What is Bathu?
Bathu is a leafy green, also called lamb's quarters or white goosefoot. Its Latin name is Chenopodium album. Unani medicine lists it as a single drug, which means one plant used on its own.
In Persian and South Asian homes it is mostly a food. The leaves are cooked like spinach. Folk use is for hard stools, for slow urine flow, and to build up people who are weak.
The short verdict: long food and folk use, but almost no human trials. Old use is not proof that a plant works. We say that once, here, and not again in each part below.
How does Bathu work?
No one has shown how Bathu works in the body. The leaves are mostly water, fibre and salts. A big helping may soften stools and make you pass more urine, and that is a food effect.
Lab and animal tests hint that leaf extracts can mop up free radicals (unstable bits that can harm cells) and calm swelling. That work is early. It does not show that eating the green treats any illness.
Unani writers class Bathu as cooling and moist. That is a way of sorting foods in old Greek and Arab medicine, not a test result.
What forms does Bathu come in?
The main form is fresh leaves and soft stems, cooked as saag, stirred into yoghurt, or used to stuff flatbread.
Other forms are dried leaf powder, a simple tea made from the leaves, fresh leaf juice, and the small seeds cooked like a grain. Seeds are soaked and rinsed first to wash out the soapy saponins.
One warning. A product sold as Chenopodium oil, or wormseed oil, comes from a different plant, Chenopodium ambrosioides.
That oil can poison you. Bathu is not that plant and does not yield that oil.
Where it comes from:
Bathu grows wild across Europe, Persia and Asia, and people have eaten it for thousands of years. Its seeds turn up at old dig sites in Europe.
Unani texts, which grew out of Greek and Arab medicine, list it as a cooling, moist green for the gut and the urine. Ayurveda knows the same plant as vastuka. Old English cooks called it fat hen.
If this is an emergency
Some reactions to Bathu need urgent care. Call your local emergency number or go to an emergency department straight away — do not wait to see whether it passes.
Who should avoid Bathu?
- Do not use if you have had calcium oxalate kidney stones, which are stones built from calcium and the oxalate salt found in this plant.
- Do not use if you have kidney disease or are on dialysis (a machine that cleans the blood), unless your kidney doctor says it is safe.
- Do not use if you take warfarin or another vitamin K blood thinner, unless your doctor agrees and checks your clotting tests.
- Do not use if you take lithium (a mood medicine), unless your doctor has said it is fine.
- Never give Bathu leaves, juice or the water they were cooked in to a baby under six months. The natural nitrate can cause blue baby syndrome, where the blood cannot carry enough oxygen.
- Do not use if you are allergic to Chenopodium pollen, or to spinach, beet or amaranth.
- Never take Chenopodium oil or wormseed oil. It comes from a different plant, it is not Bathu, and it can poison you.
- Do not eat plants you have picked from roadsides, ditches, factory land or sprayed fields, because Bathu soaks up nitrate and heavy metals such as lead from dirty soil.
- Do not use medicinal amounts such as concentrated juice or powder if you are pregnant or breastfeeding; a normal cooked serving as part of a meal is the sensible limit.
- Do not eat large amounts of raw leaves; cook them first.
When should you see a doctor?
Get emergency help straight away if a baby's lips, tongue or skin turn blue or grey after eating this plant or the water it was cooked in.
Get emergency help if your lips or tongue swell, you come out in hives, or you struggle to breathe after eating it.
See a doctor soon if you get sharp pain in your side or back, blood in your urine, or pain when you pass urine. These can be signs of a kidney stone.
See a doctor if you take a blood thinner and your clotting test results start to move, or if swelling, constipation or tummy pain does not settle within two weeks.
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