When I was a kid, my mother would create a ridiculously strong "tea" for me consisting of ginger boiled down into a cup. It burned like hell going down the throat, but at the same time, had an incredible healing power. With our newest addition to our Nature's Apocathary line, we have Ginger. Ginger has been used for over 5,000 years as a medicinal herb in both traditional Chinese and Indian Ayurvedic healing practices. It has been well documented to treating digestive disorders, but also can be used to treat migraines, nausea, hypertension and arthritis. Through it's powerfully healing properties to gut health, it even benefits mental health due to it's influence on serotonin in the body.
All About Ginger
Since thousands of years ago, ginger has been used as a food and herbal medicine in Asia and the Far East. The rhizomes have been used since antiquity in the various traditional systems of medicine to treat cold, fever, sore throats, infectious diseases, arthritis, rheumatism, sprains, muscular aches, pains, cramps, hypertension, dementia, migraine, nervous diseases, gingivitis, toothache, asthma, stroke, and diabetes and also used as home remedy in treating various gastric ailments like constipation, diarrhea, dyspepsia, belching, bloating, gastritis, epigastric discomfort, gastric ulcerations, indigestion and nausea.
However the focus of this post is about Ginger's positive impact on mental health by way of gut health benefit and thus Serotonin improvement.
Gut Health and Serotonin
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, or chemical messenger, that controls and stabilizes your mood and functions in your brain. It may surprise you to find that approximately 95% of Serotonin is created in the gut and digestive system. Thus, this happiness hormone is also responsible for many of the pivotal functions of your digestive system.
The idea that food can be medicine and medicine is food is well reflected here in leveraging ginger to assist in gut health and improving serotonin levels as a result.
Ginger as an Anti-inflammatory
Ginger’s anti-inflammatory effects on the brain are attributed mainly to two unique compounds, 10-gingerol and 6-shogaol. Many brain disorders (such as Alzheimer’s) can be attributed to chronic inflammation of the brain and so leveraging Ginger to assist in treating or at least in tandem with other treatments for such disorders shows promise.
Our latest offering in the Nature Apocathary store is Ginger in it's natural form ground to a powder and capped with care. Give your insides a warm hug without having to force down really intense strong tea - there are copious benefits to be had!
Sources:
Giacosa A, Morazzoni P, Bombardelli E, Riva A, Bianchi Porro G, Rondanelli M. Can nausea and vomiting be treated with ginger extract? Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci. 2015 Apr;19(7):1291-6. PMID: 25912592.
Jin Z, Lee G, Kim S, Park CS, Park YS, Jin YH. Ginger and its pungent constituents non-competitively inhibit serotonin currents on visceral afferent neurons. Korean J Physiol Pharmacol. 2014 Apr;18(2):149-53. doi: 10.4196/kjpp.2014.18.2.149. Epub 2014 Apr 3. PMID: 24757377; PMCID: PMC3994302.
Nikkhah Bodagh M, Maleki I, Hekmatdoost A. Ginger in gastrointestinal disorders: A systematic review of clinical trials. Food Sci Nutr. 2018 Nov 5;7(1):96-108. doi: 10.1002/fsn3.807. PMID: 30680163; PMCID: PMC6341159.