Let's talk about Dandelions! Did you know about the many Health Benefits of Dandelion Root and Leaf? Well, let me help to fill you in about this amazing plant! Check out the article below and do some research!
Health Benefits of the Common Dandelion Plant What's better than a plant that gives wishes when you puff its fluff? A plant that provides health benefits! Dandelion is excellent food and medicine! Dandelion is most often thought of as a pesky weed that takes over our lawns and gardens. They overwhelm meadows, soccer fields, and golf courses. They even pop up in cracked sidewalks and pavement. Dandelion is invasive and pervasive. Lucky for us, it's also excellent food and herbal medicine anyone can find, grow, and put to use. It has been used in traditional Chinese healing for breast concerns, appendicitis, and stomach problems. Native Americans boil and drink dandelion extract to help treat digestion problems, skin ailments, inflammation, liver injury, kidney disease, and heartburn. Early Europeans used it to remedy diabetes, high fever, and diarrhea. Dandelion is a very rich source of beta-carotene which we convert into vitamin A. This flowering plant is also rich in vitamin C, fiber, potassium, iron, calcium, magnesium, zinc, and phosphorus. It's a good place to get B complex vitamins, trace minerals, organic sodium, and even some vitamin D, too. Dandelion also contains protein, more than spinach.
How to Pick Dandelion Root and Leaves
It has been eaten for thousands of years as food and medicine to help treat anemia, scurvy, skin problems, blood disorders, and depression.
If you collect them wild, try to choose ones you know have not been subjected to pesticides, fertilizers, and other chemicals. The ones in your lawn are not usually the best.
Instead, pick them from a mountain meadow or abandoned lot.
You can buy seeds or gather them from the familiar puff balls you see each summer. Seeds grow readily in your garden, planter boxes, or pots.
Dandelion leaves are also found fresh in some health food markets or as a freeze-dried herb. Dandelion tea, capsules, and tinctures are also available.
So don't pull up those weeds, collect them for your health!