in the eyes. If you have just had surgery, the risk of bleeding is higher when taking ginkgo leaf preparations and aspirin at the same time.

In addition to aspirin, drugs that reduce blood viscosity should also be used with caution when used in combination with ginkgo leaf preparations.

This article is original, and the pictures are from the Internet

Editor: Yao Jun

Editor: Yao Jun and Zhang Yeqi

Review: Xie Donghao

Unit: Guanghua Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine

About the Author

Yao Jun is currently a Chinese medicine pharmacist at Guanghua Hospital affiliated to Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. He graduated from Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine with a bachelor's degree in Chinese medicine. He has worked in the front line of the hospital's pharmacy department for a long time. He was responsible for supervising and inspecting the third-party companies' management services for the decoction pieces and distribution of our hospital, as well as the monthly prescription reviews of outpatient physicians and the purchase of Chinese medicine pharmacies. He is now responsible for the quality inspection of our hospital's preparations. No matter what position he is in, he insists on being people-oriented and considerate of patients. Provide them with safe and considerate pharmaceutical services.