The ginger route

Press, 4 June 1982, Page 13

The ginger route

By

OLIVER GILLIE,

“Sunday Times,” London

If you suffer from travel sickness, try a few pieces of crystallised ginger, or even a packet of ginger snaps, before your journey. Ginger, one of the oldest remedies in the world, has now been shown in scientific tests to be better than pills in preventing nausea and vomiting. Ginger, first imported into Europe in the fourth century BC, the time of Alexander the Great, is recognised in folklore and old herbals for the treatment of wind and indigestion. Chinese doctors use it to relieve pain. And in Jamaica, where ginger has been grown commercially since the earliest colonial days, it is. used to treat period pains and morning

sickness. Now a recent article in "The Lancet” suggests it is a powerful remedy for motion sickness.

Two American psychologists at Mount Union College, Alliance, Ohio, tested the effects of ginger on students who were whirled round for six minutes in a rotating chair with their heads on one side. Within two minutes and a half, 12 students in a control group who were given dummy capsules began to feel ill. Three vomited soon afterwards.

Students given a standard travel sickness drug — dimenhydrinate,. sold as Dramamine and Gravol —

fared a little better. They held out for four minutes. However, students given ordinary powdered ginger (about one gramme in a capsule) did not feel ill until six minutes had passed. Ginger was also tried on about six people who were specially sensitive to travel, and they reported an improvement. “One said it was the first time she had been in a car for years without suf-

fering from travel sickness,” said Dennis Clayson, one of the psychologists. They tried ginger because of its traditional reputation, but they still do not know how it works. A possible clue comes from ‘Dr Charles Dorso of Cornell University Medical College. He had been using his own blood for several weeks for experiments on clotting — but found one day that his blood would not clot normally. The culprit, he eventually discovered, was a large quantity of Crabtree and Evelyn’s ginger and grapefruit marmalade that he had eaten the previous evening. He tested the theory with powdered ginger bought from a supermarket, and got the same results. Dorso says that gingerol — one of the constituents of ginger — has a similar chemical structure to aspirin, which also delays clotting. Ginger may act like aspirin in countering pain and malaise, but without the

side-effects of stomach irritation.

Does ginger have its own side effects? Not, at least, in the small quantities taken in food — it is generally recognised as safe by the Federal Drug Administration: However, ginger does have' a great reputation as an aphrodisiac. In his fourteenth century sex manual, “The Perfumed Garden,-” Cheikh Umar Ibn Muhammad al Nelzaoui recommended ginger applied with honey “to enlarge a small member.” He suggested: “Rub the mixture in sedulously. Join the woman. It will procure for her such pleasure that she objects to the man getting off her again.” Those interested simply in preventing travel sickness, however, should either eat a few pieces of crystallised or root ginger, or pour boiling water on a level teaspoonful of powdered ginger, sweeten, and drink.