Guava in traditional medicine

Common guava has a fruit with a yellow skin and white, yellow or pink flesh. Guavas are mainly grown for local consummation. Ripe guava are eaten raw but because they bruise easily and are highly personable. It is a large shrub or small tree with quadrangular branchlets, oval to oblong leaves about 7.6 cm in length and four petaled white flowers about 2.5 cm broad.

The seed is normally removed from the fruit for making jam, jelly, paste, preserves, juice and nectar. Roots, bark, leaves and immature fruits are used in traditional medicine to control gastroenteritis, diarrhea and dysentery

The leaves can be boiled to a psychoactive decoction used in traditional medicine against insomnia. The leaves, which have a leathery character with a distinctly hairy underside, were employed for treating wounds in Indonesia.

The leaves also sometime are used to treat diarrhea. In Vietnam, the leaves was also regarded as being highly effective for diarrheal disorders.

Pharmacological studies of guava showed antispasmodic properties that were due to inhibition of acetylcholine activity. It was found later that quercetin and quecertin-3-arabinose were the active components. Moreover, the leaf extract exhibit antibacterial activity against Shigella dysenteriae.
Guava in traditional medicine