Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
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Mochras is the dried gum that seeps from the trunk of the silk cotton tree (Bombax ceiba). In Unani and Persian practice it is used as a soothing, drying remedy for loose stools, vaginal discharge, heavy periods and general "weakness", usually taken as a powder stirred into water or milk.
The gum swells into a slippery gel in water. That gel coats irritated surfaces in the gut and adds bulk to stool, which is the plain, physical reason most of its traditional uses were built around.
Honest verdict: Mochras has centuries of standing in classical texts, but almost no modern human trials. Traditional use tells you what people have done for a long time; it is not proof that the remedy works, and that distinction holds for everything below.
The best-supported idea is simple and mechanical. Mochras is mostly mucilage — a plant gum that turns slimy in water. That gel can coat the lining of the mouth, throat and gut, and can thicken watery stool.
It also contains tannins, which are astringent (they make tissue draw together and feel tighter and drier). Unani texts use exactly this property to explain its use for discharge and bleeding.
These are plausible explanations, not proven ones. Nobody has shown in a good human trial that Mochras changes the course of any disease.
You will usually meet Mochras in one of these forms:
Dried gum tears or lumps, scraped from the bark and sold loose.
Coarse or fine powder (safoof), the most common form for home use.
As one ingredient inside compound Unani preparations such as majun (a thick herbal paste) or sharbat (a medicated syrup).
Quality varies a lot. Genuine gum is pale brown to reddish and should be free of bark, grit and insect debris.
Mochras appears in classical Unani materia medica as mocharas or mochras, and in Ayurvedic texts as mocharasa, the exudate of the semal tree. It is one of the older astringent-demulcent gums of South Asian and Persian practice.
It was carried through Persian-influenced medicine in India from roughly the medieval period onward, and is still stocked by Unani and Ayurvedic dispensaries today.
See a doctor if diarrhoea lasts more than two days, or if you see blood in your stool, run a fever, or feel dizzy and very thirsty (signs your body is short of fluid).
Get medical advice for any vaginal discharge that smells bad, itches or comes with pain, and for periods that soak through protection every hour or leave you exhausted and pale.
Go to an emergency department straight away if you feel the powder stick in your throat or chest, if you cannot swallow, or if your face, lips or tongue swell and breathing becomes hard.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
Reviewed by the HealisticMD editorial team How we grade evidence →
The published evidence for Mochras is weak or absent. That usually means no controlled trial has tested it, not that a trial found it ineffective — the two are different, and we grade only what has been published.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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