Ginger Does A Lot More Than You Think

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Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Ginger root contains a bioactive compound called gingerol, which has a number of health-giving properties, including:

  • For weight loss and improved hip-to-waist ratio

  • Against nausea, including

    • General nausea

    • Pregnancy-related nausea

    • Post-surgery nausea

    • Chemotherapy-induced nausea

  • Against inflammation, including

    • General inflammation

    • Arthritis

    • Crohn’s

    • Colitis

    • Lupus

    • And by the same mechanism, against cancer

  • For cardiovascular health

    • By reducing triglyceride levels and reducing LDL while increasing HDL

    • By reducing fasting blood sugar levels and also HbA1c levels

  • Against neurodegeneration, including

    • Alzheimer’s

    • Parkinson’s

• Continued learning is important all the way through life, but that “to-read” list sure stacks up, doesn’t it?

  • Today’s sponsor Blinkist offers thousands of 15-minute book summaries (text and/or audio; you choose) to help with that.

    • Whether you go on to buy/borrow any given book, or are just happy to learn from the summaries, it really helps any passionate reader to allocate our time well!

Read on to learn about these things and more…

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This short (4:40) video explains how:

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💊 MAIN FEATURE

Ginger’s benefits go deep!

You are doubtlessly already familiar with what ginger is, so let’s skip right into the science.

The most relevant active compound in the ginger root is called gingerol, and people enjoy it not just for its taste, but also a stack of health reasons, such as:

• For weight loss

• Against nausea

• Against inflammation

• For cardiovascular health

• Against neurodegeneration

Quite a collection! So, what does the science say?

For weight loss

This one’s quite straightforward. It not only helps overall weight loss, but also specifically improves waist-hip ratio, which is a much more important indicator of health than BMI.

Read: The effects of ginger intake on weight loss and metabolic profiles among overweight and obese subjects: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Against nausea

Ginger has proven its effectiveness in many high quality clinical trials, against general nausea, post-surgery nausea, chemotherapy-induced nausea, and pregnancy-related nausea.

Source: Ginger on Human Health: A Comprehensive Systematic Review of 109 Randomized Controlled Trials

However! While it very clearly has been shown to be beneficial in the majority of cases, there are some small studies that suggest it may not be safe to take close to the time of giving birth, or in people with a history of pregnancy loss, or unusual vaginal bleeding, or clotting disorders.

See specifically: Ginger for nausea and vomiting of pregnancy

As a side note on the topic of “trouble down there”, ginger has also been found to be as effective as Novafen (a combination drug of acetaminophen (Tylenol), caffeine, and ibuprofen), in the task of relieving menstrual pain:

See: Effect of Ginger and Novafen on menstrual pain: A cross-over trial

Against inflammation

Ginger has well-established anti-inflammatory (and, incidentally, which affects many of the same systems, antioxidant) effects. Let’s take a look at that first:

Read: Effect of Ginger on Inflammatory Diseases

Attentive readers will note that this means that ginger is not merely some nebulous anti-inflammatory agent. Rather, it also specifically helps alleviate delineable inflammatory diseases, ranging from colitis to Crohn’s, arthritis to lupus.

We’ll be honest (we always are!), the benefits in this case are not necessarily life-changing, but they are a statistically significant improvement, and if you are living with one of those conditions, chances are you’ll be glad of even things described in scientific literature as “modestly efficacious”.

What does “modestly efficacious” look like? Here are the numbers from a review of 593 patients’ results in clinical trials (against placebo):

To de-mathify that:

• Ginger reduced pain by 30%

• Ginger reduced disability by 22%

Read the source: Efficacy and safety of ginger in osteoarthritis patients: a meta-analysis of randomized placebo-controlled trials

Because (in part) of the same signalling pathways, it also has benefits against cancer (and you’ll remember, it also reduces the symptoms of chemotherapy).

See for example: Ginger's Role in Prevention and Treatment of Gastrointestinal Cancer

For cardiovascular health

In this case, its benefits are mostly twofold:

• It significantly reduces triglycerides and LDL cholesterol, while increasing HDL cholesterol

• It significantly reduces fasting blood sugar levels and HbA1c levels (both risk factors for CVD)

Against neurodegeneration

This is in large part because it reduces inflammation, which we discussed earlier.

But, not everything passes the blood-brain barrier, so it’s worth noting when something (like gingerol) does also have an effect on brain health as well as the rest of the body.

You do not want inflammation in your brain; that is Bad™ and strongly associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

As well as reducing neuroinflammation, ginger has other relevant mechanisms too:

Check it out in full, as this is quite interesting:

Role of Ginger in the Prevention of Neurodegenerative Diseases

How much to take?

In most studies, doses of 1–3 grams/day were used.

Where to get it?

Your local supermarket, as a first port-of-call. Especially given the dose you want, it may be nicer for you to have a touch of sliced ginger root in your cooking, rather than taking 2–6 capsules per day to get the same dose.

Obviously, this depends on your culinary preferences, and ginger certainly doesn’t go with everything!

If you do want it as a supplement, here is an example product on Amazon, for your convenience.

Enjoy!

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🌏 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Increasing legumes and reducing red meat is safe for bone health and protein intake, study shows

• Importance of routine eye care for patients with diabetes

• Medications for chronic diseases can impair thermoregulation, especially in hot weather

• Scientists identify a hidden pattern of consciousness in the brains of coma patients

• The association between diet pattern and depressive and anxiety symptoms

• A peek at Big Pharma’s playbook that leaves many Americans unable to afford their drugs

• A new treatment option for a form of sudden hair loss

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life – by Dr. Louise Aronson

Where does "middle age" end, and "old age" begin? By the United States' CDC's categorization, human life involves:

• 17 stages of childhood, deemed 0–18

• 5 stages of adulthood, deemed 18–60

• 1 stage of elderhood, deemed 60+

Isn't there something missing here? Do we just fall off some sort of conveyor belt on our sixtieth birthdays, into one big bucket marked "old"?

Yesterday you were 59 and enjoying your middle age; today you have, apparently, the same medical factors and care needs as a 114-year-old.

Dr. Louise Aronson, a geriatrician, notes however that medical science tends to underestimate the differences found in more advanced old age, and underresearch them. That elders consume half of a country's medicines, but are not required to be included in clinical trials. That side effects not only are often different than for younger adults, but also can cause symptoms that are then dismissed as "Oh she's just old".

She explores, mostly through personal career anecdotes, the well-intentioned disregard that is frequently given by the medical profession, and—importantly—how we might overcome that, as individuals and as a society.

Bottom line: if you are over the age of 60, love someone over the age of 60, this is a book for you. Similarly if you and/or they plan to live past the age of 60, this is also a book for you.

Click here to check out Elderhood, and empower yours!

Wishing you the most well-informed start to the week,

The 10almonds Team