Have you ever heard of a Chinese Idiom: 苦口良药 "Foo How Liong York" (in Cantonese - minus off the annotations... )

This was exactly what it meant when this "magic potion" (that was proven over hundreds of testimonies from my personal friends) was made in the light of realising that my mom had slight fever and @joannewong with @aaronleang were diagnosed with dengue.

There is nothing "miraculous" about this "potion", no hocus-pocus, no chanting 3 rounds, no boiling larva... but squeezing and filtering to get the smooth, pungent potent concoction that boosts platelet.

I am quite surprised that this is getting harder and harder to find as Malaysia is still unable to curb the common fight of decades - the Dengue Fever due to the tropical hot and wet weather.... but perhaps I could resonate the reason as it is a "potion" not to be reckon with.

"Do you want?"...

It all started when #teammalaysia family core chat group had a query from @bitrocker2020 asking how was Joanne and Aaron, when we all realised that Aaron was confirmed with dengue fever.

I was on my way out of the hospital after checking on my dad when I got the message.

Most people doesn't realise the symptoms of dengue due to the similarities of flu, fever and running nose; but the most obvious bloodworks from dengue that I have come to learn over the years from my colleagues and friends were the platelet count will start to drop like stone.

3 years ago a close friend of mine also had the similar problem, and the first responses from seniors (across different states) were....

get papaya leaf juice!

And often times those were in critical platelet count including my close friend at the time all recovered way much faster and some even avoided hospitalisation (during dengue peaked season).

I almost gave up searching for the leaves from hospital en route my home, my other friend just so happened to call me to pick up some excess durian swiss roll that she brought home from the bakery shop (she is a learning student in baking), and I spotted one giant female (fruiting) papaya tree by the roadside!

Happily plucking 2 gigantic leaves and did other chores I realised that the leaves were so easily dried up hence I decided to soak it over night before juicing them to send over to Joanne and Aaron.

The traditional way of getting the juices out is using the Mortar and Pestle after cutting up into small pieces; but thanks to modern kitchen gadgets I didn't have to wake my neighbours up in the morning with pounding.

Thank goodness my trusty old slow juicer is still working after being asleep for almost 2 years since I moved over to my new place!

However it isn't those super expensive ones that filters out the pulp super well; I still need to use my usual cloth filter to take out whatever residue that is left.

After clean up by cutting off the dry parts, soaking, juicing and filtering, this is all we got from the 2 large leaves; but this is actually more than enough for 5 people as we don't need to take a lot, just a tablespoon one time a day is good enough.

To curb the bitter potent taste of the papaya leave juice, mixing with juice can be the best way to go. A tablespoon of papaya leave and 1/2 cup of juice will help the "medicine" go down.

But how was the taste?

I can only show you the expression....

Even my mom (who had constant mild fever for 2 days) reacted the same; even we had it chilled to lessen the bitterness.

That being said...

Even though my mom and I didn't have significant signs of dengue, I was having massive headache since yesterday and a few hours after taking the juice, we both actually feel better and my mom's fever has subsided and now has more appetite.

What about you?

Have you ever tried fresh papaya leave juice extract before? Even if you don't have dengue it still has many other benefits such as detoxing liver; would you still give that a try?

Until then

Thank You for Your Time

Time sure flies! I am "3 years old" now! haha

1% of this post goes to null in the support of keeping HIVE alive