Atopic diseases, hypertension treated with TCM jujube fruit

What is jujube fruit(Da Zao)?
Also known as Fructus Jujubae in Latin, it refers to the dried jujube fruit of Ziziphus jujuba Mill., one of deciduous shrubs or dungarunga in the family Rhamnaceae. It comes in a variety of different names, such as black dates, date seed, Rhamnus zizyphus, jujube date, jujube seeds, juju be, and more. Jujube trees can reach up to 10m in height. Branches are glabrous, with a pair of straight or curved hooks. Young delicate branches grow in clusters and resemble pinnately compound leaf. Leaves are single and alternate, oval to ovate-lanceolate or ovate sometimes, 2 to 6cm long, and with mucronate tip, skew base and serrulate margin. Small yellow-green flowers cluster into short cyme and grow thickly in leaf axils. Drupe is from ovate to oblong, 1.5 to 5cm long, dark red when ripe, and with sweet pulp and kernel with pointed tips. It blooms from April to May and fruits from July to September.

In China, jujube fruit plant grows mainly in Xinjiang, Shanxi, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Sichuan, Guizhou and other places. Due to the different processing crafts used, it comes in black dates and red dates. And the latter is generally used for medicinal purpose. What’s more, jujube’s root, bark, leaves, and pit also have very high medical value.

Jujube mainly contains organic acids, triterpene glycosides, alkaloids, flavonoids, carbohydrates, vitamins, sitosterol, stigmasterol, desmasterol, cAMP, and cGMP.

Jujube health benefits
Jujubes are rich in protein, fat, carbohydrates, carotene, B vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin P, calcium, phosphorus, iron, cyclic adenosine monophosphate, and other nutrients. And now let’s take a look at what is jujube fruit good for?

Modern pharmacology
1. Immunosuppressive action. The intragastric administration to rats in the dose of 100mg Jujube alcohol extract per day showed that jujubes fruit azathioprine have has the same immunosuppressive effects and inhibit the production of antibodies on atopic diseases. Jujube alcohol extract may inhibit reactive antibodies in rats, while producing no inhibition to the non-reactive antibodies.

2. Other effects. Pharmacological experiments demonstrated flavonoid glycosides A contained have sedative, hypnotic and antihypertensive effect. Jujubees increase cAMP in white blood cells. Its decoction can reduce the liver injury by CCl4 in rabbits. It can prolong the mice’s swimming time. In addition, reportedly it inhibits the proliferation of cancer cell.