Recently, I wrote a custom herbal formula for a patient of mine. This particular formula called for the herb, sheng jiang. For those of you unfamiliar with this pinyin translation, you probably know it as rhizoma Zingiberis recens. No? Ok, this is actually just everyday fresh ginger, a relatively common ingredient in the Chinese herbal pharmacopoeia.
On this particular day, the person who painstakingly decocts our custom herbal formulas for our patients from bulk raw herbs only had dried ginger, gan jiang, at his disposal. Although the medicinal properties of gan jiang and sheng jiang are similar and I could have gotten away with substituting gan jiang, sheng jiang was much better suited for this particular individual’s condition or pattern (diagnosis). However, if I was going to go with sheng jiang, I would have to ask the patient to add it himself every time he was to drink the custom formula (twice/day). This particular patient was not only relatively new to me, but also new to Chinese Medicine. Custom Chinese herbal formulas are strong individualized medicine; we are big fans of this ancient healing modality. As we always warn our patients though, these can range in taste from “earthy” and “healthy,” to bitter, to sometimes, “God awful tree bark flavored!” It’s already hard enough to get people to drink this stuff for weeks at a time. I worried that asking this relatively novice patient to also find and add fresh ginger to it would be too overwhelming. In the end, I banked on how enthusiastic he seemed in our initial consults and went with the semi-Do-It-Yourself option of making the formula without the gan jiang and asking him to add it himself knowing that it would be a better formula and hoping that it might also increase the palatability and maybe even spark an interest in Chinese herbs.
It was only that evening, when I got got home, that I really came to appreciate the therapeutic properties of sheng jiang in this scenario. I was excited because I had been soaking some beautiful, top-grade Japanese dried Donko Shitake mushrooms in water all day. I had all the ingredients for a fabulously simple miso soup and I had been looking forward to it all day: fresh green onions, 2yr old aged miso, aged shoyu (soy sauce), dried wakame seaweed, dried daikon. I got home, laid out all the ingredients in my kitchen, and realized, ironically, that I was missing fresh ginger—yes, sheng jiang. Again faced with the ginger dilemma, I could either make the soup as-is with all the other makings of a great soup, or find some way to secure the fresh ginger and make the perfect miso soup. I had just gone grocery shopping the day before, and I was in no mood to get in my car again, so I knocked on the door of the new neighbors next door whom I had yet to meet.
Did I end up savoring the perfect miso soup with sheng jiang? No, they didn’t have the ginger. I did get to meet my neighbors though.
What does this have to do with Chinese Medicine and/or appreciating the therapeutic properties of sheng jiang? It was only after I went to the trouble of at least trying to get the ginger that I realized that sometimes, maybe even always, the greatest therapeutic value of something isn’t so much in the inherent properties, active ingredients, biochemical mechanism of action, or even energetic qualities of something (ie in TCM: warming, cooling, bitter, raises the Qi, clears Heat, etc.), RATHER—
The greatest therapeutic value in a remedy lies in the time and energy one puts into it with the purpose and intent of achieving and receiving health and healing.
Yes, for the patient with the gingerless formula, the fresh ginger was slightly better suited for him. However, every time he goes out of his way—maybe way out of his way—to fix his formula with the final touch of fresh ginger, he’ll hopefully be reminded that all this work is for a good and noble cause—his well-being. Will he one day appreciate this and even want to start cooking his own herbal formulas from scratch so he can truly appreciate the look, texture, smell, and taste of each individual herb? I don’t know, probably not, but hopefully his
formula will at least taste good.
As for me, I enjoyed my soup—gingerless as it may have been—knowing my neighbors are good kind people who offered every other spice in their fridge and spice rack. I’m glad I went to the trouble of knocking on their door, introducing myself, and asking for ginger. I feel a little more integrated in my community and now know they too will knock on my door if they ever need anything.
Ginger, heaven forbid you do something for your health right?
Any comments are appreciated, we’d love to hear back from you.
Oscar Sierra, L.Ac.
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