8 Amazing Health Benefits of Ginger
by Lisa Egan
Versatile, flavorful, and therapeutic, ginger is quite a wonder plant.
The rhizome of the plant Zingiber officinale, ginger is indigenous to southern China. It eventually spread to the Spice Islands, other parts of Asia, and then to West Africa and the Caribbean. In the first century AD, ginger was exported to Europe via India, thanks to the lucrative spice trade. Currently, India is the largest producer of ginger.
Healers have praised ginger for its medicinal properties for thousands of years and it is a folk medicine favorite. Its use as a stomach soother goes back centuries. As one sixteenth-century physician put it: “Ginger does good for a bad stomach.” In The Family Herbal from 1814, English physician Robert Thornton noted that “two or three cupfuls for breakfast” will relieve “dyspepsia due to hard drinking.”
Modern science has proven ginger’s effectiveness not only as a remedy for nausea and vomiting, but for a host of other health ailments.
Here are some areas in which the therapeutic properties of ginger have been studied:
1. Inflammation of the colon: A study conducted at the University of Michigan medical school and published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research found that a ginger root supplement administered to volunteer participants reduced inflammation markers in the colon within a month. This is significant because inflammation of the colon is a precursor to colon cancer.
2. Ovarian cancer: A study showed that exposing ovarian cancer cells to a solution of ginger powder resulted in their death via apoptosis (cell suicide) or autophagy (the cells digested/attacked themselves) in every single test. This study, conducted at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, also showed that the ginger solution prevented the cancer cells from building up resistance to treatment.
3. Asthma symptoms: Researchers at Columbia University found that airway smooth muscle (ASM) tissues exposed to asthma medication combined with purified components of ginger exhibited greater relaxation than those treated with the medication alone.
4. Liver damage caused by acetaminophen: Scientists at the National Research Centre in Egypt found that ginger can prevent liver damage caused by the painkilling medication.
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