Source: Beijing Daily
Atlas
In late autumn and early winter, some people picked up ripe and fallen ginkgo fruits on the street and went home to cook soup and porridge, resulting in poisoning. Yesterday, Guo Guiming, director of the Pharmaceutical Quality Control Center of the Beijing Municipal Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, reminded that ginkgo biloba has no health benefits such as tonics, and raw food or improper consumption may cause poisoning.
Ginkgo biloba, also known as white fruit, is the dried ripe seed of ginkgo biloba. It is known as the "living fossil of the plant kingdom", and the leaves and fruits have certain medicinal value. "White fruit often appears in children's prescriptions for Chinese medicine tablets." Experts say that it does contain some nutrients, in addition to starch, protein, fat, sugar, but also contains vitamin C, riboflavin, carotene, calcium, phosphorus, iron, potassium, magnesium and other trace elements. Guo Guiming said that when used medicinally, white nuts or fried white nuts need to go through a series of links such as processing, doctor identification and prescription matching, in order to be used as Traditional Chinese medicine tablets for the treatment of clinical diseases. White nuts or fried white fruits mainly have the effect of suppressing the lungs and asthma, stopping the shrinkage of the urine, and are often used for sputum and coughing, with white turbidity, and frequent enuresis.
Some people learn about the efficacy of white fruit from various sources and will eat it independently. Ms. Li picked up some ginkgo biloba fruits and went home to eat. As a result, as soon as she was peeled, her hands began to itch, and she also grew large erythema and papules. Doctors diagnose contact dermatitis caused by exposure to ginkgo biloba fruit.
"White fruit contains toxic components such as ginkgolic acid and cyanidine, and raw or improper consumption can cause poisoning of white fruit." Guo Guiming said that the poisoning reaction usually occurs within 1 hour to more than 10 hours after eating white fruit. Mild cases may cause dizziness, nausea, fever, vomiting and other symptoms, and when poisoning is severe, convulsions, coma and even life-threatening may occur. He reminded that the public must not go to the streets to pick up white fruits on their own, and blindly process and eat them.
Editor-in-Charge: Zhang Xinshuo