 Throughout history many herbs have been priced for their supposed healing abilities, but one has really captured the memory, the obsession, and really I think the psyche of a lot of people from the part of the world that it primarily comes from, and that herb is ginseng. So in this video not only are we doing a live little ginseng tasting, so I prepared the renchen through our traditional decoction, water extraction, and we're not only going to taste it, we're going to talk about a little bit of the history as well as some of the uses of ginseng. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hine, Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine. So before we jump into this video, two very important links right below. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, you can contact my private practice through the link right below this video, and the second is for a free download which is four daily rituals that could potentially help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine. So first I want to jump into just the tasting of ginseng before we talk about it. So I want to describe what this is first and foremost because in ancient China, you know I specialize in internal medicine with Chinese formulas, and the traditional way that most formulas were taken is what's called a decoction. So in Chinese it's tang, so it's like soup, decoction. The way this is prepared is that typically, depending on the region in China, you typically will soak the herbs first, sometimes even overnight, the night before, especially for hard roots like ginseng, which you can't even cut it up because it's so tough, and then you'll boil them often for 30 or 45 minutes, simmer them, exchange the water as in save the water, re-boil them again, and then you have two combined decoctions in one, and typically that's what you would drink three times per day. So I've prepared this maybe about 10 to 15 grams of ren chen ginseng, and if you can see the color, it has a very chicken broth looking color. The smell is a little bit of a chicken broth, sort of almost almost a salty or earthy kind of taste, and if you guys want to see what it looks like, that yellow color. So we're going to taste it and we're going to describe how these ancient physicians and alchemists and herbalists and mystics, even many often, how they described the medicinal uses of these plants because this is very important and very distinct to Chinese medicine. So let's try this first. So the first thing you notice about ren chen is that it tastes bitter. So there's a slight bitterness to it and almost a tad bit of a salty kind of flavor, but certainly the bitterness is what comes through, and that wasn't even a high dose that I boiled. In Chinese medicine, traditional classical herbalism, the functions of the plants were typically three things based on what's called the qi and the wei, and really we could say maybe a signature function or a series of symptoms it's known to treat. So the qi, really, I mean people call it the energy, but the qi is really the temperature. Temperature meaning is it warming or is it cooling? For example, ginger is warming, and herbs like huangqin, huangnian, coptis, goodleria, they're cooling. So these are describing the functions, the effects that they have on the body. When we talk about the qi, we talk about warming and cooling, and then we talk about the flavor. The flavor meaning salty, sweet, bitter, sour, spicy, right? And those are describing some of their functions as well. So in ancient times, the functions of herbs, because you guys have to remember, how do you know what an herb does in the absence of modern bio chemistry? Modern chemistry is very recent, a few hundred years in its most recent form. But these ancient alchemists were ancient chemists, right? Alchemist has chemist in the name. But how can you know what a plant does until you put it in your body? There's really no way, ultimately. So you can imagine some of the trials that must have been happening for thousands or hundreds of thousands of years with humans. I mean we have documented herbal texts for several thousand years, and by then Chinese were already using formulas. So formula science, we never use single herbs in Chinese medicine. It's always 2, 3, 5, 20 herbs in a formula. So you imagine how many thousands of years before even a book in the year 200 AD was written, must this culture have been using these? One of the ways you know the ancient function of an herb is by the flavor and the nature. So for example, if you take an herb that is considered, let's say, sour, right? You put something sour in your mouth, even an artificial thing like a sour patch kid or a candy. You put sourness in your mouth and it creates that sort of puckering sensation, right? A warhead or a lemon or a lime that's sour. You put it in your mouth and people all make the same face. This kind of astringent, it generates a lot of fluids and mucus in your mouth. So we say sour gathers. Let's say you're someone who's flemmy like me. You have a lot of mucus in your throat. You tend to have GI problems, allergies. You tend to have the mucosa tend to be too wet, too damp. Chinese medicine calls this dampness. The thing is sour astringes, meaning it gathers and stabilizes fluids. But if you're someone who has too many fluids, like you always clear your throat after big meals, you tend to be flemmy or mucusy or blow your nose a lot, sour will generate too much fluids. And you need more acrid or more bitter. So acrid would be like using ginger to stimulate appetite. Even though it's hot out, you use that acrid to generate some appetite. So flavor nature and then typically the signature functions. But when it comes to ginseng, there are two very specific formulas I want to talk about. So let's talk about formulas that actually use ginseng. Because in ancient times, ginseng was typically used almost like an IV fluids. For example, one famous formula, which is called Li Zhongwan, regulate the middle pill, was used for basically diarrhea. Some people say it was a formula specifically for cholera. But when people are having what back then was called sudden turmoil, vomiting and diarrhea typically at the same time. So this can be like cholera, for example. So renxin was used to stabilize those fluids in a whole formula, not just one herb. Now in later Dianesees, for example, the formula came out called Duxentang. And Duxentang is ginseng alone, the caution. And this is a large dose, I think the traditional dosage was 60 grams taken at once. And that was basically for when someone's dying. Acute blood loss, for example, use that to stabilize the body and prevent the person from dying. This is kind of like my mentor described it as grandma's on her deathbed. You need her to get to your son's graduation in a week before she dies. You give her Duxentang to give her that last oomph to stay alive. So it became famous for that usage. But in ancient times, what was used was aconite. And a formula was called Cernitang. Cernitang means frozen extremities formula, or counterflow formula. And usually this herb used was called aconite, fuzzi. Fuzzi was the main herb used to stabilize what we call the yang or devastated yang or yang deficiency or yang collapse some later people called it. But ginseng developed a reputation that was very similar in later Dianesees. In terms of modern research, there are a lot of documented benefits to ginseng. One of them is that ginseng will even help fatigue, not just general fatigue, but fatigue related to cancer. So one particular study found that even a low dose of 400 milligrams a day believed cancer related fatigue in the majority of the people in the study. Now ginseng also helps regulate the HPA axis related to anxiety, depression, insomnia, and stress. So for example, one study found that ginseng will actually up regulate neurotrophic factors, helping actual cell growth in the nervous system. And on top of that, it also helps with cardiovascular disease. So it's actually an antithrombotic. So people who are predisposed towards cardiovascular issues, stroke, heart attack, ginseng can actually be very helpful for as well. Mostly day to day, there's a famous formula that you see in modern TCM school called the six gentlemen decoction, and it uses ginseng primarily for digestive problems that we call spleen sheet efficiency, loading, fatigue, loose stools, food sensitivities, that kind of thing. So that is probably today what it is most famous for. But it has a very long history. And you'll see these ginseng roots that are framed in these glass boxes that have long the long tendrils of not only the main root, but also the side roots. And the prices for this can be astronomical. But it's a very famous herb through history that is not only backed up from the ancient physician's historical record, the alchemical record, and modern clinical research as well. So that's my two cents on ginseng today, guys. Before you go, check out these two related videos, and I'll see you soon.