The Most Powerful Dried Herb On Your Spice Rack?
The curative properties of clove and its essential oil are legendary. Not only does it have the highest antioxidant value of any spice, its multiple range of uses are exemplary.
This unopened flower bud of a tropical tree, native of Indonesia, is also offered to local deities. When fresh, the clove is pink and turns rust-brown when dried. Clove essential oil, applied to a cavity in a decayed tooth, relieves toothache. The oil is also used to treat skin disorders such as acne, pimples, and severe burns.
On the ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) scale used by the National Institute on Aging in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to assess the antioxidant value of foods, clove has the highest ORAC score.
Clove-infused water is used to treat stomach upsets, nausea and diarrhoea. Folklore says that sucking two whole cloves without chewing or swallowing them helps to curb the desire for alcohol.
Cloves were traded by Arabs in the Middle Ages as part of their buying and selling on the profitable Indian Ocean trade route. That’s how it happened to reach Europe and beyond.
Cloves, along with nutmeg and pepper, were highly prized in Roman times, and Pliny the Elder once famously complained that “there is no year in which India does not drain the Roman Empire of fifty million sesterces.”
At Christmas time, cloves can be pressed into an apple or the peel of an orange and used as a warm-smelling adornment in the kitchen or elsewhere in the house. Clove oil warmed in oil burners gives an aromatic holiday scent to any room.
Clove, as a herb or an essential oil, is also used to treat magic spells and matters related to Jupiter — growth, legal matters, meditation, money, prosperity, settling legal matters, and spirituality.
In aromatherapy, clove bud essential oil excels when used in massage; its invigorating and analgesic action relieves muscular aches, stiff joints, sprains, arthritis and rheumatism. Similarly, its carminative action helps to relieve dyspepsia, colic and stomach cramps. It also has a powerful antiseptic and antifungal action which can be put to a wide range of uses.
Article source © Times of India
