Cystic fibrosis treated with TCM terminalia chebula

What is terminalia chebula(Haritaki Fruit, He Zi)?
Medicinally it refers to the dried ripe fruits of Terminalia chebula Retz. or Terminalia chebula Retz. var. tomentella Kurt., plants that belongs to the family of Combretaceae. Therefore, its common names include Myrobalan fruit, fructus chebulae, medicine terminalia fruit, chebula fruit, fructus terminaliae chebulae, Sheng He Li Le, terminalia chebulae fructus, Ke Zi, Sheng He Zi Rou, fruit of medicine terminalia, haritaki fruit, chebulic myrobalan, and more.

Its plant is a large deciduous tree, and often reaches 20 to 30 meters. Leaves are alternate or nearly opposite, ovate or elliptic, 7 to 2cm long, 3 to 15cm wide, with short pointed apex, obtuse or rounded base, entire margin, and bald clean sides. Spica grows on the top of branches or leaf axil. Flowers are bisexual and yellow. Drupe is obovate or oval, 2.5 to 4.5cm long, green when young, tan when ripe, and with smooth surface and 5 edges when dried. Seed is 1. And it usually flowers from June to August and fruits from August to October. The habitat and distribution covers roadsides and areas near villages. It originates in India, Burma and other places. In China, it mainly grows in Tibet, Yunnan, Guangdong, and Guangxi.

Key chemical constituents include 23.60% to 37.36% tannin, triterpenoids, sennoside A, chebulin, tannase, polyphenol oxidase, ascorbic acid enzyme and so on. And tannin mainly contains chebulinic acid, chebulagic acid, corilagin, terchebulin, punicalagin, terflavin A, terchebin, glucogallin, gallic acid, and so on. In addition, triterpenoids mainly contains terminoic acid, chebupentol, shikimic acid, dehydroshikimic acid, and more.

Terminalia chebula benefits
As what mentioned before, it is one of the most common Chinese herbs and was known as the King in the medical classic of Tibetan Pharmaceutical Science – Jing Zhu Ben Cao (Tibetan title: Shel. Gong Shel Phreng). As a matter of fact, its health benefits have been the major subject of Tibetan medicine and it has become a symbol of Tibetan medicine thanks to its widespread medicinal uses. What’s more, in Tibetan medicine this herb is considered with all the merits, namely six flavors, eight properties, three processing tastes, and seventeen efficiency, that treat a variety of diseases. In fact, today because of its high medicinal value and properties, terminalia chebula bark and fruit have been made into tea, fruit extract, oil, supplement, and tincture for hair, lyme disease, skin care, cancer, cystic fibrosis, Diabetes, weight loss, vitiligo, and so on.