THE HEALING POWER OF GINSENG

The ancient herb boasts a number of feel-good benefits. Read on to find out more-and how it helped one woman stave off sickness

- MELISSA GOTTHARDT

Sneezing, sniffling, coughing and congestion—none of us wants to be sidelined by symptoms of respiratory infections like colds, flu and COVID that circulate at this time of year. Plus, no matter what the season, we all want to feel our energized, upbeat best. The key to accomplishing these goals, according to a wealth of research: supplementing with a medicinal root known as Korean red ginseng.

Korean red ginseng (KRG) has been used in Asian medicine to treat a range of health concerns for thousands of years. Derived from the root of a shrub that’s typically grown for at least six years, the “Panax” in its scientific name (Panax ginseng) means “panacea,” or “cure-all” in Latin. And as Jacob Teitelbaum, M.D., co-author of You Can Heal from Long COVID, notes, the herb has an impressive ability to fight infections.

“Korean red ginseng is a powerful adaptogen, which means it supports the immune system by helping the body adapt to stress,” he says. Indeed, a report in the Journal of Ginseng Research confirms that the herb stabilizes the body’s fight-or-flight stress response. That’s key when it comes to infection protection, as a New England Journal of Medicine study found that participants with low stress caught fewer respiratory viruses than their highly stressed counterparts. And in a study in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, researchers credited KRG’s stress-easing action with improving immune system function to reduce cold and flu symptoms by 72%.

What’s more, another study in the Journal of Ginseng Research determined that supplementing with KRG for six months significantly boosted the number and activity of immune cells. Need more good news? Korean findings suggest KRG can protect against the inflammation that triggers severe complications of COVID-19.