The Wild Ginger Plant To The Rescue
The wild ginger plant can help everyone who has to deal with pain.
Ginger originates in south east Asia but has been available in the West for 2,000 years. It’s long been known for its healing qualities, particularly in the treatment of indigestion, nausea and colds and ‘flu, but it can also be used to treat pain generally.
A new study from the University of Georgia published in May 2010 details an experiment in which a group of patients were given ginger to treat sports-related injuries. It was found that patients who were given 2 grams of ginger in order to relieve pain benefited from a 25 per cent reduction in levels of pain compared to patients given a placebo.
In fact the pain-reducing qualities of ginger have been known for centuries by the folks who, before the advent of modern medicine and doctors, were known as healers (usually women) to whom others went for help when they were ill or injured.
Even Nicholas Culpeper, writing in the seventeenth century in his famous “Culpeper’s Complete Herbal”, says that ginger “helps digestion, warms the stomach, clears the sight, and is profitable for old men: heats the joints, and therefore is profitable against the gout, expels wind; it is hot and dry in the second degree”.
Now this study has confirmed the pain-reduction qualities of this neglected herb, people who have to live with pain can, if they don’t already, turn to it for some measure of relief.
Philip Gegan