Inflammation, vomiting treated with TCM dried ginger root

What is dried ginger root(Gan Jiang)? Just as its name implies, it comes from fresh ginger root by drying. To be specific, medicinally it refers to the dried rhizomes of Zingiber officinale Rosc., a plant in Zingiberaceae family. And its other common names are Rhizoma Zingiberis, Ginger rhizome, Rhizoma Zingiberis Officinalis, Zingiber officinale, and so on. In China, it is basically cultivated and produced in Sichuan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, Hubei and other provinces. After harvested in winter, they are washed clean, sliced into pieces, dried in the sun or dried beside or over a fire. And typically it is used raw.

It is a flat block, 3 to 7cm long, 1 to 2cm wide, and with finger-like branches. Surface is greyish yellow or light gray brown, rough, and with longitudinal wrinkles and obvious segments. Branch points are often with remnants of scale leaves and branch top comes with stem scar and buds. It is solid in quality, powdery or graininess, and with yellow-white or gray cross section. Endodermis has obvious rings, vascular, and scattered yellow oil spots. It has peculiar scented odor and spicy flavor.

Main chemical constituents are 2% volatile oil, resin, starch, and amino acids. And the main ingredients of its volatile oil are zingiberene, phellandrene, camphene, shogaol, gingerol, zingiberone, borneol, zingiberol, citral, and so on.

Dry ginger root benefits
As mentioned above, medicinally there are two types of ginger roots – dried and fresh ginger. Though they are almost the same thing, they can’t be mixed in TCM practice. Generally speaking dried one is made of mother ginger, which means it has sprouted twice and grown for three years. In comparison, the fresh one refers to the daughter ginger, namely the one that has grown for only one year. What difference do they make? So to speak, the fresh version is like a fire, meanwhile, the dry version is a charcoal, which allows heating slowly and prevents water loss too fast. And its modern pharmacology can reveal some fact of its working mechanism.

Modern pharmacological actions of ginger herb
1. Ginger extract by methanol or ether can calm the nerves, ease pain, prevent inflammation, arrest vomiting and temporarily elevate blood pressure;
2. Its water extract or volatile oil can significantly prolong the experimental thrombus formation time in rats;
3. Its alcohol extract and gingerol and shogaol contained have significant molluscicidal and anti-schistosome effect;
4. Its alcohol extract can significantly increase the amount of bile secretion in rat, and this effect can maintain for up to 3 to 4 hours.