Amla Juice Benefits, How To Make? Self Made Or Market? Side Effects

Amla – Indian gooseberry can be consumed in many ways. Amla juice is one of the easiest ways to consume it. There are many market available ready made juices but you can prepare it by yourself as well. 

Ingredients

How to prepare amla juice easily from fresh amla:
You need
1. Amla fruit
2. Dry Coconut scraper or just a knife to cut amla into small pieces
5. Mortar and pestle Or a simple crusher
3. Tea filter
4. Big spoon.

Home remedy video

Method of preparation

Steps involved:
Take one fresh Awla fruit. Wash in water.
Grate it (or scrape it) as you would grate dry coconut using coconut scraper.
This will give you coarse powder of fresh amla fruit.
If you do not have coconut scraper, you can cut amla fruit using a knife into very small pieces.

Take these amla coarse powder in mortar and crush it with pestle. To crush it further. This makes the juice extraction a lot easier.
Take this crushed small pieces of amla in the tea filter.
Press it very hard using the big spoon.
The amla juice will be collected at the bottom of vessel.
You can press the amla powder for 4 – 5 times to extract maximum juice out of it.

When you taste the leftover amla powder after pressing, you can observe that it has lost its all of original taste. This indicates that the crushing and pressing of amla fruit is done well.
It indicates that most of the nutrients of amla are transferred into the juice.
one 15 gram fruit of amla may yield 10-15 ml of amla juice.

What if fresh amla fruit is not available?
As per traditional Ayurvedic reference mentioned in Madhyama Khanda Section, Swarasa chapter of Sharangdhara Samhita, below mentioned herbal tea method can be followed to extract juice, when fresh herb is not available.

One teaspoon (5 grams) of dried amla powder is added with half a cup (100 ml) of water. This is boiled in mild fire and reduced to quarter a cup. Filtered.

Dose, Qualities

Dose of amla juice:
If prepared from fresh fruit, 10-15 ml, once a day.
If prepared from dry powder – herbal tea method, then quarter a cup  or 50 ml per day.
Market available amla juice – 10 – 15 ml, mixed with double quantity of water, once a day before or after food.

Amla – medicinal qualities:
Guna – qualities – Guru – heaviness, Sheeta – coolant
Rasa (taste) – Has five tastes. – sour, sweet, bitter, astringent and pungent (all the five tastes, excluding salt). Sour is dominant taste.
Vipaka (taste conversion after digestion): Madhura (sweet)
Veerya (potency): Sheeta (cold)
Effect on Tridosha: Tridoshahara  – It balances all the three Doshas.

Benefits

Benefits of Amla juice:
It carries all the benefits of Amla fruit:
By the virtue of the sourness it addresses the increased vAta and by the virtue of the cold potency and sweetish taste it appeases the aggravated pitta.
The aggravated kapha gets addressed by the qualities of dryness and astringent taste.

The gooseberry fruits are beneficial in patients with urinary ailments like dysuria and also is wholesome to be consumed as such in patients of prameha.

It relieves the constipated bowels when taken regularly. The gooseberries acts as a tonic in maintaining the vision, physical strength, complexion of skin, and eroticism.

It is one of the intelligence promoter widely used in the form of rasAyana  chikitsa.
The AmalakI is beneficial to the patients with itching sensation, obstinate skin diseases, fever, uncontrolled thirst, burning sensation witjin the channels of the body, anorexia etc.,

The fresh and raw juice fruits of AmalakI is cold in potency, tastier to drink, sweetish in taste, alleviates the kapha doSha, reduces the fever and burning sensation. It promotes the virility and increases the lifespan of the individual when taken in the prescribed format of dosages and rasayana therapy modality.
Read related: Amla Benefits, Dose, Usage, Side Effects – Complete Ayurveda Details

Side effects

Side effects of amla juice:
In some people, it may cause or worsen dry skin problem and dryness of mouth.
It may worsen cold, cough / asthma in some patients. They can add 1 – 2 grams of ginger / pepper powder to the juice.
It is safe to take self made amla juice during pregnancy, lactation and in children.
Seek your doctor’s advice, for its usage during pregnancy and lactation, if you are using market available product (contains preservatives).

Shelf life

Shelf life of Amla juice: 
Ready made market amla juice such as Patanjali can be stored up to 1 year from the date of manufacturing.
The Amla juice prepared by you needs to be consumed within 6 – 8 hours of time.
If kept in refrigerator (not generally recommended), it can be stored for 1 – 2 days time.

Market available amla juice

One major disadvantage with market available amla juice is the addition of preservatives.
All ready made amla juice products contain preservatives.
Usually Amla juice is consumed for many months.  So, this poses a minor side effect threat of preservatives on health.
Patanjali amla juice contains Citric Acid, Sodium Benzoate, Potassium sorbate and flavours.
Almost all others contain similar excipients.

Amla juice combination with other herbs:
Patanjali Giloy Amla juice – prepared with Guduchi – Tinospora cordifolia – is useful in fever, to improve immunity.
Karela Amla juice – prepared with karela – bitter gourd – useful in diabetes.

Dose of ready made market available amla juice:
5-15 ml, mixed with 10-20 ml of water, once a day.
Some companies may suggest a higher dose than this, but I would not recommend a higher dose than the 5 – 15 ml per day, considering the higher concentration of market juice.

How long amla juice can be taken?
If you are preparing amla juice on your own and if you have not come across any side effects, then amla juice is safe to continue for many months.
If you are using market amla juice, better to take it for 2 months, then give a month gap and then again continue for 2 months and so on.

Amla juice in other remedies

It is used as ingredient in many remedies such as Amla Turmeric Home Remedy For Urinary Tract Disorders
Amla juice – 10 ml + 1 pinch of turmeric  + 1 pinch of ginger powder is useful in treating cold, cough and allergy.

Amalaki juice for Vata Dosha reduction –
Amla juice, having sweet and sour taste can reduce Vata Dosha. To make it more effective, a tablespoon of its juice can be added with a teaspoon of jaggery. Mixed well and consumed.
A tablespoon of Awla juice mixed with 2 grams of Ashwagandha powder is also effective in balancing Vata Dosha.
This combination is useful to strengthen and rejuvenate bones, muscles and joints.

Why 20 ml of amla juice is the ideal top dose?
The recommended daily intake of Vitamin C in a adult (men) is 90mg. And the amla juice contains 900mg of vitamin c per 100g of juice. So, you are taking considerably higher amount of the juice. Would advise you to limit the intake.
Here are some points you may have to take in consideration before taking the more of Amla:
• Taking too much vitamin C can cause diarrhea, nausea, and stomach cramps.
• Vitamin C dietary supplements can interact or interfere with medicines that you take.

How to get amla juice from frozen Amla fruits?
Soak it in hot water for 30 minutes, then crush it and extract juice. Or Crush it, add a little bit of water and filter.

I have read that amla juice contains sodium benzoate which later reacts with vit. c and causes some benzene which causes cancer in our body. is it true?
No. The benzene reaction takes many years to take place and there are no recorded evidence for this false claim. The shelf life of amla juice is only one year.
In any case, freshly prepared juice at home, of any fruit is always better than market available ready-made juice.
Further explanation by Mr Srikanth –

There is no proven evidence for that. I also saw similar comments with some web links. You need to read between the lines properly. Even the links mention “may” react but no where a concrete evidence found. “May” means uncertain and unproven. You also need to understand the way natural products react is different from clinical trials. Mixing Vitamin C+Sodium Benzoate in lab and natural Amla+Sodium Benzoate are not same! Taking powder is not safe either. It is just a blind trust. There are many chemicals in fertilizers, earth and in air already. The preservatives added in health juices would be minor and negligible compared to the junk and/or non-veg being eaten by most people! So, enjoy the fruits of amla without worrying too much about clinical trials which never had courage to admit anicent medicines. For them there is no difference between vitamin c tablet and vitamin C found in Amla!

People who are continuing Amla juice from Patanjali or any other reputed brand should not be worried too much about the preservative added.

The juice extract of amla fruit is used for grinding with other herbs in preparation of Amlapittantak Lauh, a medicine used in gastritis.
Amla home remedy for dysuria

Amla juice for oral consumption

The best way to consume amla is to eat it afresh. If you are not comfortable with that, you can also crush its pulp to extract juice and drink it. Dose for such extracted juice is – 5- 10 ml per day.

Q: Can we drink amla juice early morning on empty stomach?  if yes should I drink with warm or normal water ? How many Amla should be used to extract its juice?
A: you can drink amla juice in the morning. You can mix equal amounts of water before drinking. It can be consumed on empty stomach. But after taking this, avoid coffee / tea / milk for at least 45 minutes.
The number of amla to be used depends on the size. Ideally 5 ml (1 teaspoon)  in the morning is good.

If you are considering market available Amla juice, then follow the guidelines on the label to dilute it and for dosage. If they contain added preservative, it is best to limit it to few weeks time.
Read related: Curds recipe of Amla

Should there be any time gap between Amla juice intake and morning exercise?
10 minutes of gap is ideal so that the stomach settles down with the amla juice.