Ginseng has become the tonic of choice for tired Americans.
Thinking it will make us better athletes or reduce our stress or just get us through the night shift, we now spend $350-to-$400 million a year on the stuff, making ginseng second only to garlic as the nation’s most sought-after herbal remedy.
In fact, ginseng is a major reason why the herbal industry is doing so well – $1.5 billion a year in sales – just as herbals are a big reason for the blooming health of the $6 billion a year dietary supplement industry.
But what’s truly astounding about all this is how little we know about ginseng.
Did you know, for instance, that there are at least three different products that Americans call ginseng?
There’s Panax ginseng, which is grown in Asia and gobbled up by Americans because it’s relatively cheap (about $ 15 for a two-month supply) and because Americans are relatively clueless about ginseng, compared to the Chinese with thousands of years of hands-on experience.
There’s American ginseng or Panax quinquefolius, which grows wild in Appalachia (free-lance pickers get $500 a pound for it) and in Canada. It is sold mostly in China, where it is touted inaccurately as an aphrodisiac and for its supposed cooling effect in tropical weather.
“Americans send their ginseng to China, they send theirs to us,” laughs herbal industry analyst Matthew Patsky of Adams, Harkness & Hill in Boston. “It doesn’t make any sense.” In Chinatown, he adds, there’s even “American ginseng that will have been shipped to China. . .and back to us!”
And then there’s so-called Siberian ginseng, which is so different, chemically and botanically, from the first two that it should be called by its real name, Eleutherococcus senticosus, or eleuthero.
Most of the studies, such as they are – and they range from passable to not-worth-looking-at – have been done on Panax ginseng, the Asian stuff, though a big problem in ginseng research generally is that researchers often don’t know which type they are studying.
“There is no good clinical data for American ginseng,” says Gail Mahady co-author of a forthcoming review for the World Health Organization and a PhD pharmacognocist, or scholar of medicinal herbs, at the University of Illinois in Chicago. There was one good study, she says, but it showed no effect.
In the test tube, though, there have been some encouraging results with American ginseng. Dr. Rosemary Duda, for instance, a surgical oncologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, has found it inhibits growth of breast and prostate cancer cells.
There is somewhat more data on eleuthero in humans, Mahady says, but that research, too, “is not very good. Most studies were done in Russia in the Sixties.”
Those studies often involved pilots, says Walter Lewis, a professor of biology at Washington University and senior botanist at the Missouri Botanical Garden. They took the stuff, they went up, they flew, they “got down and said they had a great flight. It was not a controlled situation.”
“But they felt strongly about this and they may be right – it’s just that we haven’t got the experiments that test this,” says Lewis, who believes that ginseng “remains a medical mystery with no proven efficacy for humans.”
Varro Tyler, professor of pharmacognosy emeritus at Purdue University, says “although some data suggest eleuthero may enhance performance, on the basis of existing evidence, its consumption as a tonic/adaptogen cannot now be recommended.”
In the parlance of alternative medicine, an “adaptogen” is a substance believed to help people cope with stress.
But what of Panax ginseng, the herb that the Chinese have gulped happily for millennia and Americans now consume in teas, capsules, extracts and, sometimes, as dried root – which, for the really exotic stuff, can cost thousands of dollars.
“It’s selling very well, and I think the reason is people are looking for more energy,” says Marilyn Dale, nutrition team leader at the Bread & Circus supermarket chain. “It’s amazing to me that so many people know about it.”
The Asian herb is chemically complicated, says Tyler, and some of its constituents have biological effects that are directly opposite to others. One component acts as a central nervous system sedative, another as a stimulant, notes the American Botanical Council, a nonprofit herbal research and educational organization in Texas.
In hundreds of animal studies, Asian ginseng has been shown to act as a kind of general tonic – prolonging the time animals can swim, preventing stress-induced ulcers and boosting immune system activity.
Data presented last week at a conference in Washington, D.C., by the manufacturer of Ginsana, the best-selling ginseng in the United States, suggest it also improves oxygen utilization, decreases buildup of lactic acid in athletes and may boost immunity.
Still, cautions Tyler, “we are still almost totally ignorant of Panax ginseng’s effects on human beings, insofar as results obtained from appropriate clinical studies are concerned.”
Mahady of Chicago agrees that “most of the clinical studies have poor methodology, no proper controls and usually no standardization of what ginseng products are used.” Still, she says, if those weak studies are lumped with test tube and animal experiments, “you can easily say ginseng can be used as a restorative agent to enhance mental and physical state.”
Ara DerMarderosian, a pharmacognocist at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, agrees ginseng may help with adaptation to stress and with endurance, but he, too, warns about the poor quality of studies from other countries.
But if it’s not clear yet whether or how much ginseng will help you, it is clear that it probably won’t hurt you, as long as you don’t have diabetes or high blood pressure or consume too much caffeine while you’re taking it, Mahady says.
Asian ginseng can raise blood pressure and stimulate release of insulin from the pancreas, which could lower blood sugar too rapidly in some diabetics.
Ginseng can also cause adverse side effects in people taking antidepressants called monoamine oxidase inhibitors, and may cause insomnia, diarrhea and skin eruptions.
For all that, though, the German “Commission E” monographs, regarded as the world’s best compilation of data on herbal remedies, conclude there are no known side effects of ginseng, and the WHO analysis concurs.
Still, because there is little government regulation of herbs – the Food and Drug Administration does not conduct pre-market reviews, as it does for drugs – the role of herb cop has fallen to the industry itself.
Perhaps the most extensive effort is a detailed analysis of roughly 400 ginseng products on the US market by the American Botanical Council, due out this summer.
Council chief Mark Blumenthal says previous studies have shown that some ginseng products did not contain the kind or amount of ginseng stated on the label. The council study, so far, shows that more than 50 percent of the products are accurately labelled. When the research, which is funded by the herb industry, is published, the ABC will name brands that flunk the tests.
So should you spend your money on ginseng?
Tyler puts it this way: “If it really worked as an enhancer of athletic performance and endurance, the Olympic committee would ban it.” So far, he notes, the committee has not.
But unless you have high blood pressure, diabetes or some other reason to steer clear of it, the usual dose – 1 to 2 grams as dried root or capsules, or 100 to 200 milligrams of extract a day – probably won’t hurt you.
At the very least, says biologist Lewis, you can probably count on the good old placebo effect: “If you go out and spend $ 10 and if you take it religiously, it has to have an effect on your mid and body as a whole.”
To learn more
To read more about herbs, including ginseng, you might try:
- “The Honest Herbal,” by Varro Tyler. Pharmaceutical Products Press (Haworth Press), Binghamton, N.Y.
- “Herbs of Choice,” by Varro Tyler. Pharmaceutical Products Press (Haworth Press), Binghamton, N.Y.
- “Herbal Prescriptions for Better Health,” by Donald J. Brown. Prima Publishing, Rocklin, Calif.
- “HerbalGram,” a quarterly publication of the American Botanical Council in Austin, Texas, available at 1-800-373-7105 or on the Web at www.herbalgram.org
- “The Random House Book of Herbs,” by Roger Phillips and Nicky Foy. Random House, N.Y.
- “HerbalGram,” a quarterly publication of the American Botanical Council in Austin, Texas.