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Umeboshi is one of my favourite and most trusted natural flu remedies, both for flu prevention and flu treatment. Whenever I feel a flu coming, I would just pop one into my mouth. Often, that it enough to prevent the flu from coming. At other times, it helps a speedy recovery. It is only on those rare occasions where the flu is particularly nasty it needs to be supplemented by other flu remedies.
In fact, this pickled sour plum is my favourite and trusted remedy for a whole lot of ailments. And it is not just me who has such great faith in it. The Japanese actually have a saying, An umeboshi a day keeps the doctors away!
This is a salty and sour pickled sour "plum" - although it is actually a type of apricot. It is the Japanese version of what the Chinese call sng buay. And variations of this sour plum are widely consumed by both the Chinese and the Japanese. The Japanese version is usually pickled in salt with a medicinal herb called shiso, which gives it a natural red colour.
Indications
But some do contain artificial colouring. So it is important to take only the natural version, preferably organic quality sold in health food stores rather than the commercial types from Japanese supermarkets. Organic umeboshi has important medicinal qualities and is particularly helpful for:
The above are just broad caterogies of ailments that can be helped by taking this amazing pickle. The complete list runs to over a hundred different illnesses.
t may seem far fetched that over a hundred different illnesses can be helped or even cured by one single remedy - and a humble pickled plum at that. Yet it is far fetched only if you think in terms of a hundred diiferent illnesses having a hundred, or more, different causes.
In traditional Chinese and other forms of oriental medicine, the thinking is different. Illnesses are seen as being caused not by different types of bacteria and viruses, but by just a few types of body conditions. And the pickled ume plum helps to reverse one of the most common types.
There are two ways of understanding the value of this traditional home remedy.
In terms of chemistry, the explanation is that umeboshi makes the body system alkaline. It is considered one of the best alkaline foods (meaning alkaline-forming foods). The blood and other body fluids (eg saliva) of a healthy person are supposed to be slightly alkaline and sickness usually occurs when the body condition becomes acidic. Thus, by restoring the body's acid-alkali balance, umeboshi helps to restore health.
Yin and yang
Another way to understand the value of umeboshi is in terms of yin and yang, or expanding and contracting energy. This salty sour pickled plum is very yang, or highly contracted.
To begin with, it is a fruit that drops from the tree before it ripens, while it is still hard. This already shows its contracted quality as, unlike other fruits, it does not become soft and expanded. Pickling in salt – traditionally about 30 percent salt – makes it even more contracted, until the plum or ume shrivels up.
Thus, the pickled ume counteracts expanded conditions such as when the body is having various types of discharge - that is, things expanding and flowing out of the body, like runny nose, diarrhea, frequent urination and so on.
Vomiting is another expanding condition where the pickled plum comes in handy. It helps in travel sickness as well as nausea / vomiting during the early phase of pregnancy.
As alcohol is also expanding in nature – it relaxes you and makes you unable to focus and concentrate. And umeboshi is also traditionally taken with various types of Japanese liquors.
How to use umeboshi...
This pickled plum can be taken:
Click here to learn how to use umeboshi in ume-sho-kuzu, a popular marcrobiotic home remedy which is particularly helpful for conditions like the flu.
One unusual use of this pickled sour plum is in repelling mosquitoes. Medically, it is known that drinking alcohol attracts mosquitoes The macrobiotic explanation is that alcohol is very yin / expanding and it attracts mosquitoes, which are very yang / compact insects. Umeboshi, being yang / contracting, would therefore NOT attract mosquitoes.
Asthma
Mymost memorabe personal experience with umeboshi was with asthma. This is an expanding condition – the lung tissues get swollen, making the air passages narrow. Also, the lungs do not have enough contracting power to push the air out. Asthma is actually a condition whereby a person cannot breathe OUT and so, correspondingly, cannot then breathe in.
Normally, I am not asthmatic but on two occasions I had mild asthma attacks.
The first time was shortly after I became interested in natural health and was eating plenty of fruits, fruit juices and salads at that time. One cold, rainy night, after taking a salad for dinner, I woke up with asthma. That was an important lesson for me about cooked vs raw foods.
Instinctively, my wife at that time did some "energy healing" – although we did not know it as energy healing at that time – to calm me down and I was soon ok.
The second asthma attack came when I was holidaying in Europe. I had just spent a week in Italy and had been eating their wonderful gelato or ice-cream everyday. Then when I was in England, I had an asthma attack. This time I had umeboshi with me. I popped one into my mouth and, in about 10 or 15 minutes, was breathing normally. Less than half an hour later, I was sound asleep.