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Ginger
As it turns out, adding a little spice to your life can have amazing health benefits! For years, ginger has been used in Herbal Medicine to help relieve digestive upset including lack of appetite, nausea, digestive spasms, indigestion, and gas.
A large body of current research supports this use, showing through a number of studies that ginger helps to calm nausea, motion sickness, and even vertigo.
Additional research suggests ginger may also have beneficial effects on symptoms of diabetes and obesity.
AVAILABLE RESEARCH
Digestive Upset
In this book, the medicinal uses of a wide array of plants, including ginger, were examined. The section discussing ginger includes that ginger soothes and helps relieve gastric and intestinal pain.
Finley Ellingwood, M. D. "American materia medica, therapeutics and pharmacognosy." (1919).
This book discusses herbal medicine and herbal therapeutic systems, including how ginger can help soothe digestive upset and act as a cough suppressant.
This book features information on 80 medicinal plants and their uses. It includes a discussion about how Ginger has been used to “help relieve digestive upset including lack of appetite, nausea, digestive spasms, indigestion, dyspepsia, and flatulent colic (carminative).”
Digestion Aid
In this research study, the in vitro influence of 14 different spices, including ginger, on the activities of digestive enzymes was investigated. It was found that ginger had the highest stimulation effect of all spices on digestive enzyme activity. The study concludes that the in vitro influence of ginger has “a beneficial stimulatory effect on digestion through stimulation of lipase.”
This paper investigates edible plants that have “a significant body of research supporting the claims that they have a digestive action, with particular emphasis on clinical data.” The author states that the most important of these digestion-enhancing plants are ginger, peppermint, and fennel, amongst others.
Nausea
In this double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled study, thirteen volunteers with a history of motion sickness underwent circular vection (spinning). It was found that pre-treatment with ginger not only reduced nausea, but also “prolonged the latency before nausea onset and shortened the recovery time after vection cessation.” Based on these results, the authors posit that “ginger may act as a novel agent in the prevention and treatment of motion sickness.”
In this trial of the efficacy of powdered ginger root, thirty women were given a ginger supplement over a four-day period, then an alternative medication for a following four-day period. “A significantly greater relief of [nausea] symptoms was found after ginger treatments compared to placebo.” Subjectively, 70.4% of women said they felt better during the four days in which they took the ginger.
This study tested the effect of powdered ginger on seasickness by measuring the sea sickness symptoms of new naval cadets who ingested either ginger or a placebo. The results showed that “ginger root reduced the tendency to vomiting and cold sweating significantly better than placebo did.” Additionally, fewer nausea and vertigo symptoms were reported by participants after ingesting ginger root.
ADDITIONAL RESEARCH
Expectorant and Cough Suppressant
This book discusses herbal medicine and herbal therapeutic systems, including how ginger can help soothe digestive upset and act as a cough suppressant.
Anti-Diabetic
The research in this paper “was carried out to identify the effect of ginger supplementation on insulin resistance and glycemic indices in diabetes mellitus.” In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, participants received capsules containing either 3g of ginger powder or 3g of the placebo substance. The results of the study demonstrated that daily supplementation of ginger powder is helpful for patients with type 2 diabetes, as it reduced fasting blood sugar and HbA1c and improved insulin resistance indices.
There is a growing body of literature that uncovering ginger’s beneficial effects on diabetes. This paper is a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials of the efficacy of ginger for Treating type 2 diabetes. The analysis found that ginger supplementation significantly lowers blood glucose concentration. The authors conclude that “when combined with dietary and lifestyle interventions it may be an effective intervention for managing Type 2 diabetes mellitus.”
Obesity
The purpose of the following randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study was to evaluate the effect of ginger consumption on obesity symptoms over 12 weeks. The results showed that consumption of ginger improved several metabolic features of obesity and decreased BMI.