Yangshan Figs

Yangshan Figs

　　Figs, a specialty of Yangshan, are also known as honey fruit, eye-brightening fruit, wenxian fruit, milk sap fruit, or sun-facing fruit. Figs are a commonly used traditional Chinese medicine, with their receptacles medicinally valued for their stomach-strengthening, intestinal-cleansing, anti-inflammatory, and detoxifying effects. They are used to treat conditions such as enteritis, dysentery, constipation, hemorrhoids, and sore throat.

The fruit contains glucose, fructose, sucrose, citric acid, and small amounts of fumaric acid, succinic acid, as well as plant growth hormones. Figs are rich in nutritional components and suitable for consumption. When suffering from constipation, they can be used as a mild food-based laxative. The substance obtained after treating the water extract of dried figs with activated carbon and acetone has been shown to have anti-Ehrlich's ascites carcinoma effects. In recent years, research by Chinese medical scientists on the anti-cancer properties of figs has confirmed that they contain active compounds such as psoralen and bergapten, which inhibit various types of tumors. Additionally, they help enhance the body’s immune function. Japanese researchers have extracted an aromatic compound called "benzaldehyde" from fig juice, which has shown remarkable therapeutic effects on patients with advanced cancers such as primary liver cancer, malignant lymphoma, breast cancer, and uterine cancer. Abroad, fig extracts have also demonstrated significant efficacy in treating gastric cardia cancer. In fact, folk medicine in China has long used figs to treat various cancers, including bladder cancer, esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, gastric cardia cancer, and skin cancer.