Ingredient Spotlight: Ginger
Ginger has powerful medicinal properties. Think digestion, reducing nausea, and helping fight the flu and common cold. Topically, it’s also a robust anti-inflammatory and antioxidant. Trust us; it’s an important ingredient to have in your arsenal, both topically and internally. So without further ado, we break down ginger and its array of uses, benefits, and constituents.
Botanical Source: The root of Zingiber officinalis Roscoe (Zingiberaceae - ginger family)
Pharmaceutical Name: Rhizoma Gingiberis
Alternate Names: Common ginger, East Indian ginger (Eng), Gingembre (Fr), Ingwer (Ge), Zangabil (Arabic, Persian), Sonth Adrak (Hindi), Gan Jiang, Sheng Jiang (Mand), Gaan Geung, Saang Geung (Cant)
Constituents: Oleoresin, essential oil min 1.5%, sesquiterpenes including alpha-zingiberene, and aromatic compounds such as gingerol and shogaol.
Tropism: Lungs, digestive system, uterus, immune system, spleen, stomach meridians, warmth, and air bodies. Ginger is a tropism enhancer assisting other remedies in reaching their tissue destination.
Preparation: Steam distillation of the fresh rhizome for essential oil. Dried ginger root is prepared by decoction or tincture. Short decoction of the fresh root has the best diaphoretic effect for warming the exterior and treating respiratory conditions. Dried ginger root works on the interior as a warm digestive stimulant addressing weak conditions with internal or peripheral cold.
Essential Function: Diffusive arterial stimulant. Stimulates the peripheral arterial circulation to promote warmth to the body’s surface and extremities. Reduce infection and boost immunity and antidote poisoning from herbs and food.
Physiological: Nebulizer inhalation, gel cap, suppository, liniment. Stimulates and warms asthenic (cold) conditions with circulatory deficiency, primarily gastrointestinal, respiratory, reproductive, and musculoskeletal. Antiemetic- vomiting, travel and altitude sickness, painful inflammatory conditions in general, immune regulator- especially immune stress with complex disorders (bronchial, asthma, food allergies, gluten sensitivity), liver detoxicant (phase II), and antioxidant.
Psychological: Aromatic diffusion, whole body massage. Essential PNEI (Psycho Neuro Endocrine Immunology) stimulant in weakness conditions. Increases basal ganglia and prefrontal cortex functioning (peripheral nervous system), indicated for mental apathy, loss of motivation or drive, poor concentration, low endurance and perseverance, withdrawal, low self-esteem, and self-confidence.
Topical: Compress, lotion, balm, oil, and cream preparations. Rubefacient for muscular aches, pains, stiffness, sprains, and strains. Irritant in high concentrations. Internal use of oil is contraindicated during pregnancy because of its uterine stimulant actions. Used postpartum can help expel the lochia.
TCM: Rising, warm to hot nature, tonifies the Yang and warms the interior, resolves dampness and relieves pain, descends stomach Qi and harmonizes the stomach. Relieves vomiting, warms the lung and resolves and expels phlegm, warms and invigorates the blood to break up stagnation and promote menstruation, opens the meridians, and dispels wind-damp-cold.
Chakra Affinity: Root, Sacral, Solar Plexus
Psychospiritual: On a psycho-spiritual level, ginger is said to be uplifting and grounding and to warm emotions, renew romantic interest, and aid memory. The oil energizes the aura and encourages inspiration and enlightenment.
Anthroposophical: Ginger supports a digestive process referred to in anthroposophical medicine as “kidney radiation.” The kidneys are the central organs of the astral body.
“Aside from excretion, the second function of the kidneys involves the transforming, or astralizing, of food substances absorbed from the gut into “ensouled” substances. Digested foods must be broken down into their most elemental physical components for optimal cellular utilization and purified of all foreign astral and etheric forces. This astralization by the kidneys is referred to in anthroposophical medicine as “kidney radiation.”
Kidney radiation is an action of the astral body mediated by the kidneys—so-called because it radiates from the kidneys throughout the organism and facilitates the bioenergetic or dynamic plane-level assimilation of foods. It is a complex of forces that metamorphoses the components of the nutritional stream from mere biochemicals into sentient or ensouled substances. Weak kidney radiation leads to inadequate astralization and, thus, inefficient utilization of protein. When astral body weakness affects the higher pole, the higher forces cannot fully take hold of the physico-etheric complex, resulting in incomplete digestion. Ginger incorporates the spirit and astral bodies more effectively into anabolism by facilitating the integration of astral and etheric forces.”
Excerpted from Berkowsky’s Synthesis Materia Medica/Spiritualis of Essential Oils
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