Ginger

Ginger

Scientific Name: Zingiber officinalis

Part Used: Root

In a word: Anti-Barf Plant

Uses: Intestinal Flu and Nausea

No doubt about it, the intestinal "flu" is the pits. There is nothing like being stuck at home all feverish and losing it from both ends. In case you didn’t know, bouts with this particular form of hell on earth are in fact caused by bacteria, viruses, and in some cases, protozoa. Many of the worst sorts of intestinal flu come to us from the tropics; therefore, we will defer to the people from those regions and use what they find best for the problem. Two of my favorite names for tropical intestinal stomach maladies are ‘Montezuma’s revenge’ and ‘Delhi belly’. Both involve spending a lot of time in the bathroom, usually during your trip and for some while after you get home. As there are less painful ways to lose weight, people from Mexico and India use ginger to treat both conditions.

Ginger is a fabulous plant for nausea, poor appetite, and all sorts of stomach disturbances. What we call ginger is actually the underground stem of a reedlike plant, officially called Zingiber officinalis. It belongs to a family of plants that produce an enormous amount of highly scented oils in their life processes. Turmeric, cardamom, zeodary, and galanga are all members of the same fragrant family. Ginger spreads underground by the same means as crab grass, shooting runners off the central plant in every direction. These runners, which are, in fact, growth tips, are the part we use medicinally. They are collected when they are dormant, before their buds shoot to the surface of the soil and become new reeds.

Ginger is a tropical plant. It originated in Asia, but could be found throughout Africa and Arabia long before people gave up on the idea that the world was flat. The Greeks and Romans used a lot of ginger, which is said to have come from India via Arabia by way of the Red Sea. The plant appears in European records dating to the 11th century, as it was among the heavily taxed spices on which the nobility made a few bucks. Marco Polo mentioned seeing it on his trip to Asia in 1280. It arrived in England early - herbalists from the 11^th century onward wrote of it.

For digestive upsets which involve nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, ginger is one of the most effective agents around.

Ginger was popular among European herbalists right off the bat. This was particularly true in England, perhaps because ginger’s healing effects on the body were especially welcome in the lovely cold weather typical of the British Isles. Gerard had this to say about it:

Ginger, as Dioscorides reporteth, is right good with meat in sauces, or otherwise in conditures: for it is of an heating and digesting quality; it gently looseth the belly, and is profitable for the stomach, and effectually opposeth itself against all darkness of the light; answering the qualities and effects of pepper. It is to be considered that candied green or condited ginger is hot and moist in qualities, provioking Venerie; and being dried, it heateth and drieth in the third degree.

"Provioking Venerie" means making people randy. Although it was Gerard’s feeling that ginger heated more than the stomach, most of the records show ginger being used to treat that organ rather than more southerly parts.

The British transplanted ginger from Asia to their New World colonies, where it could be cultivated for the domestic market at a cheaper price. Today the best ginger comes from Jamaica; it was first grown there on British plantations.

Like many of the more famous medicinal plants, ginger was initially hauled from Asia to Europe and on to the New World because of its culinary use. Candied, the fragrant root found its way into cookies, cakes, and confections. In days gone by, fine cuisine enjoyed by the nobility, was an extravagant and highly organized affair. The upper classes were known to overindulge, and ginger was used to settle their abused stomachs. Here we see the fine line between food and medicine. Herbalists of, say, the 16^th century prescribed ginger tea for upset stomachs, and so that’s what thoughtful hostesses served to their guests. Ginger cookies were originally a digestive biscuit intended to bring relief to those who had eaten too much.

To this day, in several parts of the world, you will find ginger made into condiments and served with the meal. This is a piece of native wisdom that makes a lot of sense. Three examples of this are the chutneys served with just about everything in India, the candied ginger served with after-dinner cheese in Latin America, and the pickled ginger served with sushi in Japan. Nothing is more potentially dodgy than eating raw fish, and you will notice that the Japanese always eat sushi with a healthy helping of pickled ginger root. That is preventative medicine at its best.

It is in the area of intestinal upset that ginger comes to the fore, whether that upset is due to pregnancy, the intestinal flu, or the motion of a car, boat, or airplane. Ginger has the ability to quell the queasiness that usually proceeds vomiting. As none of us enjoys throwing up and just about all of us feel like it at one time or another, ginger should be a must both on the spice rack and in the medicine cabinet in every home.

China is said to be the native home of ginger, and as such, the Chinese are well versed in its ability to sort out problem stomachs. In China, unlike the West, traditional medicine, which is herbalism, never fell out of favor. There, herbal medicine is a fine and sophisticated science. We in the West just use the whole ginger root. The Chinese, on the other hand, use ginger’s papery brown skin to treat people with gas. They bruise and then juice the leaves, using the resulting liquid to increase the appetite of people with no taste for food, and they use the peeled root to treat nausea, dysentery, and to act as an overall digestive stimulant. After all, the Chinese have been working with ginger as medicine for some 4000 years; it is only reasonable that they should know it a bit better than we should.

Ginger was first grown in the Caribbean and Latin America in the late 1500s, and the creeping plant has since become a mainstay in the practice of local herbalists. In Mexico, the fresh root is grated, mixed with water, and taken after meals to ensure good digestion. In Trinidad, the root is made into tea to treat indigestion and morning sickness. In Brazil, it is used to treat cramps, nausea, and gas. The story is basically the same around the world: whenever intestinal flu sets in, the symptoms are best treated with ginger.

Chemically speaking, ginger is absolutely packed with active ingredients. On the list are volatile oil, pungent principles including gingerols and shogaols, lipids, proteins, starch, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, resins, and a whole lot more. Because of its global popularity and high position in indigenous people’s folk medicine, ginger and its chemical components have been well researched. Ginger has been found to both suppress nausea and stop vomiting.

If you suffer from travel-related nausea, bring some ginger candy along on your next trip. Ginger has been proven to be more effective in treating travel sickness than Dramamine!

In a rather politically incorrect experiment, some nasty scientists fed dogs copper sulfate and found that ginger extracts stopped the profuse vomiting that would have normally attended the dogs’ being poisoned. This may not have been good news to the dogs who needed to throw up the poison in order not to die, but it is for people who are suffering from less serious intestinal distress.

Ginger also has been found to increase gastric juice secretion and the production of hypochloride. This means that food is digested more quickly, creating an unfriendly environment for bacteria that otherwise could send you to the toilet for a week or more. Along these lines, chemicals in ginger have been proven to knock out the sort of bacteria that cause ‘Delhi belly’ and ‘Montezuma’s revenge’. One of the classic treatments for bacterial dysentery in the tropics is ginger, and people there are well advised to use this cheap and effective cure.

The key to ginger’s use in cases of intestinal flu due to bacteria, and indeed in cases of food poisoning, may lie in its high content of volatile oil. The root may contain as much as three percent volatile oil, which is a lot for a plant. When you make ginger tea, you will even see oil floating on the top of the water in which you boiled the root. Volatile oils have a powerful bacteria-killing capacity, and it seems probable that as the volatile oil floats down the digestive tract, it kills bacteria along the way.

When you are sick because some varmint has moved into your guts, ginger is the perfect cure. First, it will kill the invader, and second, it will soothe the nerves that are causing the indescribably horrible sensation know as nausea. One of the phenomena that people who work in the health business are seeing lately is flus, both intestinal and respiratory, that last a really long time with periodic flare-ups. If you are using ginger to treat an intestinal flu, keep right on using it even after you have lost all flu symptoms, say a week or more. This may ensure that the flu won’t come back.

Typical illnesses treated with ginger include bacterial dysentery, cholera, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, chills, cramps, and lack of appetite. If you have intestinal flu, you probably have all the above-mentioned symptoms; the good news is that you can get rid of them and maybe even their cause with a cupful of ginger tea.

For digestive upsets which involve nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, ginger is one of the most effective agents around. This is true if the source of the problem is motion sickness or a digestive bug. It will remove the unpleasant symptoms and in the case of a microbial caused malady, address the fundamental problem. Indeed, if you are traveling to countries noted for their ability to upset the stomach, it may pay to keep some ginger tablets or tincture on hand, just in case. The tincture and the tablets work equally well and are probably more practical than making ginger tea! However, if you find yourself in the tropics and in trouble, you can always go to the market and get yourself some ginger. Boil water and add a teaspoon of grated ginger. Allow the tea to boil for five minutes, strain and drink. You will start to feel better right away!

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Directions:

Tablets: 2-200mg tablets 30 minutes prior to travel; 2-200mg tablets 3 times daily in food poisoning.