Properties and uses of Bitter apple
Properties and uses of Bitter apple
The Bitter apple also called cocomero or bitter cucumber (Citrullus colocynthis (L.) Schrad.) Is a perennial herbaceous species of the Cucurbitaceae family.
It is a plant native to the hot regions of the Mediterranean basin and Africa and in Italy we find it in Pantelleria and in the Aeolian Islands, where it grows in dry and sandy soils.
It is a creeping plant with a stiff and angular stem, sprinkled with palmate and hairy leaves, of a bright green color in the upper part, wrinkled and pale in the lower one. It has yellow flowers with green veins, with 5 star-shaped petals that arise from the axil of the leaf and have a short stalk. It has a spherical yellowish (berry) fruit with a diameter of 5-10 cm, with a thin and solid skin that encloses a white porous pulp in which there are smooth, oval, orange-yellowish seeds. The taste of this fruit is very sour, so as to still feel in the mother tincture prepared starting from the pulp. Recall that the Cucumis Colocynthis is a poisonous plant, which can be lethal. From the pulp of the dried fruit of this plant we obtain a mother tincture, which is useful for the homonymous homeopathic remedy to cure the paroxysmal pains that arise after conflicting situations.
Bitter apple has a spasmolytic action on smooth muscles, therefore indicated at the level of the digestive system to treat epigastric pains, cramps, hepatic colic, spastic colon, painful diarrhea with tenesmus.
In detail, the use of Colocynthis is indicated for those patients expressing mainly the following organotropisms: digestive system; peripheral nervous system; biliary bladder.
In particular this homeopathic remedy is indicated in the treatment of disorders such as: hepatic and bilious colic, abdominal spasms; painful menstruation; lumbosciatalgie that worsen with cold and extension; facial neuralgias that improve with the heat; epigastric pains, gastritis, ulcers; acute inflammation of the biliary tract also with fever and pain; intestinal colic also violent, especially in the infant; severe and painful diarrhea, tenesmus; dysmenorrhea; sciatica that diminishes by bending the leg; spasmodic pains in the form of spasms; pains that arise as a result of a violent rage, in fits of anger; renal colics, lithiasis, urinary tract stones.
The dilution-dynamization preparation procedure makes the Colocynthis medicine incapable of harming and exiting a great many other curative properties that the non-dynamized raw substance does not possess.
Colocynthis is used, besides, as a homeopathic remedy also as a cure in Allopathic Medicine. Thanks to its diuretic and purgative properties it is, in fact, used above all in the treatment of rheumatic diseases.
The Citrullus colocynthis plant contains: cucurbitacins: natural compounds with anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects; elaterine: substances with purgative action and anticancer properties.