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Traditional Chinese Medicine Records of Medical Benefits of Ginseng and Siberian Ginseng
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) describes ginseng in the Shen-nong-Ben-cao Jing (100 bc) as being sweet and a little cold. It mainly supplements the five viscera. It quiets the essence spirit, settles the ethereal and corporeal souls, checks fright palpitations, eliminates evil qi, brightens the eyes, opens the heart, and sharpens the wits. Protracted consumption may make the body light and prolong life.
To appreciate fully the ancient description of ginseng, here is an elaboration of the statements:
•Ginseng is sweet: Anyone who tastes a ginseng root will find it quite bitter. The freshly picked root is sweeter (has a somewhat pleasant taste compared to many other herbs), but, more importantly, the designation of the root as sweet is partly based on the idea that sweet is the underlying inherent taste within the herb that reflects its actions. Like other sweet herbs, it is believed that ginseng will supplement the spleen, calm irritation, and nourish the body. Later Chinese texts often mention the bitter taste as well.
•A little cold: The action of the herb is relatively mild, in contrast to a cold herb, but its nature is still like that of a cold herb, able to alleviate heat syndromes. The combination of sweet and cold together has the effect of calming nervous agitation: the sweetness alleviates irritation, and the coldness calms the internal fire that agitates the human spirit.
•Supplement the five viscera: Ginseng does something more than most of the sweet herbs; it benefits not only the spleen, but also the other four systems of the body: liver, kidney, heart, and lung. One implication is that ginseng greatly improves the ability of the spleen to draw nutrients out of food and distribute them to the other organs. It serves as a nutritive aid but does not provide nutrients.
•Quiets the essence spirit: The essence spirit can be broadly interpreted as referring to the mind. Thus, ginseng quiets the mind. By taking ginseng, excessive mental chattering calms down.
•Settles the ethereal and corporeal souls: The ethereal soul (hun) and corporeal soul (po) refer to fundamental forces within the body. The ethereal soul is believed to reside in the liver and to be responsible for dreams; the unsettled hun causes one to have disturbing dreams, even nightmares. The corporeal soul is said to reside in the lungs, and to be responsible for maintaining the integrity of the physical body. Persons who develop lifelong degenerative diseases are said to suffer from scattering of the corporeal soul, often the result of being frightened. It could be said that ginseng calms the distressed mind while strengthening the body.
•Checks fright palpitations: When a person is frightened, he/she experiences an irregular heartbeat and palpitations. Anxiety attacks and panic attacks correspond roughly to fright palpitations. Ginseng helps calm the heart (the resting place of the spirit) so that it does not overly react to external stimuli or to internal mental worries: equanimity is restored.
•Eliminates evil qi: Evil qi refers to influences from the environment that cause diseases. Herbs that nourish the viscera, like ginseng, are usually not attributed the ability to expel the evil that is causing disease; more often, such herbs are said to protect the body from evil qi (evil cannot get into the strong and well-nourished body to cause disease) or to help the body recover its strength once the evil has been eliminated. Ginseng can be taken when a disease is present to help cure it by eliminating the evil qi. Some later authorities disagreed with this view, suggesting that ginseng had only tonic properties and should not be taken while evil qi was still present for fear of enticing the evil to stay within the body.
•Brightens the eyes, open the heart, and sharpens the wits: The eyes are the windows to the mind; the heart is the residence of the mind, and the wits are the expression of the mind. This section says that by taking ginseng one’s mind will not become dull. If the heart becomes closed, if the mind becomes overwhelmed with thoughts, if the spirit is clouded and the eyes therefore dim, then a person’s fundamental nature will be prevented from attaining its ultimate expression: the person will be timid, unhappy, even depressed. When the heart opens and the mind quiets, the true nature will be expressed, and the person will display sure purpose, will, and courage, and be able to accomplish great things.
•Protracted consumption may make the body light and prolong life: This phrase is included in reference to the intensive efforts undertaken by Taoists pursuing immortality during the Han dynasty period. They believed that one could shed the physical body and float into the heavens as an immortal being. Most of this transformative (alchemical) process was accomplished with minerals, such as cinnabar (mercury sulfide), which slowly poisoned the Taoists’ bodies due to prolonged exposure. One consequence was that they lost weight: at the time, their shrinking flesh was taken not as an indication of poisoning, but as a sign that they were shedding their early body to leave only the heavenly body. This section does not indicate that ginseng can be used as a weight loss herb for the obese, nor does it even suggest that one can live longer on this earth by taking the herb regularly; it refers specifically to the Taoist concept of transformation to an ethereal immortal.
Ginseng’s value as a universal tonic, which promotes and maintains good health, particularly for those who are physically and mentally troubled, aged men and women, has long been recognized in the Orient, and is slowly gaining recognition in the Western worl...
