Boost your energy with ginseng

Press, 11 June 1987, Page 9

Boost your energy with ginseng

JEAN FIELDING,

a British,

State-registered nurse, looks at a 5000-year-old Oriental remedy.

People who live alone cannot afford to be ill, so when I felt depressed recently, I visited a health food store, where I noticed my general practitioner examining some packets.

“Aren’t your own prescriptions good enough for you, Doctor K?” I ask jokingly. Without embarrassment he confided: “I buy a supply of this Korean ginseng every month — it boosts my energy more than any drugs.”

If ginseng enabled Doctor K. to function , more efficiently I reckoned it might cheer me up, so I bought a packet and started taking 600 mg. each morning. After three weeks I experienced a remarkable feeling of well-being. I could concentrate better at work, sleep more soundly and I regained my normal optimistic outlook on life.

Full of enthusiasm, I recommended ginseng to my friends, relatives and colleagues whenever they complained of rheumatism, fatigue, insomnia, high blood pressure or headaches.

Gaynor S. who had been worried by her partner’s moodiness, was so delighted by his changed manner after taking ginseng for a fortnight that she admitted: “I’m taking ginseng every morning, too. It gives me extra confidence and I’m more interested in the. children’s activities.

A divorced friend, Jillian T., who was always over-worked coping with her three children, a lodger, a demanding job and her house, garden and car, assured me: “You’ve saved my life by praising ginseng. It’s better than pep-pills! I was so exhausted by evening that I was snapping at the kids and neglecting household jobs. Now I’ve started decorating and I’m going to begin entertaining and dancing again. I feel a new woman!" ‘ For more than 5000 years, Panax ginseng has been regarded as a panacea for all ailments in China, Korea and India. The name “Panax” is derived from the Greek word for “all-healing” while ginseng comes from the Chinese “Shen seng” or “Jen shang” meaning “man-root” or “man-like.”

Of all the multitude of plants, ginseng is the only one claimed to be a universal remedy. Other names for it are magical herb (shen tashao), and the that-banishes-wrinkies-from-the-face (Ison mien huntain). The last name implies that ginseng enables people to live longer and healthier lives.

Panax ginseng is the botanical name of a shrub of the family Araliaceae and it grows deep Inside mountainous moist forest areas. This low perennial herb , has a single stalk which grows to one metre in height and bears five compound leaves and a single cluster of flowers. The creamy, fleshy, branched root with rootlets branching off, resembles the shape of the human body.

The root contains the magic life-giving formula which includes glycosides which contain steroids, essential oils, fatty acids, ginsenin, phytosterin, resins, enzymes, vitamins, sugars, alkaloids, minerals, silicic acids and up to 13 per cent moisture. Chinese people believe that nature is composed of balanced positive (male or “yang”) and negative (female or “yin”) forces. They attribute ill-health to an imbalance between the forces and use herbs to rectify this condition before it leads to disease. Ginseng is the most “yang” herb used in medicine.

In his “Pharmacopoeia of the Heavenly Husbandman,” written in the second century A.D., the emperor Shen Nung, a famous Chinese herbalist, placed ginseng at the top of a list of health-giving herbs.

He wrote: "... it is a tonic to the five viscerea, quieting the animal spirits, allaying fear, expelling evil effluvia, brightening the eyes, opening the heart, benefiting the understanding and,' if taken for some time, it will invigorate the body and prolong life.”. Chieh-pin Chang (A.D. 960) listed some 500’

medicinal formulae containing ginseng, prescribed for nearly every kind of disease

During the early years of imperial rule in China, fabulous sums were paid for ginseng roots. A properly cured old root of top quality sold for more than its weight in gold.

The most cherished roots were those with an obvious man-like shape for they were believed to have curative powers for the whole body and for increasing male potency. One Chinese emperor paid 115,000 for a particularly shapely man-root When supplies of wild ginseng dwindled in Asia, the plant was cultivated in plantations in Korea, Manchuria, Japan, India and Siberia. A ginseng boom started in North America in 1717 when Father Joseph Francis Lafitau, a Canadian missionary among the Iroquois, recognised a wild ginseng plant from the description sent to him in a letter from a missionary in China. Millions of Orientals still rely on ginseng for revitalising the body and their doctors combine it with other herbs for the treatment of countless diseases. Its effects are subtle and progressive rather than dramatic or instant Unlike most

stimulants it does not produce asudden in body activity follovred by a depressed stew, nor does the nervous isyrtem become over-depandent upon It

The Chinese belle-red that ginseng was teneflcial in more, aliments because Its normalising influence helped the body to adjust its hormonal balance. It's claimed It can enable the body to raise too-low blood-pressure and lower too-iiigh pressure; acts as a stimulant and as'a sedative; 1 tower a high cholesterol level, yet leave a normal level untouched. . Ginseng, its adherents say, enables the body to resist physical, emotional, and mental stresses without causing side-eft sets. It helps us. to cope with overheating, noire, overwork, chemical factors such as poisons and can-cer-lnducing substances, bacteria, and viruses.

The Chinese considered ginseng to be the supreme remedy for an sexual inadequacy. My doctor considers that ginseng will improve his health and extend his life, while sportsmen like Geoff Boycott believe it increases their energy and enables them to train for longer periods. And, surely those billions of clever Orientals who revered ginseng for untold centuries cannot all have been wrong?

—Copyright, DUO.