Health benefits of rambutan may be already fimilar, but how about benefits of rambutan leaves ? Being nominated as one of the world most “Exotic Fruit” Rambutan has proven to be more than what it was tagged with. Scientifically named as “Nephelium Lappaceumis” Rambutan come in a bundle in one stem. Physically, it looks a lot like its sibling lychee. Not to be mistaken though, rambutan has a striking physical difference, which is its hair. Yes, I prefer to call it hair instead of spikes since, these spikes are harmless and will not hurt your finger if you touch it. Lychee on the other hand did not have this hairy feature on its skin. Rambutan naturally grown in Southeast Asia and is popular among the locals as favorite ingredients or topping for a lot of types of dessert. Although the fruits gain the most recognition for being the popular sweets, it has not escaped from folks observation that the leaves are commonly used as a medicinal herbs and ointments.

Since many of other posts might have already discuss the benefits of rambutan fruit, mainly addressing about the benefits of the fruit itself with only few additional information about the functionality of another part of the fruit, such as its skin, leaves, and roots. In this article, I would love to invite you all to focus on the benefits of rambutan leaves.

Rambutan leaves are of an oval shape and ranged from dark green to yellowish green in color. The leaves come in a bundle of leaflets. The size of the leaflet varied from 5 to 15 centimeters in length and 3 to 10 centimeters in width.

The first and foremost thing that will come up to your mind, especially if you are familiar with the benefits of rambutan leaves is its properties in helping hair problem situation. But it surprisingly offers much more benefits than just that.

Here are the lists of the benefits of rambutan leaves (from the popular to the less known ones).

1. Help maintaining good health of your scalp. Concoction made of rambutan leaves can help in maintaining the health of your scalp, in which the substance in the leaves helps providing just the right nutrition for your scalp. Apply it regularly onto your scalp and hair to achieve the best result.
2. Strengthening hair roots. While maintaining the health of your scalp, it also helps in strengthening the roots of your hair, resulting a healthy hair with a long life span.
3. Preventing or helping with hair loss. Closely related to the first two points, strong hair roots equals to lasting hair strands. With a good and healthy scalp this rambutan leaves concoction will spare you from hair fall or hair loss problem!
4. Sporting a beautiful hair. People say healthy hair shines like no other. When you have a healthy hair, it will give you the privilege of having those soft, shining, and alluring strands that most people envy.
5. Solving problem and delay the production of white hair. Still in the topic of hair health department, this poultice will also help you delay the production of your white hair. Helping you prolong the days without aging problem.
6. Natural hair dye. Known for its vast useful properties for the hair. Rambutan leaves also is a good mixture to blacken hair. If you wish for a beautiful shining black hair, this herbal option might be a good choice for you.
7. Natural fabric dye. Young shoots have been known to be used to dye yellow silk to green. A mixture of rambutan leaves, with its fruits and other compounds has been known to produce a dye called ayer banyar which can dye red silk to black.
8. Helping with diabetes. The brew of rambutan leaves is known amongst traditional and alternative medical practicioner to help in curing diabetes.
9. Alexiteric Effect. Rambutan leaves has this amazing properties of resisting toxic and venom. If you have accidentally poisoned the brew of these leaves might help as your first aid.
10. A good natural pain killer. It is commonly practiced in its native region that a paste of rambutan leaves can help reduce the intensity of headache or might even rid you of the headache. Just apply the poultice on the affected area and it will calm the nerves around the applied area. This can also be applied if you have pain in other part of the body.
11. Relieving fever. Other than aiding you with your headache, drinking a brew of rambutan leaves several times can help lower your fever, especially that is commonly suffered from influenza.
12. Aphrodisiac. This might probably be the less known attributes of rambutan leaves. But rambutan leaves contains a substance that acts as an aphrodisiac that can boost your or your partner sex drive.
13. Helping with digestion problem. Rambutan leaves contains substance that can help your digestive system. Including helping people that suffers diarrhea
14. Contains tannin. Tannin has been known for its anti-microbial properties that is usually been utilized to prolong the shelf life of certain foods (natural preservative).
15. Contains saponin. The benefits of saponin range from helping the reduction of blood cholesterol by preventing the re-absorption of the cholesterol, protection of bone cells, to having anti-tumor and anti-cancer properties (direct anti-oxidant) that can lower the risk of developing cancerous cell in the future. Saponin also seem to help boosting our immune system in fending off viruses and bacterias that want to invade our body.

I would also like to introduce you on how to made a simple mixture for both rambutan leaves paste and brew at home.

How to make rambutan leaves paste for hair care:

1. Mash some rambutan leaves with your traditional mortar and pestle or if you don’t have one you can use any kind of tools like grinder make it into a pulp.
2. Add a little water (make sure it is not too much, just enough to moisten the mixture)
3. Filter it to get the extract.
4. You can now apply it to your scalp and hair. Use it regularly until the desired result is achieved.

How to make rambutan leaves brew to treat your fever:

1. Pick some rambutan leaves and left them to dry.
2. Take 15 grams of the dried leaves
3. Add three glasses of water to the dried leaves.
4. Boil the mixture.
5. Let it cool and strain it with filter.
6. Consume the brew three times a day to relieve the fever.

You can now practice some of this simple home remedies for yourself! Let us know if you decide to try this and share us the result!