KrisPistofferson

According to Chinese medicine, this is the "Philosopher's Stone" of herbs, good for everything with little or no side effects. Some unfortunate souls claim it does nothing for them, but I tend to think they are looking for a sensation akin to caffeine, whereas ginseng is more sublime than that. Ginseng is the bomb. Discuss.

CycleMagic

OK.. when I was a kid, we had to go ginseng "hunting" with my dad. worst.summer.ever. end of discussion.

Serendipper 

I made a crazy mold culture out of ginsing and water once. Grew it for two years. I swear that thing moved started to move one day...It looked like a sea anemone.

jyossarian

Ginseng good. Make you strong like bull.

CycleMagic

do you cook with it, Jyo?

jyossarian

Ginseng extract in pill form. Sometimes I dissolve it in tea, but I don't cook w/ it b/c the heat might destroy its effectiveness.

KrisPistofferson

Yeah, I use the liquid extract in iced tea and iced coffee, as well. Used to use a lot of it when I drove an eighteen wheeler, since coffee would've had me pulling over to pee too often, and ginseng doesn't have a horrid blood sugar crash like caffeine does.

chromedome

I think the wild stuff is supposed to be much better than the agricultural stuff. I've seen the good stuff priced at $16,000 for one root in China.

TexasGuy

From the looks of it, if the effects were noticeable then one could alter one's body depending upon which ginseng one took.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginseng

bbattle

I've run across the ginseng hunters when I'm on my mountain bike. Some places in the mountains you don't want to be because the dope growers will shoot you. In others, it's the ginseng/mushroom crowd. People will spend 16 hours a day rooting around in the woods for maybe $50 of roots and 'shrooms but won't consider an 8 hour/day regular job.

TexasGuy

Why would you?
Routing around in the woods is fun, beautiful and exciting. You don't need a car and you probably don't need health insurance because if somebody miostakes you for a deer you're probably dead
8 hour jobs suck and are 100% overrated.

bbattle

The trouble is, the guys that mistake people for deer are usually bad shots and they'll just wound you. You'll stagger through the forest trying to find a doctor before finally dying and becoming mushroom fertilizer.

It's just as dangerous being an urban scrounger. You're in the dumpster tossing out the aluminum cans when you hear the dreaded "beep-beep-beep-beep". Next thing you know you're being pecked at by some seagulls in the middle of a nasty landfill.

TexasGuy

Why must you always bring reality into it. i was having a nice dream of roaming through forests, uncovering trees and logs and ferns.

sentinel4675

What exsactly does ginseng do? I've heard so many things about it, but not sure if it will do any good.

TexasGuy

There are 2 major varieties of Ginseng, and much like Chinese Tradition/lore they are contradicting

Panax ginseng Chinese/Korean ginseng (root)
Alleged effects: promotes Yang energy, improves circulation, increases blood supply, revitalizes and aids recovery from weakness after illness, stimulates the body

Panax quinquefolius American ginseng (root)
Ginseng that is produced in the United States and Canada is particularly prized in Chinese societies, and many ginseng packages are prominently colored red, white, and blue.
Alleged effects: promotes Yin energy, cleans excess Yang in the body, calms the body. The reason it has been claimed that American ginseng promotes Yin (shadow, cold, negative, female) while East Asian ginseng promotes Yang (sunshine, hot, positive, male) is that, according to traditional Chinese medicine, things living in cold places are strong in Yang and vice versa, so that the two are balanced. Chinese/Korean ginseng grows in northeast China and Korea, the coldest area known to Chinese in the old time, so ginseng from there is supposed to be very Yang. And originally, American ginseng was imported to China from subtropical Canton, the seaport next to Hong Kong, so Chinese doctors believed that American ginseng must be good for Yin, because it came from a hot area. However they did not know that American ginseng can only grow in temperate regions.
The ginseng is sliced, a few slices are soaked in hot water to make a tea.
Most North American ginseng is produced in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and British Columbia and the American state of Wisconsin, according to Agri-food Canada. P. quinquefolius is now also grown in northern China.
A randomized, double-blind study shows that American ginseng reduces influenza cases in the elderly when compared to placebo[1]



Summary - One of these ginsengs prevents blood vessels from being regenerated, the same thing that Shark Cartilage does (except on a better scale) although the FDA categorically denies this. Now tjos blood vessels growing is a major contribution of quite a few malignant tumors/cancers. So ideally if you reduce the possibility of blood vessell growth you limit the chances of getting cancers that are caused by blood vessell growth.

One of the ginseng also seems to inrease testosterone while the other (reduces it?) From what I've seen increased testosterone results in more free radicals which is believed to help inrease aging. *shrugs* from my interpretration of stuff that i've read over the last year or so.

jfmckenna

Absolutely nothing.

It is however a beautiful plant and when finding it in nature it does give one a sens3e of beauty to behold. Unfortunately if this crazy nonsense continues then it will become extinct in my beautiful Appalachia

Shadiyah

I don't have too much experience with Ginseng. It is supposed to give you a lot of energy, but I have not really tested it over a long period, so I'm not sure how well it works.

pigmode

I have a very nicely formed one preserved in a jar.

KrisPistofferson

So, the score is:

Ginseng does nothing=1 (jfmckenna)

Ginseng increases vitality=around 3 billion (almost the entire population of Asia.)

Uh, okay.

TexasGuy

Nah. I'd make it more like 1000. I'm sure youcould find 1000 doubting thomases who dont know their asses from their heads and wouldnt understand or be able to tell if it was actually doing something or not .

bbattle

Yeah, you can tell just by looking at this guy that he's getting all he can handle.


Bonafide ginseng hunter

KrisPistofferson

You never know, he might have a beautiful fourteen year old cousin waiting for him at home.

jfmckenna

It's amazing how mass hysteria works I agree. imho it's amazing that the masses believe that if you are good little boy or girl then when you die you go to the fairy land in the sky. I guess I am the minority there too. But for a 'medicine' that claims to relax one who is tense and to charge up one who is lathargic, well I guess then ginseng will always work. Ginseng by the way came about as a medicine because it's roots looked like a human form and in fact the more human it looked the better it was, if thats not mysticism for ya. Also thanks to TCM and in relation to where I live is the useless deaths of the Black Bear. The price of the gall bladder bile is worth more then Heroin so naturally the poor folk are out there butchering bears because Asians believe it cures rhumatism, poor eyesight and a host of other things. While there is minimal evidence that it may help in liver ailments the substance can be manufactured in a lab but the TCM medicine men believe the real thing is better.

KrisPistofferson

So to think that certain plants have medicinal value is akin to believing in an afterlife, poaching animals, and practicing mysticism? Wow. Have you ever used marijuana or tobacco? The effects are not imaginary, nor are they "mysticism," they have drugs in them that are just as potent as any prescription medication.

I think your problem is really with TCM, and that's okay, I don't agree with it %100 either, but that's fairly irrelevant to a thread about ginseng, which is simply a root with medicinal properties. By your logic, Karate and Kung Fu are not worth anybody's time, as they are rooted in and contain traditions that you find to be distasteful. <-This is a perfect analogy, by the way.

The Native Americans named it "man-root" because it was shaped like a man, but it wasn't the twisted version you just offered us. Pretty much every culture throughout history has used plants as medicine, and yes, some local superstition has played a role as well, but to claim that medicine was invented by the modern pharmacology industry, and everything before it is worthless, is ********, and throws the baby out with the bathwater.

Oh, and if you're just trying to troll my thread because it's boring where you are, go cuddle up with your James Randi doll, tool.

So, to everybody, I am not trying to be an apologist for weird old Chinese men who want to ingest powdered manatee bones to prolong their lives, nor do I support the depopulation of our native ginseng plants, (there ARE ways of getting at the valuable parts while leaving the plant alive and able to thrive,) I just wanted to talk about bloody ginseng without a bunch of trolling asshats piling on.

jfmckenna

Ok Pistoff you first ask for a discussion including folks like me who are the 'Unfortunate souls'


The you cant handle said discussion so you call me a troll and a tool. **** off ass hole. LOL