Purslane

Table of Contents

1. What Purslane Is
2. Traditional and Historical Use
3. What Is Actually in It: The USDA Numbers
4. The Omega-3 Story: ALA, Not Fish Oil
5. Blood Pressure: What the Trials Found
6. Blood Sugar and Type 2 Diabetes
7. Antioxidants, Betalains and the Melatonin Claim
8. How to Eat It: Raw, Cooked and Pickled
9. Myths and Overclaims in the Popular Videos
10. Safety: Oxalate, Look-Alikes and Who Should Avoid It
11. Key Research Papers
12. Connections
13. Featured Videos

What Purslane Is

Common purslane is a low, sprawling summer annual in the purslane family (Portulacaceae). Its stems and leaves are succulent — thick, juicy and full of water, a little like a jade plant — and it grows as a flat, dense mat. The University of California’s weed specialists describe reddish stems that radiate from a single rooting point “like spokes of a wheel,” commonly up to about 12 inches long; stalkless, oval, smooth and shiny leaves from half an inch to two inches long; and small, five-petalled yellow flowers that open only in sunshine. The seeds are tiny, reddish-brown to black, and sit in a little pod whose top comes off like a lid (UC IPM: Common Purslane).

It is a weed and a crop at the same time. Gardeners fight it because it is a prolific seeder and because its fleshy stems can lie on the soil for days after hoeing and then take root again. Cooks seek it out because it is one of the few “weeds” that tastes good: crisp and juicy raw, with a clean, lemony tang that the same UC guide calls “a sweet, yet acidlike flavor.” You will meet it under many names — verdolaga in Spanish, pourpier in French, ma chi xian in Chinese.

Wild and cultivated purslane are not identical. When a 2020 study compared the two, the cultivated plants carried more amino acids and vitamins, while more than 80 of the 184 plant compounds the researchers identified were at least twice as abundant in the wild plants. The same analysis found high levels of oxalic acid (Nemzer et al., 2020). In other words, the forager’s plant and the market bunch are the same species but not quite the same food.

Back to Table of Contents

Traditional and Historical Use

Purslane has fed people for a very long time across most of the world. It has been cultivated in India and the Middle East and has been popular in Europe since the Middle Ages; in what is now the United States it was first recorded in Massachusetts in 1672 (UC IPM). A 2015 review of its chemistry and uses describes it being eaten as a potherb and added to soups and salads around the Mediterranean and in tropical Asia, and its seeds being ground into flour for mush and bread in the Americas and by Aboriginal Australians (Zhou et al., 2015).

Today it turns up in many kitchens. Mexican cooks stew verdolagas with pork in a tart tomatillo salsa or fold them into eggs; Greek and Turkish cooks toss the raw sprigs into salads, often dressed with yogurt and garlic; in the Levant it is a traditional green in fattoush. That yogurt habit turns out to have a chemical logic, explained in the safety section below.

In traditional Chinese medicine, where it is ma chi xian, purslane is classed as “cold” and “sour,” and the dried above-ground parts have been used for fever, dysentery, diarrhoea, boils, eczema and blood in the stool, typically 9–15 g of the dried herb; Chinese folklore called it the “vegetable for long life” (Zhou et al., 2015). Evidence tier: traditional use only — these entries record what healers did, not what trials have shown.

The modern health interest began with omega-3 fats. In 1986 Simopoulos and Salem reported in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine that purslane is a “terrestrial” — land-plant — source of omega-3 fatty acids (Simopoulos & Salem, 1986). The fuller 1992 analysis by Simopoulos and colleagues at the Center for Genetics, Nutrition and Health in Washington, DC remains a widely quoted source for purslane’s omega-3 content (Simopoulos et al., 1992).

Back to Table of Contents

What Is Actually in It: The USDA Numbers

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s FoodData Central database lists raw purslane as record 169274 (“Purslane, raw,” SR Legacy food 11427), searchable at fdc.nal.usda.gov. Per 100 grams of raw leaves and stems — about 2⅓ cups of loosely packed sprigs, since USDA weighs a cup at 43 g — it lists:

• Water: 92.9 g, which is why it is so light: 20 kcal, with 2.0 g protein, 0.4 g fat and 3.4 g carbohydrate.
• Potassium: 494 mg — about 11% of the Daily Value (DV).
• Magnesium: 68 mg — about 16% of the DV.
• Vitamin C: 21 mg — about 23% of the DV.
• Iron: 2.0 mg — about 11% of the DV, as plant (non-heme) iron that is only partly absorbed.
• Calcium: 65 mg — about 5% of the DV, some of it tied up by oxalate inside the leaf.
• Vitamin A: listed as 1,320 IU, an older unit; in today’s units that is roughly 66 µg RAE, about 7% of the DV.

Boiling keeps most of the minerals but costs vitamin C. USDA’s boiled-purslane record (169275) still lists 488 mg of potassium, 67 mg of magnesium and 78 mg of calcium per 100 g, but vitamin C drops to 10.5 mg — half the raw figure, because it leaches into the cooking water and breaks down with heat — and iron to 0.77 mg. A cup of the cooked greens weighs about 115 g.

How does that compare with spinach? Per 100 g raw, USDA lists spinach at 79 mg magnesium, 558 mg potassium, 28.1 mg vitamin C and 469 µg RAE of vitamin A (record 168462). So purslane is in the same league as spinach for minerals — a little lower on most of them — and far lower in vitamin A. Its distinction lies elsewhere: in its fat.

Beyond the USDA panel, laboratory analyses find the omega-3 fat alpha-linolenic acid (next section); more vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol), vitamin C and glutathione than spinach in the same comparison (Simopoulos et al., 1992); betalain pigments, including betanin (Nemzer et al., 2020); and, according to the 2015 review, flavonoids, polysaccharides and alkaloids — among them compounds called oleraceins and the catecholamines dopamine and noradrenaline (Zhou et al., 2015). None of these appears in the USDA record, and amounts vary widely from one analysis to the next.

Back to Table of Contents

The Omega-3 Story: ALA, Not Fish Oil

This is purslane’s genuine claim to fame. Alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) is the omega-3 fat that plants make — the same one found in flaxseed, chia and walnuts. Leafy greens contain very little fat, so they are rarely meaningful sources of it, but purslane stands out among them.

• The classic figure: Simopoulos’s group measured about 300–400 mg of ALA per 100 g of fresh purslane leaves — more than in spinach in the same analysis, with chamber-grown plants highest (Simopoulos et al., 1992). For scale, USDA lists raw spinach at 138 mg of the same fatty acid per 100 g.
• Other laboratories found less: Australian varieties held 1.5–2.5 mg of total fatty acids per gram of fresh leaf, about 60% of it ALA (Liu et al., 2000) — which works out to roughly 90–150 mg of ALA per 100 g. Variety, growing conditions and plant part all move the number.
• The seeds are far oilier: 80–170 mg of fatty acids per gram, or 8–17% of their weight, about 40% of it ALA (Liu et al., 2000). That matters because the blood-pressure and blood-sugar trials below used seeds and extracts, not leaves.
• A favourable balance: in both wild and cultivated leaves the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats was low, between 1:1 and 1:3 (Nemzer et al., 2020).

Now the context. The U.S. adequate intake for ALA is 1.1 g a day for women and 1.6 g for men. A generous 100-gram serving of purslane therefore supplies somewhere between about a twentieth and a third of a day’s ALA, depending on which analysis you trust. A single tablespoon of ground flaxseed (7 g) supplies about 1.6 g, going by USDA’s flaxseed figures — more than a whole bowl of purslane. Purslane is a good omega-3 vegetable; it is not a concentrated omega-3 source.

ALA is not EPA or DHA

The omega-3s in oily fish are EPA and DHA, longer-chain fats that the body builds into cell membranes, especially in the brain and the retina. Purslane does not supply them in any useful amount: some early analyses reported a trace of EPA, but a 2000 analysis of Australian varieties detected no longer-chain omega-3 fats at all (Liu et al., 2000). Your body can lengthen ALA into EPA, but not efficiently. Stable-isotope tracer studies show that conversion to EPA is limited in men and that the further step to DHA is very low; women convert somewhat more, probably because of oestrogen (Burdge & Calder, 2005). So purslane counts toward your plant omega-3 intake, not toward the fish-oil kind. More on the difference on our Omega-3 Fatty Acids page.

Back to Table of Contents

Blood Pressure: What the Trials Found

The popular videos call purslane “the weed that fights high blood pressure.” There is something real behind that, but it is smaller and narrower than the headline.

Why it might help

There are two plausible whole-food reasons. Purslane’s potassium (494 mg per 100 g) and magnesium (68 mg) are exactly the minerals that vegetable-heavy eating patterns such as the DASH diet deliver, and potassium helps the kidneys shed sodium. Beyond that, nobody has worked out why purslane seeds or extracts lowered blood pressure in the trials below.

What the human trials found

• Seeds, 48 adults with type 2 diabetes (Esmaillzadeh et al., 2015): a randomised crossover trial. Each person spent 5 weeks eating 10 g of purslane seeds a day stirred into a cup (240 mL) of yogurt and 5 weeks eating the yogurt alone, with a 2-week break in between. Systolic pressure (the top number) fell by 3.3 mmHg on the seeds against a 0.5 mmHg rise on yogurt alone, a statistically significant difference. Diastolic pressure (the bottom number) fell 3.1 versus 0.9 mmHg, which did not reach significance.
• Extract capsules, 63 adults with type 2 diabetes (Wainstein et al., 2016): a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of three purslane-extract capsules a day for 12 weeks, in people already taking one diabetes tablet. Systolic pressure fell 7.5 mmHg on the extract and essentially not at all on placebo. Two of the seven authors were affiliated with an ingredients company.
• The pooled picture (Vajdi et al., 2025): a meta-analysis of five randomised trials found systolic pressure about 3 mmHg lower with purslane than with control (95% confidence interval 0.1 to 6.0 mmHg) and no change in diastolic pressure. The trials disagreed with one another a great deal (heterogeneity of 95.5%), and the authors rated the certainty of the systolic result as moderate and the diastolic result as low. Diastolic pressure did fall in some subgroups: people over 40, people with diabetes, and 12-week trials.

What that means for you

A 3 mmHg fall in systolic pressure is real but modest, and it came from seeds and extracts given mostly to people with type 2 diabetes. We found no trial in which people simply ate purslane as a vegetable. Evidence tier: small randomised trials in humans (seeds and extracts), pooled with moderate certainty for systolic pressure. Eating purslane as one of many potassium-rich vegetables fits everything known about managing high blood pressure; using it in place of prescribed medicine does not.

Back to Table of Contents

Blood Sugar and Type 2 Diabetes

The second half of the video claim is that purslane “fights high blood sugar.” Here the evidence is thinner than the enthusiasm.

The trials

• Seeds versus metformin, 30 adults (El-Sayed, 2011): the 30 people with type 2 diabetes were split into two groups; one took 5 g of purslane seeds twice a day, the other 1,500 mg of metformin a day. Fasting and after-meal blood sugar, insulin, triglycerides, cholesterol and body weight all fell in the seed group, much as they did on metformin. Claims that purslane is “as good as metformin” trace to this study, but with two small groups and no placebo group it cannot show that.
• Seeds versus yogurt alone, 48 adults (Esmaillzadeh et al., 2015): the crossover trial described above. Fasting blood sugar did not differ between the two periods (−2.1 versus −2.8 mg/dL), and neither did insulin or insulin resistance (HOMA-IR). What did change: triglycerides fell 25.5 mg/dL on the seeds versus 1.8 mg/dL on yogurt alone, and weight fell by about half a kilogram.
• Extract capsules, 63 adults (Wainstein et al., 2016): HbA1c, the three-month average of blood sugar, improved more on the extract only inside a subgroup of “responders” — people whose HbA1c happened to fall, whichever capsule they took (−0.8% versus −0.6%). A subgroup picked by its outcome is a weak way to show a benefit.

The pooled picture

Pooling six randomised trials with 352 participants, a 2019 meta-analysis found fasting blood sugar about 4.5 mg/dL lower with purslane (95% confidence interval 1.5 to 7.5) and triglycerides about 19 mg/dL lower, with no significant change in total, LDL or HDL cholesterol (Hadi et al., 2019). A 2024 meta-analysis limited to people with type 2 diabetes again found lower fasting sugar, better blood fats and lower C-reactive protein, an inflammation marker — but no significant change in HbA1c, insulin or insulin resistance (Donglin et al., 2024).

What that means for you

Fasting sugar a few mg/dL lower is a small effect, and HbA1c — the measure that tracks the risk of diabetes complications — has not been shown to move. The authors of the seeds-versus-metformin trial suggested that the seeds’ polyunsaturated fats, flavonoids and polysaccharides are responsible (El-Sayed, 2011), but that idea has not been tested. Evidence tier: small randomised trials in humans, almost all of seeds or extracts; the leafy vegetable itself is untested. Purslane earns a place in a diet for type 2 diabetes as a 20-calorie-per-100-gram vegetable, not as a treatment — and nobody should cut back diabetes medicine because of it.

Back to Table of Contents

Antioxidants, Betalains and the Melatonin Claim

Vitamin E, vitamin C and glutathione

In the 1992 comparison, purslane leaves contained more alpha-tocopherol (vitamin E), vitamin C and glutathione than spinach did — seven times more vitamin E in the chamber-grown plants — while spinach was slightly higher in beta-carotene. Per 100 g of fresh leaves the team measured 26.6 mg of vitamin C and 14.8 mg of glutathione, an antioxidant the body also makes for itself (Simopoulos et al., 1992). These are measurements of what is in the leaf; they are not evidence of a health effect in people.

Betalains: the beet pigments

Purslane belongs to the same broad group of plants as beets and chard — the group that colours itself with red and yellow betalain pigments instead of the anthocyanins most plants use. Betanin, the main red pigment of beetroot, was among the 184 compounds identified in wild and cultivated purslane (Nemzer et al., 2020). Betalains are strong antioxidants in the test tube, but we found no human study of purslane’s betalains. Evidence tier: composition and laboratory data only.

Melatonin

Purslane is often promoted as a food source of melatonin, the hormone that helps time sleep. A 2005 letter by Simopoulos and colleagues reported about 19 nanograms of melatonin per gram of fresh purslane leaves, against 0.04 ng/g for spinach — the figures quoted in later reviews of dietary melatonin (Simopoulos et al., 2005). That is high for a vegetable, but do the arithmetic: a 100-gram serving holds about 1.9 micrograms, less than one five-hundredth of a milligram, while melatonin supplements are sold in milligram doses. We found no study testing whether eating purslane changes blood melatonin or sleep. Evidence tier: composition data only. For what melatonin itself does, see our Melatonin page.

Back to Table of Contents

How to Eat It: Raw, Cooked and Pickled

Choosing and preparing

Look for plump, glossy leaves and tender stem tips; the thick lower stems can be stringy. In summer, farmers’ markets and Latin American or Middle Eastern grocers may sell it as verdolagas or simply purslane. Wash it well — it grows flat on the ground and holds grit — then pinch off the tender tops and leaves; the thicker stems can go into soup.

Raw

• Toss the sprigs into a tomato-and-cucumber salad with olive oil and lemon; they add crunch, juice and a gentle sourness.
• Stir chopped purslane into thick, plain whole-milk yogurt with crushed garlic and a pinch of salt, as Greek and Turkish cooks do. The calcium in the yogurt also locks up much of purslane’s soluble oxalate (see Safety).
• Add a handful to fattoush or any bread salad.

Cooked

• Mexican-style: simmer verdolagas with pork or chicken in tomatillo salsa and serve with brown rice and beans.
• Fold wilted purslane into scrambled eggs or an omelette.
• Sauté it briefly in olive oil with garlic, or stir it into lentil soup at the end of cooking. It wilts in a minute or two and turns faintly slippery, a little like okra.

If oxalate is a concern for you, note that a quick sauté does not lower it; blanching and throwing away the water, or pickling, does (details under Safety).

Pickled

Purslane stems pickle well. In a 2025 study, stalks kept for 21 days in the refrigerator in a brine of vinegar, salt, sugar and water lost 47–83% of their oxalate — more than blanching removed (Zherkova et al., 2025).

How much

A cup of raw sprigs weighs about 43 g, so a generous 100-gram salad portion is roughly 2⅓ cups; a cup of cooked purslane is about 115 g (USDA). Eaten the way people eat any leafy green — a cup or two at a time, as part of a varied diet — it is an easy, nearly free way to add potassium, magnesium, vitamin C and plant omega-3. People with oxalate kidney stones should treat it like spinach (see below). The seed doses used in the trials (10 g a day) and extract capsules are a different thing from the vegetable, and the food comes first.

Back to Table of Contents

Myths and Overclaims in the Popular Videos

• “Purslane lowers blood pressure like a medicine.” Overstated. Pooled trials of seeds and extracts show about 3 mmHg off the top number and nothing off the bottom number (Vajdi et al., 2025). Useful as part of a vegetable-rich diet; not a replacement for prescribed treatment.
• “It works as well as metformin.” Not shown. That idea traces to one trial of 30 people with no placebo group (El-Sayed, 2011). Pooled trials show fasting sugar a few mg/dL lower and no significant change in HbA1c (Hadi et al., 2019; Donglin et al., 2024).
• “It has more omega-3 than fish.” Misleading. Purslane’s omega-3 is ALA, roughly 0.1–0.4 g per 100 g of leaves. It contains no meaningful EPA or DHA (Liu et al., 2000), and the body turns little ALA into them (Burdge & Calder, 2005).
• “It is packed with melatonin for sleep.” The arithmetic says no. About 2 micrograms in a 100-gram serving, a tiny fraction of a supplement dose, and untested for sleep.
• “The seed and capsule results apply to a salad.” Unknown. The trials used 10 g a day of seeds or concentrated extracts; ordinary servings of the leaves have not been tested for blood pressure or blood sugar.
• “It is a free weed, so eat as much as you like.” Risky. It is high in oxalate, very large meals of it have caused kidney injury, a poisonous look-alike grows in the same places, and lawns and pavements are often sprayed.

Back to Table of Contents

Safety: Oxalate, Look-Alikes and Who Should Avoid It

Oxalate: the real downside

Oxalate (oxalic acid) is a natural plant compound that binds calcium. In the gut, the soluble form can be absorbed; the kidneys then have to clear it, and in urine it can combine with calcium to form calcium oxalate — the most common kind of kidney stone. Purslane is consistently found to be a high-oxalate green (Nemzer et al., 2020), in the same range as spinach when the two are measured the same way (Zherkova et al., 2025).

The clearest figures come from a greenhouse study in which purslane leaves held about 1,070–1,230 mg of total oxalate per 100 g of dried leaf (the shade-grown plants were higher), and about 53% of it was in the soluble form (Moreau & Savage, 2009). Published values vary widely between varieties, seasons and laboratory methods, so treat any single number loosely and treat the plant as high-oxalate.

What lowers it

• Yogurt: adding yogurt to raw purslane cut the soluble share of its oxalate from 53% to 10.7%, because the yogurt’s calcium binds oxalate into the insoluble form the gut does not absorb. Coconut milk and coconut cream only diluted the mixture and did not change the soluble share (Moreau & Savage, 2009).
• Blanching and discarding the water: 3 minutes in boiling water lowered total oxalate by anywhere from under 1% to 69%, depending on the month the plants were picked; the September plants, which held more insoluble oxalate, barely changed, because boiling only leaches out the soluble form (Zherkova et al., 2025).
• Pickling: 21 days in a refrigerated vinegar brine lowered total oxalate by 47–83% (Zherkova et al., 2025).
• Light cooking does not help: lightly cooking the leaves had no effect on their soluble or insoluble oxalate (Moreau & Savage, 2009). Oxalate leaves the plant with the cooking water, so the water has to be thrown away.

Two cases of kidney failure after enormous meals

A 2023 report from China describes two older women who developed acute kidney injury after eating very large amounts of purslane: a 58-year-old who ate about 750 g of stir-fried purslane in one meal, and a 60-year-old who ate about 1 kg over two meals. Both needed dialysis, improved and went home; in the first, a kidney biopsy showed calcium oxalate crystals in the kidney tubules, and her creatinine (the standard kidney blood test) had still not fully returned to normal at follow-up. Both had risk factors — high blood pressure in both, diabetes in the first, a decade of anti-inflammatory painkillers in the second — and the authors suspected both may already have had some kidney disease (Wang et al., 2023). Evidence tier: case reports. This is rare, but it is a clear warning that a kilogram of any high-oxalate green in a sitting is not a normal serving.

Who should limit or avoid it

• People who have had calcium-oxalate kidney stones, or who have been told to follow a low-oxalate diet: treat purslane like spinach — small portions, blanched or pickled, and eaten with a calcium-rich food such as yogurt.
• People with chronic kidney disease, for two reasons: oxalate, and potassium (494 mg per 100 g). If you have been told to limit potassium, or you take medicines that raise it (such as ACE inhibitors, angiotensin-receptor blockers or potassium-sparing diuretics), count purslane like any high-potassium green. See Kidney Disease.
• People on medicine for diabetes or blood pressure who want to try the seed doses or extract capsules used in the trials: the effects are small, but they add to your medicine’s. Check your readings and tell your prescriber.
• Pregnancy and breastfeeding: we found no safety studies of purslane seed doses or extracts in pregnancy or breastfeeding, so skip the concentrated forms. The vegetable in ordinary food portions is a long-standing traditional food, with the oxalate caveats above.

Foraging: the poisonous look-alike

Purslane’s most dangerous feature is its neighbour. Spotted spurge (Euphorbia maculata) is another low, mat-forming summer weed that grows in exactly the same lawns, gardens and pavement cracks. Tell them apart before you eat anything:

• Snap a stem. Spotted spurge’s broken stems ooze a milky, poisonous sap, and the sap of all spurges is an eye and skin irritant (UC IPM: Spotted Spurge). Purslane has no milky sap. If you see white, leave it.
• Look at the leaves. Purslane’s leaves are thick, fleshy, smooth and shiny, from half an inch to two inches long. Spotted spurge’s are thin and flat, only about 1/8 to 1/2 inch long, set in opposite pairs, and often marked with a red spot halfway down the centre vein.
• Feel the plant. Purslane’s stems are thick, smooth and succulent; spotted spurge’s stems, leaves and flowers are hairy.

If you are not certain, do not eat it. The same UC guide notes that spotted spurge is poisonous enough to kill sheep grazing in pastures where it is the main weed.

Sprayed lawns, roadsides and dog walks

Purslane is one of the weeds that lawn and garden weed killers are sold to control, so a patch in a lawn, park, pavement crack or verge may well have been sprayed (see Glyphosate). Harvest only where you know nothing has been sprayed — your own garden is best — avoid roadsides and places dogs use, and wash it well.

Back to Table of Contents

Key Research Papers

1. Simopoulos AP, Norman HA, Gillaspy JE, Duke JA (1992). Common purslane: a source of omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants. Journal of the American College of Nutrition. — PubMed PMID: 1354675
2. Liu L, Howe P, Zhou YF, Xu ZQ, Hocart C, Zhan R (2000). Fatty acids and beta-carotene in australian purslane (Portulaca oleracea) varieties. Journal of Chromatography A. — PubMed PMID: 11043602
3. Burdge GC, Calder PC (2005). Conversion of alpha-linolenic acid to longer-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids in human adults. Reproduction, Nutrition, Development. — PubMed PMID: 16188209
4. Simopoulos AP, Tan DX, Manchester LC, Reiter RJ (2005). Purslane: a plant source of omega-3 fatty acids and melatonin. Journal of Pineal Research. — PubMed PMID: 16150116
5. Nemzer B, Al-Taher F, Abshiru N (2020). Phytochemical composition and nutritional value of different plant parts in two cultivated and wild purslane (Portulaca oleracea L.) genotypes. Food Chemistry. — PubMed PMID: 32203838
6. El-Sayed MI (2011). Effects of Portulaca oleracea L. seeds in treatment of type-2 diabetes mellitus patients as adjunctive and alternative therapy. Journal of Ethnopharmacology. — PubMed PMID: 21718775
7. Esmaillzadeh A, Zakizadeh E, Faghihimani E, Gohari M, Jazayeri S (2015). The effect of purslane seeds on glycemic status and lipid profiles of persons with type 2 diabetes: A randomized controlled cross-over clinical trial. Journal of Research in Medical Sciences. — PubMed PMID: 25767522
8. Wainstein J, Landau Z, Bar Dayan Y, et al. (2016). Purslane Extract and Glucose Homeostasis in Adults with Type 2 Diabetes: A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial of Efficacy and Safety. Journal of Medicinal Food. — PubMed PMID: 26854844
9. Hadi A, Pourmasoumi M, Najafgholizadeh A, Kafeshani M, Sahebkar A (2019). Effect of purslane on blood lipids and glucose: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Phytotherapy Research. — PubMed PMID: 30281177
10. Donglin G, Birjandi R, Esfandabadi FM, Haedi A, Fujiang C (2024). The effects of purslane (Portulaca oleracea) on C-reactive protein, lipid profile, and glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus: A GRADE-assessed systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Prostaglandins & Other Lipid Mediators. — PubMed PMID: 39454818
11. Vajdi M, Tahvilian N, Hassanizadeh S, Jafari M, Askari G (2025). The effects of purslane consumption on blood pressure in adults: A grading of recommendations, assessment, development, and evaluation-assessed systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Journal of Research in Medical Sciences. — PubMed PMID: 41306619
12. Moreau A-G, Savage GP (2009). Oxalate content of purslane leaves and the effect of combining them with yoghurt or coconut products. Journal of Food Composition and Analysis. — doi:10.1016/j.jfca.2009.01.013
13. Zherkova Z, et al. (2025). Assessment of Purslane (Portulaca oleracea L.) Total Oxalate Content, Ascorbic Acid, and Total Organic Acids Using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy. Plants (Basel). — PubMed PMID: 41304577
14. Wang X, Zhang X, Wang L, Zhang R, Zhang Y, Cao L (2023). Purslane-induced oxalate nephropathy: case report and literature review. BMC Nephrology. — PubMed PMID: 37443012

PubMed Topic Searches

1. PubMed: Purslane and blood pressure
2. PubMed: Purslane and type 2 diabetes
3. PubMed: Purslane and oxalate

Back to Table of Contents

Connections

• All Food
• Vegetables
• Spinach
• Swiss Chard
• Omega-3 Fatty Acids
• Flaxseed
• Potassium
• Magnesium
• Hypertension
• Type 2 Diabetes
• Kidney Stones
• Yogurt

Back to Table of Contents

Featured Videos