Cowberry occupies huge areas in forests and peat bogs. Brilliant bright red berries of this plant ripen in the period from mid-August to early September. Cowberry berries have a specific sweetish-sour tart flavor, slightly reminiscent of the taste of cranberries. They contain many useful compounds with healing properties: organic acids (oxalic, benzoic, malic, citric, acetic), glycosides arbutin and vaccine, tannins, carotene (also pro-vitamin A), ascorbic acid (vitamin C). Cowberry leaves also have medicinal properties due to the content of glycoside arbutin, ursul, gallic and quinic acids, tannins, flavonol in them. Each of these compounds is responsible for a certain therapeutic effect. For example, glycoside arbutin, falling in the composition of berries or decoction of cowberry leaves in the human body, is further subjected to splitting. In this case, glucose and hydroquinone are formed, which manifests therapeutic properties, killing pathogenic bacteria.
At what diseases are the medicinal properties of cowberries used?
Ripe berries cranberries have a curative effect in the initial stages of hypertension and with diarrhea caused by putrefactive bacteria. Cowberry fruits have an antiscorbutic effect, which is due to the high content of vitamin C. Water infusion berries berries have healing and thirsting properties. It is given to patients who are in feverish states.
Cowberry leaves also have medicinal properties. They are used in the form of broths for inflammatory diseases of the kidneys and bladder, kidney stone disease, gout, rheumatism, gastritis with low acidity, incontinence in children, edema of various origin, colds.
How to save lingonberries for medical purposes?
Berries cranberries can be kept quite a long time in fresh form. This is due to the presence in them of a natural preservative - benzoic acid. Fruits of cranberries are harvested also in the form of jam, compote, juice.
Leaves for billets for future use are dried in such a way that they retain the green color. To properly prepare leaves of cranberries for their further use for medicinal purposes, it is necessary to harvest them in the spring before the flowering begins. Leaves collected in a later period, when dried, strongly blacken and lose their healing properties. Drying of cranberry leaves should be done in darkened rooms with low humidity. Damaged insects raw materials also need to be discarded.