Ginger for Digestion and More

Tina: So, I wonder, I mean, I've never tried to grow ginger, have you?

LEAH: I think I have,

Tina: Oh. Is it hard to grow? Mm

LEAH:  yeah, it's really hard cause I don't think I ever like, got an established plant. you know, sometimes they start to get that little like green nubbin, same with turmeric. And um, yeah, I, I've been highly unsuccessful.

Tina: Well, at least you're consistent.

 I'm Dr Tina Kaczor and as Leah likes to say I'm the science-y one

LEAH: and I'm Dr Leah Sherman and on the cancer inside

Tina: And we're two naturopathic doctors who practice integrative cancer care 

LEAH: But we're not your doctors

Tina: This is for education entertainment and informational purposes only

LEAH: do not apply any of this information without first speaking to your doctor

Tina: The views and opinions expressed on this podcast by the hosts and their guests are solely their own 

LEAH: Welcome to the cancer pod 

Hey, Tina.

Tina: Hey, Leah.

LEAH: I can't believe we haven't talked about ginger as its own subject.

Tina: I know, because it's something that we use a lot.

LEAH: Yeah, we talk about it all the time, but we haven't dedicated an entire episode to it until today.

Tina: Yeah, well, you and I talked about nausea and vomiting once upon a time, and at that time, you did a little feature post for Instagram on ginger.

LEAH: That is correct. Yes, I made a little video. That's probably why I thought that we had already. Done an episode, but yeah, today we're talking about ginger and it was a nice review for me because I Use it for one or two things and I forgot of all of its other benefits

Tina: Well, let me ask you this. Do you have some fresh ginger root in your kitchen right now?

LEAH: No, I have it in a jar in the freezer

Tina: Oh, okay. So that's how you keep it fresh.

LEAH: Yeah, because it always dries out and I use a lot of ginger but I use powdered ginger and I use ginger tea So yeah, the root though never seems to stick around.

Tina: I think we use so much that we constantly have a fresh root kicking around in there, and we, I think we eat it pretty close to every week. And something.

LEAH: Yeah, I do have ginger tea almost every day So

Tina: Yeah. So many medicinal benefits beyond nausea.

LEAH: yeah, and it doesn't have a lot of interactions which we'll kind of go into too. So yeah It's just kind of one of those things and it's been used for thousands, like literally thousands, over 5, 000 years, it's been used in traditional medicine.

Tina: It puts into context that, you know, evidence based medicine has been around for less than a hundred years. Evidence based medicine is Western medicine, and it's been around for that long. Pharmaceuticals have been along since maybe 120 years, roughly. I guess you can call it a little longer than that, but 5, 000 years and this plant is still being used today for what it was used for thousands of years ago.

LEAH: And what's kind of cool is in a previous episode, you had talked about like the spice trade and how the value is. Found in the medicinal property of a 

Tina: Mm hmm. 

LEAH: like that's kind of one of the things that, created its value. And that's very much so with ginger.

I found an article, which I thought was really interesting. And it says in the 13th and 14th centuries, the value of a pound of ginger was equivalent in the cost of a sheep. Yeah,

Tina: a pound of ginger equaled one

sheep? 

LEAH: one sheep and it was also, um, highly sought after, you know, for its medicinal properties.

Tina: Interesting.

LEAH: It was exported from India.

Tina: So, I wonder, as far as, I mean, I've never tried to grow ginger, have you?

LEAH: I think I have,

Tina: Oh. Is it hard to grow? Mm

LEAH:  yeah, it's really hard cause I don't think I ever like, got an established plant. I've tried to grow, you know, sometimes they start to like get that little like green nubbin, like same with turmeric. And um, yeah, I, I've been highly unsuccessful.

Tina: Well, at least you're consistent.

LEAH: Well, in Arizona, I tried to grow turmeric. because it's just warmer there. I mean, there's no way you can grow it up here in the Pacific Northwest. Another little bit of history of ginger is that. Queen Elizabeth the first is credited with the invention of the gingerbread man.

Tina: Hmm. I wonder if she just claimed credit. I mean, was she really in a kitchen?

LEAH: No, I mean like I don't think she did it herself. I didn't look further into that I will look further into that but no I mean, I'm sure the same way that Thomas Jefferson is credited with the invention of I don't know ice cream or mac and cheese It wasn't him. It was his chef.

Tina: I see. Hmm.

LEAH: Anyways, those are like some really fun facts about ginger

Tina: I can't say I've ever looked up the history. It's so reliable medicinally. I just use it for the medicinal indications and, uh, I've never really looked back at it.

LEAH: it's One of those things that I like to know, like, because it's like with everything, like, how did you know to start using something as either a spice or a medicine? And it's been used as a flavoring, just as long as it's been used as a medicine.

Tina: Well, you know, all of medicine has been observational until fairly recently, and so almost all of the traditional uses of any plant compounds was observation. In whatever way, shape or form a certain culture did it, it didn't matter if you're in Europe or in China, in India, there were people who practice the medicine and all of medicine was practice, right?

You watched and you saw what worked and what didn't work and then you were handed down and then you trained and so observation has lost its allure in modern medicine.

LEAH: But, okay, so, so ginger is a rhizome. We call it a ginger root, but it's a rhizome, which is a stem that roots are grown off of?

Tina: Mm hmm.

LEAH: trying to think of like, was there some animal that was digging up the rhizome? Like observation, like, what are they, who are they observing? There's some critter out there that's digging up ginger and I just don't see animals eating ginger. Anyways, the original usage of it is a little bit of a, there is a little bit of a mystery because according to this fascinating article that I found, ginger does not grow in the wild and its actual origins are uncertain. 

Tina: Yeah, because the ginger we're talking about is not wild ginger. We have a plant here in the Pacific Northwest that we call wild ginger, but it's not the same plant, So when we're walking and hiking, you can actually find wild ginger and use its rhizomes, but it doesn't taste like it.

It doesn't have the large thickness. It's very thin. It's like a pencil. very distinct looking when you see it in the wild and it can be used as an edible when you're out on the trail or you're cooking something up at the campsite.

LEAH: When you say edible in the Pacific Northwest, it has such a different meaning than just It's original meaning.

Tina: What do you mean? Oh, you mean edible means cannabis. I'm so far removed from that thought process right? Yeah. Yeah. I I know

LEAH: Anyways, so this is another fun fact that ginger, well, we knew that it was in the, we, you and I knew it was the same family as turmeric, but it's also the same family as cardamom.

Tina: Yeah, I can't say I've ever thought about that either

LEAH: Me neither.

Tina: botanist

LEAH: All kinds of fun things about it.

Tina: out there anyone who's like steeped in plants is like you two dumbos. 

LEAH: I love the fact that like turmeric looks like A smaller, oranger ginger, like, and I don't, I don't think of like cardamom as a rhizome. I mean, it's a pod. So, I mean, but yes, Okay. So what the heck do we use ginger for? Nausea is the first thing that comes to mind.

Tina: Yeah, and I think of it immediately as a clinician. I think of it for nausea first. And then I also think of it when people need to get their digestive fires going. they need more help in digesting food. Food kind of just sits in their stomach and doesn't seem to want to go, especially if it's richer food.

It's warming. it's a warming herb, so it's known for that, but when I think of it for digestion, it actually increases some bile acids, it stimulates the stomach, to make more acid as

LEAH: And that's, so that's interesting that you say that because in Ayurveda, ginger supports the digestive fire.

Tina: Mm hmm.

LEAH: And in both Chinese medicine and in Ayurveda, ginger is warming. 

Tina: Mm hmm.

You know what I like about Ayurveda? It's easier to understand than five element theory or Chinese medicine or some of these other systems of thought that are very similar and analogous really in what they find with the fires of digestion and how the energy of the food is distributed throughout the body.

And that kind of thing. But Ayurveda seems more accessible as a way of thinking.

LEAH: I love the overlap between the two because I love Chinese medicine. I don't understand it, but I love it. And the fact that there is just so much overlap between the two. I don't know. To me, it's like, well, there's gotta be something to that.

Tina: Yeah. Yeah, I have a huge amount of respect for Ayurveda, five element theory, all of the traditional medical practices. I Don't find it intuitive, you know, some people find it really intuitive to pursue the the education in those realms and to really Know it. I'm happy for someone else to tell me my dosha and what to eat

LEAH: Just give me what I need to know.

Tina: Yeah, yeah, I rather know the mechanisms and stick to my biochemistry then As much as I love it, and I love hearing it. It's not something I find myself doing in my free time Like I do the chemistry.

LEAH: something else I think that's kind of cool about ginger is that there are some people who don't like it because it is too hot or spicy.

Tina: Mm

LEAH: You can adjust for that, or they even have, we used to recommend these tummy drops at the cancer center and they come in different flavors, pineapple, there's one that's like a super spicy ginger, but they were great for nausea, for relieving nausea, not for causing it, because there's plenty of other things in the cancer center that cause it.

We would recommend you know, have some, if you don't like the fresh, try a candy ginger. One of my favorite ways of having ginger is that the crystallized kind, the kind that's like coated in sugar, but it's a really accessible kind 

Tina: Yeah. Cause you need a, such a small amount.

LEAH: Yeah. And then, Trader Joe's used to have chocolate covered ginger.

Tina: I think they still do.

LEAH: Oh, I never know. There's, there's so unpredictable with what they carry.

Tina: I just had some last week.

LEAH: Oh, you did? Oh, well,

there you go 

from Trader

Tina: Yeah. Trader 

LEAH: Well, there you go. And then pickled ginger. When my sister was pregnant, she would relieve her nausea eating pickled ginger.

Tina: love pickled ginger.

LEAH: I do too.

Tina: That's the stuff you get at a sushi restaurant and they give you ginger.

LEAH: Yeah,

Tina: That's pickled ginger. That's delicious.

LEAH: so good. And it's specifically to help with, the digestion, um, of the sushi of

Tina: and you know, growing up, ginger ale, once upon a time, even Canada Dry had ginger in it. It no longer does. Now it is basically corn syrup and ginger flavoring, but you can find actual ginger in some of the carbonated ginger ales out there. You just have to look at the ingredients and make sure it's in there.

So Reed's, R E E D S, Reed's Ginger Ale has real ginger in it. And that same company makes a little small 

cans. I don't know if they took them off the market, but for a while that said on there. For nausea or anti nausea or something like that and I don't know maybe maybe that was too far of a claim.

I don't know if they got their hands slapped for going out on a limb and putting something like that on a label. Anyways, that really works too because you only need a little sip of it. Some people find carbonation upsetting and other people find it calming so you have to see what works for you, but

LEAH: My mom used to just have it go flat. She'd just pour the ginger ale in a glass, and then you just let it go flat, and then you can sip on that. So, yeah, so nausea has A lot of research behind it, whether it's for chemotherapy, induced nausea and vomiting, or you know, when you're pregnant or postoperative as well.

Tina: Yeah. And there's a lot within, yeah, with chemotherapy specifically. So this is not a hard cell in our circles of oncology. Ginger is pretty well recognized to have anti nausea effects during treatment.

LEAH: And I use it for myself for motion sickness, um, which is why I used to have the, crystallized, you know, the candy ginger around.

Tina: Yeah. Ginger people. That's who I was trying to think of. There's a kind of, ginger people make a lot

of 

LEAH: oh yeah, that little creature that's like the little ginger 

Tina: it's a little ginger rhizome that looks like a

person. 

LEAH: he's cute.

Tina: They make a lot of various products um, they have a good amount of ginger in them. Some are quite hot because they have so much ginger in them. I think they call them the gin gins, the little ginger candy that they make.

LEAH: Yeah. So that's another good. product that, that people like.

Tina: You know, there is a ton of evidence. On ginger for various things and we'll be more thorough and go into all the things that it does. But, um, sometimes when something has worked for thousands of years and we're studying it, despite the fact that we already know it works part of me as a clinician is like, okay, let's move on next, you know, put those research dollars somewhere.

We don't know. I think we've proven so well that ginger is good for nausea that we can probably stop studying it now. I know people like mechanisms, so they have to look to, is it working on the central nervous system? Is it working on the stomach? How is it doing this? But the reason we look at mechanisms when we know something works is because we're trying to figure out a drug to mimic it.

Nine out of ten times. So when we study plant mechanisms, and this has always been true since, I don't know, at least since I have been studying, we study mechanisms so that we can figure out another molecule that can mimic it. So we'll pull the molecule out and say, is this the gingerol in the ginger plant that's doing it?

If so, can we take the gingerol molecule, stick some kind of chemical group on there to make it unique, patent it, and make it a drug? This is drug discovery. 

LEAH: this is Tina's soapbox.

Tina: This is myself, like, I'll get down now. Um, but I'm saying this because mechanisms are fine for us to know as clinicians, but in the real world, all you really need to know is the plant, what it's used for, and what its contraindications are. You don't really need to know all the nitty gritty details of the mechanisms.

LEAH: So some of the mechanisms are interesting though, because it does inhibit, COX 2 and TNF alpha, which are things that we've mentioned before.

Tina: Inflammatory things.

LEAH: Inflammatory things. Yeah. And so it is used for inflammation. So okay, let's take a break and then we'll come back and we'll continue talking about what.

else besides nausea and vomiting, ginger is used for.

Tina: Sounds good.

LEAH: speaking of nausea and vomiting, um, the mechanism and speaking of mechanisms, the mechanism by which ginger is thought to work against nausea and vomiting is that it's a 5 HT3 antagonist. And other drugs, there are actual drugs that people going through cancer treatment are very familiar with.

Um, Aloxi, Zofran, Syncuso, those. are also 5 HT3 antagonists. So that's kind of a, another little bit of ginger trivia,

Tina: Well, I guess, and, and from a user standpoint, I think that it's important to know that sometimes prevention is better than treatment. In other words, do the ginger before the onset of a nausea event, whether it is chemo or getting on a boat or an airplane or whatever it is, if you do it two to four hours beforehand, it seems to have a better effect.

LEAH: I think that's one of the most important things about taking ginger for nausea is that it has been studied and it is effective as a preventative. Yeah.

Tina: big difference between prevention and treatment, right? it's just like pain medicines, you know They work better when you take them before something gets bad. that's true of a lot of plants.

LEAH: Cause then you're just playing catch up at that point. So other things that ginger is used for, as we mentioned, it does. Act as an anti inflammatory. And so arthritis, specifically rheumatoid arthritis,

Tina: Mm hmm

LEAH: uh, cardiovascular disease was it lowers, lowers, lipids,

Tina: Yeah It lowers lipids if taken with the fatty meal So they they have done studies where they had people eat fat and they were healthy otherwise healthy people and after you eat a fatty meal Your lipids show it, right? You see the fat in circulation. And when ginger was taken alongside it, you saw less elevation in the fats in the bloodstream.

And after you eat a fatty meal, you also have a decrease in the ability to break blood clots up. So that's called fibrinolysis. Fibrinolysis. Lysis means cutting, right? So fibrinolysis is cutting up blood clots. And your ability to do that goes down after a fatty meal and But if they did ginger alongside it, it didn't go down.

In other words, you were still able to break up blood clots. So that anti platelet aggregation effect or keeping platelets from being sticky is a huge benefit of ginger and it's for cardiovascular health and for cancer care as well, because the, the way platelets aggregate together and stick together is a whole lot like how cancer cells stick together.

 so I think it's anti platelet aggregation effects are right up there on my, my list of reasons to recommend it to people. 

LEAH: there are upper limits of how much gingers that someone should take because of that, um, which we'll get into later. So I was once told, cause I don't really mount a huge fever and I was, I had the flu and I just kind of felt like in that stage where it's like, Oh, I just want to like burn this, this off. I like, I felt like my fever was just kind of like, meh, it's not really happening.

And so I was taught that if you sit in a hot bath and you drink a hot cup of ginger tea,

Tina: Mm 

LEAH: that can help to kind of bring up your temperature and mount a fever and then your fever breaks and you're all you're all better You're not all better. 

Tina: in herbalist terms, it's a diaphoretic. A reliable diaphoretic, which people will feel if you have some ginger tea, you might feel the warming effect in your whole system, not just your stomach. So, yeah. Yarrow is the other kind of classic plant that is used for that, yarrow. But it's a reliable diaphoretic and in our world, fevers are a good thing.

We should mention that. So in, in a general sense, not during chemotherapy because fevers are a whole nother ballgame during treatment time, but generally in an otherwise healthy person who's not undergoing treatment, mounting a small fever is a healthy thing to do when you're not feeling well or when you're trying to fight off a virus.

So we don't. I don't know about you but I don't suppress fevers until they get to a level that it's must be suppressed. Like I would say for an adult over 102, 102 or so, where it starts to get really uncomfortable and um, we want to ramp it down. Even then I might do it with a cool bath rather than a drug because fevers are good.

LEAH: Yeah, I personally I don't I don't take things for a fever I especially because of my history of cancer. I want to make sure that my immune system is like you know Full alert, so I I personally don't take anything for a fever Something that I did when I got my COVID vaccine, because I had such I don't know, not a reaction, but I had like the all the side effects of the vaccine, you know, just the achiness, the flu, like this, the feeling like I just.

like the chemo feeling.

Tina: Hmm.

LEAH: I sat around and I just drank ginger tea all day long.

Tina: Oh

LEAH: It just made me feel better.

Tina: yeah.

LEAH: I love ginger tea. Anyways. So anything else that we use? I mean, we talked about just general digestion. it helps to move food along. If you feel like food is just kind of sticking around in your stomach.

I've read that it is used as an appetite stimulant. I've tried it on patients. It doesn't. You know, necessarily work as well as medications can help, um, but it is good for that sort of just food. Is it moving along? What's, um, what's that word? Prokinetic! Because it does act as what's known as a prokinetic, which are drugs or natural substances that help to move food along your digestive track.

Um, something like a drug like, uh, metoclopramide or Reglan is something that people are familiar with. They're prescribed that for. Nausea at times and it could be because of that feeling of the food just kind of sitting around and so that's what I like ginger for To prevent that from happening.

Tina: Mm hmm. Yeah, I'm thinking if there's anything else, medicinally. um, I don't use it this way but apparently It does act a little bit like cayenne or capsaicin topically. it can be used as an analgesic. So the way it works is it it allows something called substance P to be released.

And once all your substance P is released, so it feels warm and maybe even on the edge of hurting, and then it's gone, then you're numb. And that's what capsaicin from hot peppers does. And that's what ginger does. 

LEAH: Yeah, I was I was reading about that too about how the essential oils can be applied Topically, I would probably you know dilute it with a carrier oil, but that yeah the same I it's not something that I was familiar with I have heard of ginger baths where you can make like a giant teabag And make a, a ginger bath,

Tina: Okay.

LEAH: but yeah, cause you don't really see products.

You don't see like salves or ointments of, of ginger, but it's probably more user friendly than, than the capsaicin. Cause that is dangerous if you get it at the wrong places and it can get really hot. So yeah.

Tina: Well, and it's interesting because the way that they both work is they do kind of hurt at first, just like hot peppers hurt in your mouth until your mouth goes numb. And the reason it goes numb is because it's got no more of the substance P left. So it lets substance P out of these little vesicles in your nerves.

And when it's all exhausted, It's numb. So that's how the capsaicin works for pain when we use that topically for arthritis or whatever we use it for.

LEAH: And typically, besides the fresh and the dried spice, it's found in capsules, whether they're like the capsules with the liquid inside or just the dried powder capsules. Um, ginger's found in tincture form, which is a medicinal way of extracting all the good properties out of it.

how else do we take in ginger? Yeah, powder, dry. Tincture. And I guess essential oil.

Tina: Yeah. Yeah, and a lot of the components do come out in tea. So the water extraction works pretty well for a lot of the things we're talking about. At the same time, I should say, I, when I looked at this, all the studies and chemotherapy related nausea and that kind of thing, they weren't always consistent.

So this is where you have to like, you have to take a fine tooth comb, look through the methods of each study and say, like, why did these not all find the same effect? A lot of times it has to do with how it's extracted, how much they took, what the components were. Um, and so. If one method doesn't work, let's just say tea didn't work, try another method.

Try a little nip of crystallized ginger, where you take just a little touch of that. Some of it has to do with the flavor, like even when just putting it in your mouth starts to have an effect, it doesn't have to be large amounts. And that is something they found in the studies. When people did capsules, more was not necessarily better.

So one capsule worked as well as three capsules in some of the studies. So I thought that was interesting. So, it's one of those things you can kind of. Play around with a little bit and find out what works for you. 

LEAH: And even with the teas, because you know, a dried ginger in a teabag that you buy from the store is going to have a completely different flavor properties than if you just kind of shaved off some fresh ginger and put it in a tea cup with hot water. Or if you did an actual, like, putting it in a pot and Um, making a decoction, so putting it in a pot with water and then covering it because you want all those essential oils to stay in it.

That's going to have a much more hot, vibrant flavor than just a teabag that's been sitting on the shelf. So if you don't like that hot spiciness, try and that, you know, it depends on the brand too, because there are some brands that are more vibrant flavored, um, than others.

Tina: hmm.

LEAH: And it mixes well with other things, you know, you can have it with a green tea or, I often will take, you know, different tea bags and just kind of have them sit together in the teacup and then you just kind of make your own little combo.

Tina: Lemon is another thing that goes really well with it.

LEAH: Yeah.

Tina: Just good old lemon.

LEAH: Hmm.

Tina: Lemon ginger tea. Classic. Add a little raw honey in there. Some propolis from the raw honey. Sounds good.

LEAH: Oh, that's, that's another kind of favorite thing to make, like a ginger lemon honey really concentrated kind of tea for chest colds.

Tina: Mm hmm. And if you're of the type and you don't mind hot stuff, then you can throw a little, just a few flakes of cayenne right on top.

LEAH: Oh, that's right. Yep. Throw in some cayenne.

Tina: Or if you have nasal congestion, horseradish,

LEAH: Yeah, but you can overdo that too.

Tina: wasabi or horseradish, that'll clear you out. Horseradish is a classic, um, for stuffed sinus congestion.

LEAH: As we all know from anyone who's ever had horseradish or wasabi. Yep.

Tina: Reliable.

LEAH: Okay. So, let's do a little break and we'll come back and we'll talk about the interactions, side effects, cautions, and all of that stuff.

Tina: Let's do that.

LEAH: So we've pretty much touched on these side effects. You briefly said something about heartburn. Um, my big tip to people when they do take ginger capsules is make sure you take it with plenty of fluid and don't lie down for a couple hours after taking it because it will stimulate the digestive juices and those start to come up.

That's also something I've personally experienced.

there was a lot in the sources that I looked up about, not taking it at the same time as anything that's an anticoagulant. So warfarin would be, the big one. I don't think a cup of ginger tea is gonna make or break anything.

The doses that were talked about were anything over 4 grams of ginger. So that's a lot of ginger.

Tina: Yeah, that's an intentional dose. That's not like having ginger in a stir fry.

LEAH: Right. And I think with nausea, wasn't, weren't they looking at like 250 milligrams, like several times a day? So to get up to four grams, I mean, like a thousand grams a day, I think is kind of a typical dose, So four grams is, why are you doing that? Why are you taking that much? Don't do that. that's pretty much it with, with ginger. It's as long as you're not overdoing it.

It's a pretty safe food.

Tina: Yeah, on the spectrum from food to pharmacy, it's very close to food. Much closer to food than pharmacy. As far as ingestion goes and concerns about liver pathways or kidney or anything like that. We don't have to worry about it interfering with drug metabolism. it's a food stuff.

LEAH: we don't work with. Pregnant patients, but it is something that has been found to be safe during pregnancy. 

Tina: Yeah. And effective. So there are studies that actually lumped together pregnancy and chemotherapy cohorts and, uh, found it was effective for both.

LEAH: anything else that we didn't mention?

Tina: Nope, just like most plants that have any color in them, there's going to be some polyphenols and antioxidant effects. Um,

LEAH: Doesn't have a lot of color.

Tina: no, but it's yellowish.

LEAH: it's not like it's cousin turmeric.

Tina: No, it will not be used as a pigment. Yes. Turmeric is so orange it's used as a dye. It's nowhere near that.

LEAH: Oh, I know, a nice little handy hint. it's something that needs to be peeled, you know, before you use it. People often peel it. I have seen recommendations of people using a spoon to peel it.

Tina: Hmm.

LEAH: I use a carapeeler.

Tina: Okay.

LEAH: just use the carrot peeler and then I just keep using the carrot peeler to peel it down. I mean, but I have seen this little like trick with using a just a regular tablespoon or teaspoon to scrape the skin off 

Tina: Yeah, because it's so thin.

LEAH: And the younger, fresher ginger, the thinner the skin.

Tina: And the other tip is what we started with was put it in your freezer if you don't think you're going to use it often or you bought some fresh and you're not going to get to it or whatever. It freezes.

LEAH: It freezes and then I just use a, what are they called, a rasp? I don't know what they're called. Those like, giant, long Grater! It's a grater! I just kind of grate it into my um, food and it defrosts pretty quickly or I just pull out the handy carrot peeler and Shave it off.

Tina: Take a few pieces off of

it. Yeah,

So if you're, if you're not already doing it, integrating some ginger into your stir fries or your soups or just making tea, um, maybe that's a good plant to get to know cause it has so many effects on the body and anything that's anti inflammatory, it should be high on our list of regular ingestion.

I think. I put this above turmeric just because it's more of a food stuff than

LEAH: right. It is. It is more flavor friendly than turmeric And if you live in a part of the world where right now it is cold and damp It's just kind of a nice thing to have. I mean even gingerbread, right? I mean gingerbread is delicious and it doesn't just have to be eaten at Holiday season. Yeah, so I guess that's all we have of ginger.

Tina: We just hit a gingerbread wall.

LEAH: Now I want gingerbread. Anyways, if you enjoyed this episode and know someone who would also enjoy this episode, please share it. Share it with your friends.

Tina: if this made you think of somebody and you thought, so and so could really use some ginger, send it to that person.

LEAH: That's right. And remember to follow or subscribe wherever you are listening on whatever streaming app you are listening because that way we'll just kind of pop right up to the top and it will always be, at the top of mind and remind you that there's a new episode.

Tina: Hey, and did I tell you we're in 64 different countries around the world right now?

We have listeners in 

64 

LEAH: is so cool.

Tina: I will say, I want to thank folks down under because Australia, New Zealand has a good number of people, but you know, they're very naturopathic down there. They've got a pretty good, strong naturopathic community in, uh, New Zealand, especially in any case, most of our listeners are still United States.

85 percent

LEAH: Well, I want to say hi to my friend Neen down in New Zealand, I wonder if she's listening.

Tina: you'll find out. We'll see if she ever responds to this.

LEAH: All right. On that note, I'm Dr. Leah Sherman,

Tina: And I'm Dr. Tina Kaeser

LEAH: and this is the Cancer Pod.

Tina: until next time.

Thanks for listening to the cancer pod. Remember to subscribe, review and rate us wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates, and as always, this is not medical advice. These are our opinions. Talk to your doctor before changing anything related to your treatment plan. The cancer pod is hosted by me, Dr.

Lea Sherman. And by Dr. Tina Caer music is by Kevin McLeod. See you next time.