Bunduq (Funduq)
Quick Facts
- What it is: Bunduq (Funduq) is the hazelnut kernel, Corylus avellana, used in Persian and Unani medicine as a warming, nourishing single drug and eaten worldwide as a food.
- Main uses: Supporting healthy cholesterol as part of the diet, Heart-healthy eating pattern, Traditional use for dry cough with honey, Traditional nourishing tonic for weakness
- Best for: Replacing less healthy snacks, Adding calories and minerals if you are underweight
- Active ingredients: Oleic acid (a monounsaturated fat), Vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol), Dietary fibre, Plant sterols, Manganese, copper and magnesium
- Forms: Raw or roasted kernels, Hazelnut butter or paste, Cold-pressed oil, Flour or meal, Unani compound pastes with honey
- Time to effect: Four to twelve weeks of daily eating for any cholesterol change; no fast effect.
- Side effects: Usually well tolerated; the serious risk is nut allergy, which can be sudden and life-threatening.
Track this remedy in the app
Track Bunduq (Funduq) with reminders and record whether it helped, in the app.
What is Bunduq (Funduq)?
What is Bunduq?
Bunduq, also spelled Funduq, is the hazelnut. It is the kernel of the shrub Corylus avellana. Persian and Unani healers treat it as a single drug.
They see it as a rich, warming kernel. It is eaten as food. It is also given as a mild tonic for the chest, the nerves and general strength.
What does the evidence say?
Most of what we can say with trust comes from food research. It does not come from studies of the Unani remedy. Eating nuts in place of less healthy snacks is linked with slightly better cholesterol numbers.
That is a long way from the old claims about brain tonic or cough cure.
Long use and proof are two different things. A long record of use tells you that people valued it. It does not show that it works for a named illness.
Where human trials exist below, they are named. Where they do not, that is said plainly and not filled in.
How does Bunduq (Funduq) work?
How does it work?
Most of the likely effect comes from what a hazelnut is made of. There is no special drug action behind it.
Hazelnuts are about 60 percent fat. Most of that fat is oleic acid. This is the same soft fat found in olive oil.
Swapping this fat in for saturated fat is the key point. Saturated fat is the hard fat in butter and fatty meat. This swap is the best-backed reason that nuts nudge cholesterol in a good way.
Hazelnuts also give you fibre, vitamin E and plant sterols. Each of these may play a small part.
The Unani view is different. Hazelnut is classed as hot and moist. It is said to warm a cold chest and to feed the brain and nerves.
That is a picture drawn from an older system of medicine. It has not been tested as a mechanism (a proven way of acting in the body).
What forms does Bunduq (Funduq) come in?
What forms can you buy?
Hazelnut is used in these forms:
- Raw or lightly roasted kernels. This is the usual food and Unani form.
- Hazelnut paste or butter, which is ground kernels with nothing added.
- Cold-pressed hazelnut oil, used in cooking and in some skin products.
- Hazelnut flour or meal, used in baking.
- Mixed Unani preparations. Here the kernel is blended with honey, almond, pistachio or sugar in pastes and electuaries (thick sweet pastes).
Sweet spreads sold as hazelnut spread are mostly sugar and palm oil. Do not treat them as the remedy.
Where it comes from:
Where does it come from?
People across Europe and western Asia have eaten hazelnut since prehistory. Burnt hazelnut shells turn up on Mesolithic sites, from the middle Stone Age.
Greek writers such as Dioscorides wrote down medicinal uses. That material passed into Arabic and Persian medicine. There the kernel became Bunduq, or Funduq.
Unani doctors listed it as hot and moist. They gave it with honey for an old cough. They also counted it among the nut tonics used to strengthen the brain and the body.
It is still a normal food across the whole region.
If this is an emergency
Some reactions to Bunduq (Funduq) 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 Bunduq (Funduq)?
- Do not eat hazelnuts, hazelnut butter, hazelnut flour or hazelnut oil if you have a tree nut allergy — this ban is absolute, and reactions can be sudden and life-threatening
- Do not use hazelnut oil on your skin or hair if you have ever reacted to nuts
- Do not give whole nuts to a child under five years old, because of the risk of choking; use smooth nut butter instead
- Never eat nuts that are mouldy, shrivelled, discoloured or taste bitter or musty — they may carry aflatoxin, a mould poison that harms the liver
- Do not eat hazelnuts if you get mouth or throat swelling after them because of a birch pollen allergy (a cross-reaction called pollen-food syndrome)
- Do not eat large daily amounts if you have had calcium-oxalate kidney stones, without checking with your doctor first
- Do not use hazelnut in place of a prescribed cholesterol or heart medicine
- Do not take hazelnut within four hours of levothyroxine (thyroid hormone tablets), as it can reduce how much medicine you absorb
When should you see a doctor?
Call emergency services straight away if you or someone else has trouble breathing, a swollen tongue, lips or throat, a spreading rash, sudden faintness or vomiting after eating hazelnut. This can be anaphylaxis (a severe, fast allergic reaction) and it needs adrenaline, not waiting.
See your doctor within a few days if your mouth itches or tingles every time you eat hazelnuts, if a cough lasts more than three weeks, if you are losing weight without trying, or if your cholesterol stays high after three months of dietary change.
Tell your doctor or pharmacist you eat nuts regularly if you take warfarin, thyroid tablets or diabetes medicines.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
4.8
