Can I eat mung beans while taking medicine?

Mung beans are often used as a food ingredient and can have a diuretic and detoxifying effect. However, they are not suitable for consumption while taking some Chinese medicine, especially some warm tonic Chinese medicine. If you eat mung beans while taking medicine, the efficacy of the medicine will be reduced.

1. Chinese medicine preparation

Whether or not you can eat mung beans depends on the disease the patient suffers from and the type of Chinese medicine he or she is taking. Mung bean itself is also a traditional Chinese medicine, which has the effects of clearing away heat and detoxifying, relieving heat and promoting salivation, and promoting diuresis and reducing swelling. If the patient has heat symptoms such as heatstroke, sore throat, cough with yellow sputum, mumps, dry mouth, bitter taste in the mouth, skin infection, urinary tract infection, constipation, etc., taking mung bean soup (porridge) or mung bean cake while taking heat-clearing Chinese medicines such as Coptis chinensis, Scutellaria baicalensis, Phellodendron chinense, Folium Isatidis, Root Isatis, Bezoar, Honeysuckle, etc., can play a complementary role; if the patient suffers from chronic gastroenteritis, cold pain, numbness, and difficulty in movement in limb joints, abdominal pain, diarrhea, dysmenorrhea and other deficiency and cold symptoms, taking warming and tonic medicines such as ginseng, astragalus, cinnamon, aconite, cloves, galangal and warming and cold-dispersing Chinese medicines such as cassia twig, dried ginger, and asarum, he should abstain from eating mung beans to prevent adding cold to cold or weakening the efficacy of warming and tonic Chinese medicines.

2. Western medicine preparations

When taking drugs such as ephedrine, scopolamine, morphine, caffeine, etc., do not eat mung beans to avoid affecting the absorption of the drugs. In addition, there are no incompatibility between mung beans and most medicines.

If we have to say that mung beans are incompatible with certain medicines, we can only prove it from the chemical composition and pharmacological effects of mung beans. For example, the mung bean protein, tannins and flavonoids in mung beans can combine with organophosphorus pesticides, mercury, arsenic, and lead compounds to form precipitates, reducing or losing their toxicity and making them difficult to be absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract. Therefore, patients with pesticide poisoning and heavy metal poisoning can take mung bean soup or grind raw mung bean powder to detoxify.

Through the above introduction, depending on the different diseases, the choice of medicines is also different. Therefore, whether you can eat mung beans while taking medicine, you should try to avoid taking them together. This will cause great harm to the human body. Attention should be paid to this point. If you want to be able to treat your own diseases well, it is best to follow the regulations for treatment.

3. Who can’t drink mung bean soup?

1. People who are taking warm tonic Chinese medicine should not take it to avoid reducing the efficacy of the medicine.

2. People with cold constitution. Such people often have symptoms such as cold limbs, fatigue, cold pain in the waist and legs, diarrhea and loose stools. Eating mung beans will aggravate the symptoms and even cause other diseases.

3. The elderly, children and the weak. Because mung beans contain more protein than chicken. This type of people has poor gastrointestinal digestion function and it is difficult for them to digest mung bean protein in a short period of time, and they are prone to diarrhea due to indigestion.

4. There is currently no scientific evidence to prove that other Chinese medicines are incompatible with mung beans. In particular, some traditional Chinese medicines for clearing heat and purging fire, such as Coptis chinensis, Scutellaria baicalensis, Phellodendron chinense, Folium Isatidis, Root of Isatis, Bezoar, Flos Lonicerae, etc., when taken together with mung bean soup or mung bean cake, can play a complementary role and achieve twice the result with half the effort.