Ginseng Plant

This is a nice picture of a ginseng plant. Note the bright red berries.

Ginseng Cooker

Check out this sweet electronic ginseng cooker. It's like a rice cooker, but for ginseng! Nini and I found this out in San Gabriel after dim sum.

Sanging in Illinois

No video? Watch it at youtube

Gathering wild American ginseng has been a hobby for many and occupation for some for hundreds of years (originally learned, I'm guessing, from Native Americans - they were here first, after all). Ginseng is a very rare and precious herb, and getting more rare as the years go by. That makes this video all the more remarkable. As the narrator says, for someone to show you where he collects ginseng is almost unheard of. Take a look.

Eric Brand is Serious About Ginseng

Eric Brand is one of my favorite bloggers on the Blue Poppy blog. In his latest entry, he calls out the Western scientific community for sloppy research on Chinese herbs. Bathe in the righteous indignation (emphasis and links mine):

I must confess that it really irks me when I find primary herbal resources that spread misinformation within our core professional community.

In most situations, these errors could be minimized with extremely basic efforts at rigor and scholarship. For example, the European ESCOP monographs are one of the most widely used and well-regarded resources in Western herbalism. They have an extensive section on ginseng, complete with an impeccable scientific review and a variety of excellent features. Yet they report the dose of ginseng as 0.5-2.0g per day, with anything over two grams considered overdose. Seriously, are they for real? How could a whole team of scientists and herbalists create a monograph on ginseng without noticing that the traditional and standard clinical dose range of ginseng is 3-9 grams per day? I mean, it isn’t rocket science to determine that ginseng is an herb with an extensive history of use in traditional East Asian medicine, and all the pharmacopoeias in the East clearly list this higher dose range.

The complete post, as you'll see, is more about the concurrent use of ginseng and other stimulants. Combining ginseng (and now reishi mushroom) with coffee is extremely popular - google "ginseng coffee" and you get more than 350,000 results.

Excellent Article on Ginseng

Three triumphant ginseng roots stand on the corpses of their defeated enemies.

"Million Dollar Man Root" was published last year in the Washington City Paper, D.C.'s free weekly. The story centers around Harding's Ginseng Farm in Rockville, Maryland, which raises wild-simulated American ginseng (西洋参 Xi Yang Shen, also known as 花期参 Hua Qi Shen). There are many hilarious and informative bits, and even if you're an acupuncturist and/or herbalist you'll probably learn something new.

Chi, in traditional Asian medicine, is the energy that sustains life. Of course, one of the most common motivations for taking ginseng is to increase the type of energy that creates life. Over dinner one night I asked my girlfriend to think back to when we first started dating. I began taking ginseng about a month into our relationship. Does she remember any change in the firmness of my erections around then?

“I refuse to answer that question,” she says.

“So what you’re saying is that my erections were incredibly firm and robust right from Day 1?”

She stares at me blankly for a moment, shakes her head, and then goes back to her meal.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I say.

The author, Franklin Schneider, doesn't make any distinction between American ginseng (panax quinquefolis) and Asian ginseng (panax ginseng), and as far as I can tell neither does Mr. Harding's website.

TCM's materia medica describes American ginseng as cool in nature and milder than Asian ginseng, which is warm and stronger for tonifying qi. Mr. Harding says "Believe me, it’ll make you into a real big man. A bigger man!" but is ginseng a guaranteed sexual tonic? Chinese medicine professionals know the answer is no, despite ginseng's miraculous properties.

If you're generally in good health, just a little run down with low energy, a low dose of ginseng may be a great way to stimulate your qi. But low sexual desire and low sexual ability has many different etiologies, and qi deficiency is just one. In some cases, especially Damp Heat accumulation or Liver Qi stagnation, ginseng may make your situation worse. For best results, do your own research, and then see a Chinese medicine professional, designated by the L.Ac after their name, which stands for Licensed Acupuncturist. All L.Acs in the state of California and most L.Acs in other states have extensive herbology training and can determine what kind of ginseng, if any, is best for you.