Dried ginger root, also known as Gan Jiang in Pinyin, has long been hailed as an important tonic for sexual potency, as evidenced by the China’s old saying "man just can’t live for 100 days straight without ginger." In addition, it is good at inducing heat to expel pathogenic cold, increasing appetite and alleviating symptoms of a cold, which was discovered and used for reducing nausea, slowing gastrointestinal motility and contraction, and helping digestion by the ancients in China, India and other Asian countries. So, do you know how to use ginger root and how to cook with ginger root medicinally for the best health benefits?

Dry ginger root benefits
As mentioned above, medicinally there are two types of ginger roots – dried and fresh ginger. Though they are almost the same thing, they can’t be mixed in TCM practice. Generally speaking dried one is made of mother ginger, which means it has sprouted twice and grown for three years. In comparison, the fresh one refers to the daughter ginger, namely the one that has grown for only one year. What difference do they make? So to speak, the fresh version is like a fire, meanwhile, the dry version is a charcoal, which allows heating slowly and prevents water loss too fast. And its modern pharmacology can reveal some fact of its working mechanism.

Proven dried ginger herbal remedies
Thanks to its high nutrition and medicinal value, this herb has been made into ginger root tea, powder or ground ginger, dehydrated ginger, dried crystallized ginger, candy, extract, crystallized ginger, tablets, juice, and more. Anyway, to make full use its health benefits while avoiding the possible side effects, following some proven rules and recipes would be highly recommended.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) believes that this herb is acrid in flavor and hot in properties and covers meridians of spleen, stomach, heart, and lung. Vital functions are warming spleen and stomach for dispelling cold, restoring yang and promoting coronary circulation, and warming the lung to resolve retained fluid. Main ginger root uses and indications include abdominal cold pain, vomiting, diarrhea, cold limbs due to yang depletion, cold retained fluid induced dyspnea with cough, Bi syndrome induced by wind, cold and dampness, and more. Recommended dosage is from 3 to 10 grams in decoction, powder, or tea pills.