Curry Leaves: Health Benefits, Chemical Composition, Preparation
We are able to easily find curry leaves in our home garden. Curry leaves tree is belonging to Rutacea family and also Sapindales order. The scientific name of curry leaves is Murraya koenigii. In this tutorial, we are going to look about chemical composition, day to day uses and health benefits of curry leaves. Also, we discuss different methods of preparing curry leaves for different purposes.
Chemical composition of curry leaves
Curry leaves are rich in alkaloids, glycosides and phenolic compounds. And also curry leaves have high amount of anti-oxidants. Linalool, alpha terpinene, myrcene, mahanimbine, caryophyllene, alpha pinene and murrayanol are the compounds that are in curry leaves. And also curry leaves contain vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin E, phosphorous, iron, calcium and nicotinic acid.
Aroma and the flavour of the curry leaves
Curry leaves have nice aroma. Because of its aroma, curry leaves are used to cooking when we cook dhal curry, soups, meat curry varieties of fried rice. When we add curry leaves to our cooking, it makes a very fine aroma during cooking. Not only during cooking, it also releases its aroma when we crush curry leaves. So, its own aroma is one of the feature of which curry leaves have.
Curry leaves have a fine flavour when we add them into our diet. Countries such as Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Malaysia, and South India are used curry leaves mostly. If we chop curry leaves with garlic, we are able to get sweeter pungent aroma in our foods. When we fry our dishes if we are able to put garlic with curry leaves into the heated oil before other ingredients add, it will give us a sweeter aroma and sweeter flavour to our foods. So, our desire to the food will be increased because of the curry leaves.
Health benefits of curry leaves
When it comes to health benefits of curry leaves, we can talk wide area of benefits.
- Cholesterol and triglyceride levels which are caused to heart diseases are decreased because of the curry leaves. An alkaloid called mahanimbine which is rich in curry leaves are caused to that benefit occurs.
- Curry leaves protect our nervous system.
- Curry leaves extract helps us to increase our body's brain protecting antioxidants such as glutathione peroxidase, glutathione reductase, superoxide dismutase.
- And also curry leaves help to enhance our memory. It reduces the oxidative damage in brain cells.
- The curry leaves have anti-cancer effects. Curry leaves decrease the breast cancers. Curry leaves extract can dead the breast cancer cells. And also an alkaloid called girinimbine is caused to colon cancer dead.
- Another good health benefit of curry leaves is, it decrease the high blood sugar level. And also curry leaves have iron, folic acid. So, because of curry leaves, anemia condition can't be occurred in our body. When we have the necessary limit of iron and folic acid we can prevent anemia condition.
- Curry leaves have anti-bacterial effects. They can prevent the growth of corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis and Streptococcus pyogenes.
- Curry leaves have vitamin A. They are needed to keep our eyes healthy.
- If you are a pregnant lady, sometimes you have morning sickness during the pregnancy period. Because of curry leaves, you are able to decrease them.
- When we are able to get curry leaves regularly, we can lose our weight. For that, you have to put some curry leaves into the boil water and after leave it some time and drink it. Every morning you can do that. You can have a nice weight that you want.
Why curry leaves useful for our hair?
Curry leaves rich in beta carotene and protein. So curry leaves help us to reduce hair fall and increase hair growth. Curry leaves can reduce the dandruff in hair. Alcohol and smoking may be caused to premature hair greying. But these curry leaves can reduce hair greying due to vitamin B.
So now we know it is very important that using curry leaves for our hair. How can we use them for our hair? Let's take a look about how to do it?
Preparing curry leaves for our hair and skin
First you have to chop curry leaves. After that, add some water drops to it. Now you are able to make a paste. Now apply it to your scalp on hair. This paste repairs your hair roots. So you can reduce hair fall.
Curry leaves not only good for hair. It is also good for our skin. We can use as a treat for the skin. Curry leaves prevent from skin infections.
How to make a paste for our skin?
Make curry leaves paste first. I have already explained it in a above section. After that, mix the curry leaves with pinch of turmeric. You can use this as a face pack. Using this, you can remove dark spots in your face.
Curry leaves also good for our nails.
Further in ayurvedic medicine curry leaves use to clean teeth. According to this, in Ayurveda they use curry leaves powder as tooth powder or raw leaves.
I have explained above, how we can gain benefits from benefits. And how valuable the curry leaves are. But we have to know that how we can get curry leaves. How can we prepare them for our diet?
Preparing curry leaves for our diet
Curry leaves juice- take curry leaves, mint leaves and cinnamon powder. Put them together in to the boiling water. Then add honey and lime juice to the boil water. After mix it well. Keep it for cooling. This curry leaves drink helps you to lose your weight and other benefits also.
Other way to prepare a curry leaves juice- put curry leaves and lime juice and a little bit sugar to the boiling water. If you drink this curry leaves beverage, the hair growth is increased. And also your digestion will be easier.
Further, you can add curry leaves to your tea. Usually we add dried curry leaves to the tea. But the children haven't a better choice to curry leaves as raw leaves. If we chop curry leaves, it will be easy for kids to eat.
How can we keep curry leaves for some time?
- Keep curry leaves in a dry place. We can keep them in a refrigerator. When in the refrigerator, wrap them in a paper towel to absorb the moisture.
- We can dry curry leaves by the sunlight. And make dried curry leaves and we are able to keep then for two three months. Also we can mill them and make dried curry leaves powder and keep them in a dry place.
- If you add curry leaves to your dish, you have to remove black leaves.
How can we grow a curry leave tree?
Curry leaves plant need a warm climate. But in cold climate countries, a pot can be used to grow a plant. Grow curry leaves plant in a pot and keep it in indoors. So you can use fresh curry leaves if you want.
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