Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
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This column writer recently had a severe attack of very bad cold and cough, and no amount of swallowing antibiotics and vitamin C helped. His wife, Shakti, then recalled her mother’s traditional treatment, ground up a little jaggery and raw ginger, and asked him to have it three times a day. Lo and behold, the cough and cold disappeared within a day or two! Looking back to see which of the two – jaggery or ginger – did the trick, the writer looked up at modern scientific literature, from where it was seen that the Chinese have a similar traditional medication, called Ge Gen Tang. This too has ginger and a sweet herb (kudzu roots) in it, and has been used for years to fight common cold and a variety of other conditions. That ginger has remarkable medicinal properties has been well known and studied by many groups, particularly from India, China, Pakistan and Iran. That it has dozens of drug molecules has also been reported. A review way back in 1994 by Dr. C V Denyer and coworkers ( J. Natural Products, 57(5), 658-662, 1994) listed as many as 12 major studies on the medicinal properties of ginger. Some of these point to its anti-oxidative properties, some show it to have anti-inflammatory effects, some to its ability to treat nausea, a few to its anti-emetic ability, and there is even a paper from the West Asian region suggesting that it may have a beneficial effect against dementia and Alzheimer’s. And a group of Iranian researchers from Isfahan have reviewed the current evidence on several properties of ginger in health and physical activity ( Intl. J. Prev. Med. 2013 Apr. 4 (Suppl 1):S36-S42), including its anti-cancer properties.
