Valuable remedies from the custard apple tree.

Traditional Chinese medicine also believes that custard apple has a sweet and slightly sour taste, a warm nature, and the effect of reducing gas, clearing phlegm, and treating dysentery... with simple and inexpensive methods of preparing medicine.

Ripe custard apples are very beneficial for the elderly, those recovering from illness, and postpartum women. Unripe custard apples, which are damaged by fungus, have a dry, reddish-brown or purplish color and are used to treat boils on women's breasts, coughs, and sore throats. In addition, folk medicine uses custard apple seeds to kill lice, leaves to treat chronic malaria and sprains, and the roots and bark of the custard apple tree as an anthelmintic.

For your reference and application, here are some ways to treat certain ailments using custard apple:

- Treating breast swelling:Take a handful of custard apple leaves, crush them together with dandelion leaves, and apply the mixture to the swollen breast. Change the dressing once a day.

- Treating sprains and injuries:Take 20g of custard apple leaves, 10g of unripe papaya fruit, 5g of slaked lime, and 5g of salt. Grind them all together until a paste forms, then heat over a fire and apply to the affected area. Apply once a day.

- Deworming:Chop 30-50g of custard apple root, wash thoroughly, lightly roast, then boil to make a concentrated decoction and drink once in the morning.

- Provides nourishment for the elderly, those recovering from illness, and postpartum women:Custard apples should be eaten twice a day, one fruit each time.

- Treating diarrhea and dysentery:Take 20g of unripe custard apple, burn it to ashes, add 50g of young shoots of Laos grass, and 30g of roasted rice until golden brown. Boil all ingredients together and drink the decoction once a day, divided into three doses.

- Treat breast boils:Take dried, powdered custard apple fruit, mix with vinegar, and apply this mixture to the boils several times daily.

- Treating toothache:Crush custard apple seeds and soak them in alcohol. Then, use the alcohol-infused custard apple seeds to rinse the swollen and painful tooth for about 10-15 minutes before spitting it out. Repeat this several times a day.

ButTreating head lice:Take the juice from crushed custard apple seeds soaked in strong alcohol and apply it to your hair. Then, cover your head with a cloth and leave it on for about 30 minutes before washing your hair. You can also soak your clothes in this custard apple seed-infused alcohol solution.

- Treating sore throat:50g of dried custard apple, 50g of rehmannia root, 30g of scutellaria root, 20g of gac fruit seeds, 50g of mint leaves, 25g of licorice root, 25g of lemon leaves, 25g of apple leaves. All ingredients are dried (except the dried custard apple, which is charred), then ground into a fine powder. This powder is mixed with 150g of sugar syrup and formed into pills, each weighing 0.5g. Adults take 3-4 pills twice daily. Children, depending on age, take 3-6 pills per day, divided into two doses. Treatment should last 3-5 days.

- Treating malaria:40g of unripe custard apple, 80g of earthworms (the type with a segmented neck), 20g of calcined alum. Crush the unripe custard apples, soak them in alcohol and roast until golden brown. Remove the intestines from the earthworms, wash them thoroughly, rinse with alcohol, dry them, and roast until golden brown. Mix both ingredients with the calcined alum, grind into a fine powder, and knead with garlic water to form pills the size of green beans. Take 10 pills twice a day.

Alternatively, take 20-30g of custard apple leaves, crush them, add water and squeeze out one bowl of juice. Filter the juice through a cloth, leave it exposed to dew, and the next day add a little alcohol, stir, and drink it about 2 hours before a malaria attack. Drink once a day for 5-7 consecutive days.

According to Vietnam Agriculture - NT