Medicinal value of camel thorn

Camel thorn is a plant that is mainly secreted in desert areas. This plant is relatively drought-resistant and can be used as medicine. It is helpful for treating diseases such as dysentery and diarrhea. It also has anti-cancer and cancer prevention effects. So if you want to use camel thorn, you need to understand its medicinal value. You cannot take medicine at will to avoid side effects of the medicine. You can learn about it.

Camel thorn is mainly distributed deep in deserts and Gobi, absorbing underground moisture and nutrients. It is a naturally growing drought-resistant plant. It is mainly produced in Ningxia, Xinjiang and Gansu, and grows in sandy wastelands, salinized low-lying wetlands and sandy Gobi at an altitude of 150 to 1500 meters.

Edible value

Camel thorn is a nectar plant in June and July. When there is a strong wind, the camel thorn in the Turpan Basin in Xinjiang will pierce its leaves with its needles, and the wound will secrete sugar juice. After being exposed to wind and sun, the sugar juice shrinks into small pieces and can be eaten. People call it "thorn sugar", and boiling it in water can cure dysentery and vomiting and diarrhea. This "thorn sugar" was a tribute during the Tang Dynasty when Emperor Xuanzong was in power. It was called thorn honey and was amber in color and very tempting.

It is a food used to make sugar, and tastes as sweet as sugar when eaten. At that time, it was sold to all parts of the Central Plains along the Silk Road. Cen Shen, a frontier poet in the Tang Dynasty, wrote a poem: "Guilin grapes are newly sprouted, and the camel thorn honey in Wucheng is not yet edible." The poem indicates that when the grapes sprout in early spring, the camel thorn honey has not yet formed into grains and is naturally not edible.

Medicinal value

After four years of research, scientists in Xinjiang found that some compounds isolated from camel thorn have good performance in anti-oxidation, anti-allergy, and anti-tumor. The anti-cancer activity of this new compound is discovered for the first time. This achievement passed the results appraisal organized by the Science and Technology Department of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The research results have been recently published in Modern Chinese Medicine and Chinese Pharmaceutical Journal.

Camel thorn is a deciduous shrub unique to arid desert areas. The plant can secrete sugar substances. The thorn sugar collected after drying is a folk medicine used by ethnic minorities to treat abdominal pain and bloating, dysentery and diarrhea, nourish and strengthen the body, balance body fluids and abnormal bile.

Through extraction, separation and purification, the active chemical components of camel thorn and thorn sugar were systematically studied, and 50 compounds were separated and identified, of which 14 compounds were found for the first time in camel thorn plants, 4 were found for the first time in camel thorn plants, and the discovery of the new compound isoflavone lignans is a completely new compound. This type of substance is "difficult to find in nature" and shows moderate induction activity on mouse lung cancer cell lines, "indicating its anti-cancer application value."