 The other day I was scouring the internet for these old wives tales about the uses of certain herbs because I do think like probably many other skeptical people think that there is an element of truth and there's an element of BS and it's our job now to figure out which is true and which of these stories are maybe not true so that we can move forward and utilize what's useful, get rid of what isn't. And one of those herbs that came up in those stories was ginger for nausea. So in this video I thought I would share a little bit more about this idea of using ginger for nausea and what some of the research says and the Chinese medicine point of view. Hey guys, Dr. Alex Hein, Doctor of Chinese Medicine and Licensed Acupuncturist. So before we jump into this video there are two 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 there's a link below to contact my private practice. And the second is a link to a free download which is four daily rituals that could potentially help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine. So those are right below this video. So I started off by looking at this research paper at pregnancy-sickness-support.org.uk. And they're studying ginger for hyper-MSS, basically repeated vomiting and I think this one was in pregnant women. And this sample size was 512 women who had been hospitalized within the past five years. So this is a pretty severe vomiting I think during pregnancy. It's funny that it says, ginger is ineffective and causes harm. An internet-based survey of sufferers. As you can tell, first of all this is a problem because if you're just surveying the sufferers then you may have a selection bias where you've only gotten the people with gripes, the women here that had a negative response to ginger, maybe the only ones reporting just like unhappily married people on internet forums. So 51% of respondents who tried it reported it actually exacerbated symptoms. It actually worsened their mood, including feelings of anger, lack of validation, isolation, guilt, and exacerbating the feeling they were just understood. Wow, I didn't know ginger could make you feel lack of validation and feel isolated. That's funny, that's pretty hilarious. Let's look at this just for a sec because it's a good conversational point here. So they said the kind of ginger that they took, the forms, many different forms of ginger had been tried. For example, ginger biscuits, 360, ginger beer, dry ginger tea, ginger sweets, fresh ginger tea, raw ginger, crystallized ginger, and ginger root capsules, 1,000 milligrams. So it's funny because we're talking about ginger for nausea, but what these women, the majority didn't even consume was ginger. They consumed ginger with sugar, ginger beer with sugar, ginger sweets with sugar, crystallized ginger with sugar, and ginger root capsules, 1,000 milligrams. They were saying that very mixed results, a lot said they had negative effects, 54% exacerbation of the symptoms were the most common reported. So besides the fact that this really was not an internet-based study on ginger, it was on mostly ginger sweets. I mean, if you're vomiting and nauseous, probably eating crystallized ginger with 30 grams of sugar, probably not the best bet, but it brings up a really important point for us to talk about because this is common in clinical research and does not at all invalidate what we do in Chinese medicine. So very commonly, you'll see studies like this that say we had this sample size, they took ginger, usually in a capsule, whatever, 1,000 milligrams, 500 milligrams, didn't work. So it looks like ginger doesn't work. But most often what you see is that the dosages that they used, first of all, this study is garbage because it's half for the women it can be ginger. So get rid of this. But this one particular research paper I was reading was actual proper ginger, encapsulated. And it was 1,000 milligrams. Another was 500 milligrams. The problem is that these dosages are 10 to 20 times less or even 50 times less than what we use in Chinese medicine. Take a look at this. A non-nausea formula that we use in Chinese medicine called Guajetang, which can be actually very effective for morning sickness and is often used in morning sickness, has nine grams of ginger. That is, the main indication of this formula is not even nausea or stomach symptoms, but it is often used actually in first trimester morning sickness. A specific formula for nausea, that's called jupitang, has 24 grams of ginger and 12 grams of jupi or chenpi, which is tangerine peel. Now, 500 milligrams versus 24 grams of ginger. Slight difference, I would say. Very, very slight difference. But let's take a look at these side by side because this kind of says it all. Okay, so this one is now we want to compare what one of those studies had done on ginger, the dosaging versus a serious dosage of ginger that we use in formulas in Chinese medicine. So that study used, I think, 500 milligrams of ginger. That's what that looks like. So let's put this guy right there, right? That's the 500 milligrams. And then I talked about a formula we use that's not even specifically for nausea, but we often do use it in the first trimester for nausea related to pregnancy, a little bit over nine grams. So I went a little bit high, but just so you can see visually, it's the first one. This is the non-nausea formula, but we often do use it for that. And let me show you a proper formula that's actually indicated for significant stomach reflux and digestion. 12 grams of chenpi, tangerine peel, in addition to 24 grams of ginger, a little bit over 12 grams there. And then look at the amount of ginger in this. So that's what that looks like. This is what the study was studying. Look at how thin this is, not even like a bite of ginger. I mean, this is like scraps you throw on the floor. All right, so let's compare these all side by side. This is often what is done in some studies, literally 500 milligrams. This is a standard formula in Chinese medicine, standard dosage of ginger, not even for nausea or vomiting, nine grams, very common in many formulas. And this is an actual, quote, medical grade formula that I use acutely for indigestion, where there's nausea and reflux and vomiting, okay? 24 grams, take a look at these. Unfortunately, this is what's often studied. This is what we often use. And this is actually an interventional medical dose. So, you know, just have to be careful and skeptical of what you see on the internet. That goes for alternative medicine too, especially, but in Chinese medicine, this is what we end up using most of the time and not this. So, this isn't gonna tell us that much at all, clinically. All right, guys? So, nausea in general in Chinese medicine has many different causes. For an herbalist, a Chinese medicine doctor to say, nausea takes some ginger, frankly is a relatively inexperienced doctor because there are many different causes of nausea and there are dozens, if not hundreds of formulas we could use for nausea with different causes. So, I thought I would take the time to share three different ones. The first one is what we call nausea due to cold. Patients with this pattern often are more likely to have a low appetite, bloating, food sensitivities, a pale face, a pale tongue, and often a thicker white tongue coat, especially first thing in the morning, if you look at your tongue, it has a thick white foam on it, film. That's very commonly nausea due to what we call stomach cold and is often related to low stomach acid. The second one is nausea due to heat. So, this can be due to many different patterns. The most common one I see is just bad diet. People drinking a lot of coffee, drinking a lot of alcohol, eating a lot of fried foods. The tongue is often red, they often feel hotter, bowel movements are more dry or constipated and hard as opposed to the first group being looser stools or even diarrhea and undigested food. That's more nausea due to heat or a mixed pattern. And then the third pattern is what we call nausea due to room. So, room is where there's an issue with fluid metabolism in the body. These patients often have dizziness. They often have a feeling of upward poking in the ribs or in the sternum or in the epigastric area. They often have lots of mucus or saliva in their throat. They're very flemy. They have issues with edema sometimes or they know they have fluid metabolism issues. They have water retention issues. There can be urinary issues as well. And this one, in this kind of people, they will often have bloating and an aversion to drinking water, interestingly enough. They don't wanna drink water or plain water. They often feel excessively full from liquids, so they avoid them. And this is a kind of dizziness due to this water metabolism kind of issue in Chinese medicine. It's a very common one as well. So, those are three different patterns. And for some of these, if you give one formula to the other person, they will often get worse. So, going back to this pregnancy, morning sickness, hyperemesis, paper I'm sharing, what's often happening most likely is number one, besides the fact that half of them were consuming sugar, not even ginger really, what's often happening is probably half these women are probably the hot type. And so, we would never give just ginger to the hot type of nausea or vomiting because it could exacerbate things on its own. So, again, this goes back to fundamental day one of Chinese medicine. You have to do a pattern differentiation. More cold, more hot, more mixed. And some women, when they're pregnant, are the cold deficient type. Some women are the run hot type. The cold type often lose weight easily and the hot type often run warmer. And there are a lot of different other patterns there as well. But again, this is not very non-specific, non-differentiated advice. So, it's no surprise they didn't get very good results. That is my two cents from a Chinese medicine point of view. And you could see the before and after. The 500 milligrams, nine grams in not even a nausea formula, but we can use it off label for nausea. And then a formula specifically targeted towards active stomach refluxing or nausea or vomiting. So, huge difference. And surprise, surprise, no difference. Again, Chinese medicine always is misrepresented in the news, but who cares? It doesn't really matter to me considering how well it works. But I thought I would share this because this is kind of a fuel people often use and it's pretty inaccurate. So, that's what I have for you today, guys. Again, before you go, I have some other interesting videos on herbs and their uses right over here.