Learn about kinkeliba’s health advantages and drawbacks, its past, its use in herbal remedies, and recipes with clear instructions.
- Common names: long life herbal tea, quinqueliba
English name: combretum
Botanical classification: Combretaceae - Forms and preparations: infusions dried leaves, and fruit.
What is kinkeliba?
Kinkeliba is a plant whose leaves are used in traditional medicine to boost bile function increase bile secretion, shield liver cells, and for their anti-inflammatory and antibacterial effects.
The plant grows as a bushy shrub up to 4 or 5 meters tall. It belongs to the large Combretaceae family, which forms the shrub and tree base of savannah forests.
It thrives in the Sahelian countries of Senegal, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Guinea, but you can also find it in Togo, Côte d’Ivoire, or Sudan.
As a fun fact, people call the areas where they grow “tiger bush”. This is because the plants form bands of shrubs with strips of bare soil between them. From above, this creates a striped look.
In Senegal and Mali, people often drink kinkeliba leaf tea for breakfast or to break the Ramadan fast instead of coffee or tea.
Some see it as a poor person’s breakfast, with many preferring milk, which they think is fancier.
It has a nice woody flavor.
What are the health benefits of kinkeliba?
Kinkeliba is known for having tannins, betaines, potassium nitrates, heterosides, polyphenols, flavonoids, combretins, and catechetical tannins.
The leaf has acid-alcohols and quaternary amino acids too.
People praise it for its ability to increase urine flow, boost bile production, cleanse the body, and aid digestion.
In African folk medicine, people drink it as tea to ease constipation, shield liver cells, boost bile function, and help the body get rid of bile.
It also fights inflammation and bacteria well.
Here are the health benefits of kinkeliba also known as quinqueliba:
1. Effect on the liver
Kinkeliba helps treat various liver problems: viral hepatitis hematuric bilious fever, jaundice, and gallstones.
It boosts bile production, helps remove bile, and increases urine output.
It kick-starts all the body’s ways to get rid of waste.
This plant has a cleansing effect and tastes good. It has a slight woody flavor without any bitterness, unlike other detox plants with similar effects.
To boost its overall purifying action, you can pair it with white birch leaves. These leaves clean through the kidneys, not the liver making the two plants work well together.
2. Antioxidant action
Kinkeliba contains lots of catechins and epigallocatechin. These strong antioxidants also show up in green tea and cocoa beans.
Its antioxidant effect helps the body to combat free radicals, like those from pollution or pesticides, and to slow down cell aging thus shielding us from age-related diseases.
When combined with blueberry leaves, the medicinal leaves of Vaccinium myrtillus, its antioxidant action becomes stronger and more potent.
This explains its reputation as a protective plant or even a longevity plant (not to be mixed up with Centella Asiatica, a medicinal plant used in Indian Ayurvedic medicine also known as a longevity plant).
3. Anti-inflammatory action
Kinkeliba its leaf, shows strong anti-inflammatory properties.
This property enables us to tackle what we call low-grade inflammation, which differs from acute inflammation that causes pain.
Low-grade inflammation is trickier because you can’t feel it, but it leads to many serious long-term health problems.
In fact, conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, depression, cancer, and all degenerative diseases share a common factor: inflammation.
To fight this inflammation, you need a healthy lifestyle good eating habits, and to consume natural anti-inflammatory products such as kinkeliba.
As a result, it can be swapped out or linked to moringa leaves, or meadowsweet medicinal plants used to reduce inflammation.
4. Blood sugar-lowering effect
Research on kinkeliba leaves has revealed that they help to decrease blood sugar levels.
We’re aware that our current diet has too much sugar, and high blood sugar poses a health risk.
Natural products like kinkeliba can help to balance things out.
5. Effect on digestion
Kinkeliba boosts the digestive process of fat digestion and helps to increase appetite by stimulating liver and bile function and causing intestinal muscles to contract.
It has an impact on constipation and helps people with infectious diarrhea due to its germ-fighting properties.
When dealing with bad constipation, it’s better to use Tinevelly’s senna tea. This plant-based laxative is used to ease constipation clean out the gut, and balance the gut bacteria.
How to use kinkeliba?
Use and dosage
Kinkeliba is prepared as a decoction.
Put 20 g of dried leaves in 1 l of water.
Bring to the boil, when it starts to boil, count 3 min then remove from heat, and let infuse for about 20 min.
Filter and it’s ready.
The resulting drink can be drunk throughout the day.
For a cure, count 2 to 3 cups per day for 3 weeks, otherwise, the kinkeliba is drunk a bit like tea, once in a while for pleasure while doing good.