Can Common Salt be Used as a Medicine?
In this article we will look at some of the medicinal uses of household items such as common salt. I am sure some of you must be aware of its day-to-day usage but very few of us know the medicinal value and usage of household and readily available common salt. This article will enlighten you about how common salt can come to our rescue to deal with so many health issues and diseases. These home remedies can go a long way in saving the money we throw in buying expensive medicines, which sometimes don’t work.
Common Salt
We all need a dash of salt to complete our cooked dishes or food that requires salt. No dish is deemed complete without adding a dash of salt to it. Common salt is not a food item, but it is used in almost every food preparations in almost all households. Apart from the enhancing and enriching the taste of any cooked food, it is also useful in the maintaining the fluid level in our body. Salt is also useful in dealing with muscle twitching, acid-alkali equilibrium, and osmotic pressure. Salt is essential for the human body, but in a very limited and controlled amount. As an adult we need about three to eight grams of common salt per day. If common salt is completely avoided from all the foodstuff, then its deficit in our body can give rise to body weakness, giddiness, loss of appetite, cramps in the muscles, which are used a lot, mainly calf muscles, twitching, and convulsions, collapsed veins, cold palms and soles, and low blood pressure. In addition, if we consume less water, it can give rise to other problems such as less urine, dehydration, less elasticity of our skin, and confusion. Acute reduction of salt say by 30%-40% can lead to collapse or dysfunction of our circulatory system and can also prove to be fatal.
Common salt is used as a stabilizer, as a means to preserve food since good olden days. It helps to eliminate the water content from the natural substances, thereby keeping them dry.
Medicinal Uses of Common Salt
Sore throat and tooth ache: Take a teaspoonful of common salt in a glass of water and stir it until it gets dissolved completely and then rinse your throat and mouth with this water or brine solution.
Poisonous substances: Salt solution is used in numerous cases where consuming brine solution or salt solution can be used as in consumed to help you vomit or puke the harmful substances.
Nasal Congestion: In case your nose is blocked or you are suffering from stuffy nose or cold, all you got to do is to use common salt. Instead of using nasal drops or any medicine which can have a side effect, dissolve a pinch of salt in lukewarm water and put a few drops in your nose.
Leach bite: In case you are bitten by a leach, instead of doing anything else, take the salt and apply it on the sting. It will heal soon.
Dandruff: Though salt is a common household item but we don’t use it as a medicine, but salt can also be used to treat dandruff. Make salt solution and massage it on your scalp slowly and repeat it regularly. Using the salt solution can help keep your scalp clean and free from dandruff. No dandruff in turn reduces hair fall.
Eye ailments: If you are suffering from redness and dryness of the eyes, mix about half a teaspoonful of powdered common salt, preferably rock salt in a glass of buttermilk, take once daily. The mixture of rock salt and buttermilk can also be used to treat muscular cramps, sunstroke, flatulence, colic pain.
Skin diseases: Skin diseases such as scabies, neuralgia, chapped hands and skin can be irritating and at times painful. What you can do to correct this skin ailment, all you got to do is to dissolve a teaspoon of salt in 3/4th cup of water and mix it with equal amount of gingelly oil (til oil); now heat the mixture gently to evaporate the water and apply the solution on the affected areas.
Expectorant: It is also seen that many times, we a drug that can work as a expectorant or a medicine which promotes the secretion of sputum by the air passages that is used to treat cough and in respiratory disorders like bronchitis, asthma, pneumonia. Here, if you suck and swallow a crystal of salt with a clove, it acts as a safe expectorant in these kinds of ailments.
Fomentation: Sometimes we can also use fomentation or apply a hot moist substance to the body to ease pain by using a crystal salt. In cases where the patient is suffering from excruciating pain in conditions such as lumbago, rheumatoid arthritis, and muscle trauma, salt fomentation can be used and help relieve the pain to a great extent.
Hope my research on uses of common salt comes handy in treating ailments mentioned here.
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