Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
African peach is a shrub or small tree from West and Central Africa. Botanists call it Sarcocephalus latifolius, and older books list it as Nauclea latifolia. In Hausa it is tafashiya.
It grows a round, red, knobbly fruit that people eat fresh. The root bark and stem bark are the parts used as medicine. Healers boil them into a very bitter drink.
Tradition used it for fever and malaria, for pain, for loose stools and for toothache. Good human trials are almost absent.
So the honest verdict is that its medical value is unproven. Long use is not proof that a plant works. It is not proof that a plant is safe, either.
No one has shown how African peach works in people, because the human studies have not been done.
Most of what is claimed comes from laboratory dishes and from rats and mice. In test tubes, extracts of the root bark slow the growth of malaria parasites. In mice given malaria, some extracts lowered parasite counts.
In rodent pain tests, extracts reduced pain signs. In rats, extracts lowered blood sugar and slowed gut movement. Whether any of this happens in a person is not known.
The plant holds a group of bitter compounds called indole alkaloids. In cell work these appear to act on nerve and muscle tissue. That is a lab finding, not a proven effect in people.
One research group reported finding tramadol, a strong prescription pain drug, in root bark from Cameroon. Later work linked that to pollution from farm animal treatment, not to the plant itself. It is still a reason to be careful about where bark comes from.
You are most likely to meet it in these forms:
- Dried root bark or stem bark, sold loose in markets - A boiled water drink (decoction) made from that bark - Ground bark powder, sometimes in capsules - Leaf infusions, used more in some regions than others - Alcohol tinctures from herbal suppliers - The fresh fruit, eaten as an ordinary food
The fruit is food and is treated as such. The bark drinks are the medicinal use, and they are the ones with no reliable dosing data.
African peach has a long, well recorded place in West African herbal practice. Hausa, Fulani, Yoruba and many other communities used it.
Healers gave bark decoctions for fever and for what we now call malaria. Chewing sticks from the plant were used for teeth and gums. Bark was also used for loose stools, stomach pain and wounds.
It appears in several African traditional medicine surveys and regional plant lists. That record shows what people believed and did. It does not show that the plant treated those illnesses.
Stop and see a doctor if any of these happen:
- A fever that lasts more than two days, or that keeps coming back - Yellow eyes or yellow skin, dark urine, or pale stools - Pain in the upper right side of your belly - Vomiting that will not stop, or blood in your stools - Shaking, sweating or confusion, which can mean low blood sugar - Passing much less urine than usual - Rash, swollen lips or trouble breathing
Go to an emergency department straight away for breathing trouble, a seizure, or a fever with confusion or a stiff neck.
In the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, it is not approved as a medicine. It may be sold as a herbal supplement or dried plant material, with no checks on strength or purity.
In several West African countries it is recognised as a traditional medicine plant and sold openly in markets. The fruit is an ordinary food.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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