Ginger Soft Extract

Overview :

Ginger, the underground stem or rhizome of the plant Zingiber officinale has been used as a medicine in Asian, Indian and Arabic herbal traditions since ancient times. In China, for example, ginger has been used to aid digestion and treat stomach upset, diarrhea and nausea for more than 2,000 years. Since ancient times, ginger has also been used to help treat arthritis, colic, diarrhea and heart conditions. In addition to these medicinal uses, ginger continues to be valued around the world as an important cooking spice and is believed to help the common cold, flu-like symptoms, headaches and even painful menstrual periods. Native to Asia where its use as a culinary spice spans at least 4,400 years, ginger grows in fertile, moist, tropical soil.

A highly purified extract of ginger has been shown to reduce knee pain in patients with osteoarthritis in a US study.Today, ginger root is widely used as a digestive aid for mild stomach upset and is commonly recommended by professional herbalists to help prevent or treat nausea and vomiting associated with motion sickness, pregnancy and sometimes chemotherapy for cancer (although the latter has not been studied).

The US study (Arthritis & Rheumatism 2001: 44: 2531-38) evaluated results from 247 patients with osteoarthritis of the knee who had moderate to severe pain. The study is one of the few published on the use of ginger in arthritis. Patients in the trial took one capsule of ginger complex in the morning and one in the evening.

After 6 weeks of treatment, a higher percentage of people (63 per cent) were classified as responders for improvement of knee pain on standing in the ginger extract group than in the group given placebo (dummy tablets). Pain on standing was the main variable used to measure efficacy in this study and is a standard measure of pain in medical studies. Pain on standing is measured using a visual scale. People are shown the scale and asked to mark the level of their pain on the scale.

This difference between the ginger-treated group and the dummy tablet group was statistically significant, meaning that there was a low probability that the result occurred by chance.

Ginger has been used for at least 2500 years in China, India and Tibet as an anti-inflammatory for arthritic pain apparently without cause for concern. The US Food and Drug Administration lists ginger as ‘generally regarded as safe’.

In the US study the only significant difference in adverse events between the ginger-treated group and the group on dummy tablets was that gastrointestinal effects such as burping, bad taste in the mouth, stomach upset and heartburn were more common in the people taking the ginger complex.

Warnings have been sounded about a possible effect of ginger on bleeding times. People on blood-thinning medications, called anticoagulants and people at risk of bleeding should talk to their doctor before taking ginger products.