Meadowsweet: analgesic, anti-inflammatory and anti-gout virtues

Meadowsweet: the anti-inflammatory and depurative plant

Its name evokes the places where it likes to grow: damp meadows, the edges of streams and ponds. Its former name, Spirée Ulmaire, gave rise to the term aspirin because this plant produces salicylate compounds, close to aspirin.
It was in fact Charles Frédérique Gerhardt, a biologist in Montpellier, who first extracted salicylic acid from meadowsweet in 1853.
The term “Salicylate” also refers to willow, a botanical species also rich in compounds of this nature. Meadowsweet also needs open, airy and well-lit places. This plant is known for its anti-inflammatory properties useful against rheumatism. It stimulates diuresis, drains the kidneys and fights against gout. Its draining action allows it to be used in slimming cures alongside other plants such as hawkweed. Active on the water of the human body, it is useful against water retention, oedemas, cystitis. Its compounds confer on it, besides an anti-inflammatory activity, analgesic properties useful against dental pain, neuralgia and headaches. Its role in regulating the synthesis of prostaglandins, thus influencing the dilation and permeability of blood vessels, is less well known. It indeed slows down the formation of platelets and inflammation. Modern life, by providing us with food autonomy protecting us from shortages and famines, has made us forget the nutritional and gustatory aspect of meadowsweet tubers, hanging underground on fine little threads. It is precisely for this reason, in order not to lose the thread of nature’s benefits, that we must rediscover meadowsweet and its virtues.