The Benefits of Ginger

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Ivy Hollander, Journalist

Ginger has proven to be one of the healthiest spices for humans. Ginger is filled with nutrients and bio-active compounds that provide health for the body and the brain. The benefits are mostly due to antioxidants. Antioxidants are similar to vitamin C or E and they remove damaging oxidizing agents from a living organism. Ginger can be used dried, fresh, powdered, or as a juice or oil.

The first benefit is that it contains gingerol. Gingerol is good for people because it is made with powerful medicinal properties. Ginger has been known for its history of being a medicine. Ginger has always been a very common ingredient used in a lot of recipes. Gingerol has a strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect.

The next advantage of consuming ginger is that it can treat for morning sickness, such as nausea. Ginger is good for patients who have just gone through surgery and may be sick with the side effects of nausea and throwing up. It will also help with the before pregnancy sicknesses. As shown by 12 recent studies, a combined total of 1,278 pregnant women showed that 1.1 to 1.5 grams of ginger can reduce nausea. But this study also showed that it had no effect on helping the vomiting of the women.

The last benefit is that ginger can lower blood sugars drastically and help improve heart disease risk factors. In a 2015 study, 41 people with type 2 diabetes ate or drank two grams of ginger per day. This lowered their fasting blood sugar by 12%. It also helped improve their HbA1c, a marker for long term blood sugar levels, resulting in a 10% reduction over 12 weeks. Though this was a very minimal study, researchers should do bigger studies to help convince the proof of this.

In conclusion, ginger has and will continue to be a helpful spice. With the many sicknesses today, eating or drinking ginger happens to be just a small step of assisting in the prevention of it.