Purslane: A Plant That Is Both Food and Medicine
Purslane (Machixian, Portulacae Herba) is a common plant that is both food and medicine; wherever there is a vegetable garden, purslane grows. It is common not only in vegetable gardens but also in other fields and along roadsides. The ancients ate purslane, but nowadays, except for a very few who still eat it, most people regard it as a garden weed and remove it.Purslane is extraordinarily hardy: it withstands both drought and waterlogging and is truly a wild green that yields harvest in wet or dry years. Hence its nicknames: long-life vegetable and drought-enduring vegetable. Because its taste is sour, it is also called sour-tasting vegetable.Purslane treats many diseases and has strong health benefits. Among all plants, purslane has the highest omega-3 fatty acid content. Omega-3 transports cholesterol to other tissues for normal metabolism, preventing it from depositing in the body; it thereby stops elevated lipids in the blood from invading arterial walls in various forms and triggering smooth-muscle cell proliferation, which then engulf large numbers of lipid bodies to become foam cells, causing arterial atherosclerosis. Eating more purslane therefore has a good effect in lowering blood lipids and preventing cardiovascular disease.Purslane is an important Chinese medicinal. Traditional TCM holds that purslane is sour in flavor and cold in nature, entering the Large Intestine and Liver meridians; it clears heat, resolves toxin, cools blood and reduces swelling. It treats heat-toxin dysentery, heat and blood stranguria, red and white leukorrhea, metrorrhagia and metrostaxis, hemorrhoidal bleeding and welling-abscesses, erysipelas, scrofula, wet tinea and white baldness.Purslane has a very wide range of uses. It treats skin diseases—for example, veteran physician Zhu Yongxian heavily used purslane to treat erysipelas (i.e., shingles). The Dictionary of Chinese Materia Medica also records purslane 60 g, Daqingye 15 g, Pugongying 15 g, decocted and taken, for shingles. In 144 shingles patients treated with this formula, within 1–10 days most lesions scabbed and fell off; pain resolved in 125 cases, and the remaining 19 also recovered after a course of over 10 days.Purslane also treats hematuria and vaginal bleeding in women. Modern pharmacology shows that purslane has both excitatory and inhibitory effects on the experimental animal's uterus; this may be why it is effective for gynecological benglou and red/white leukorrhea. Su Song liked to use purslane for red and white leukorrhea in women.Purslane also has antibacterial and anti-inflammatory effects: it inhibits Shigella, Sonnei, Schmitz and Flexner dysentery bacilli, E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and some fungi. Recent research finds it strongly inhibits several common food-spoilage bacteria. It is thus scientifically sound that TCM has, from ancient times to today, regarded purslane as the most important herb for dysentery and diarrhea. Purslane works well for colitis and can also serve as adjunctive treatment for bowel cancer.Recent practitioners have made intestinal suppositories from Sanqi (Notoginseng), Qingdai (Indigo Naturalis), Machixian and Wubeizi (Galla Chinensis) for colitis and colon cancer, finding the combination anti-inflammatory, bacteriostatic, anti-itch and conducive to epithelial healing. For enteritis or bowel cancer, one may also use a purslane decoction as an enema; the effect is better than eating it, because the enema delivers the active constituents directly to the site of disease.Besides being eaten and decocted internally, purslane can also be used externally. TCM often applies purslane externally to various ulcerative skin diseases. Shenghui Fang records using 1 liang of dried purslane and half a liang of Huangbai, ground finely; take a little, wrap in cotton, and insert into the ear to treat ear sores. Modern practitioners also decoct Huangbai and purslane and wash various exudative skin diseases, with good results. For eczema and sores on the skin, one may also use 4 liang of purslane and 1 liang of Qingdai, ground finely and spread evenly on the eczema to stop itching and pain. For infantile eczema, decoct purslane, Kushen (Sophorae Flavescentis Radix), Shengdiyu and Huangbai and wash the child's skin. Purslane also treats flat warts. Any skin disease TCM considers due to damp-heat may include purslane in the formula.TCM holds that purslane and turtle are mutually antagonistic, so purslane should not be taken with turtle. Moreover, because purslane is cold in nature, it suits only heat-pattern patients and is not for cold patterns. Some people feel distinctly unwell after taking purslane; they should stop.