Podcast 277: Herbalists’ Views on the Top-Selling Herbs (Part 14): Dandelion, Rhubarb, Ginseng

16 April, 2026

We’ve come to the end of the “mainstream” top-40 best-selling herbs list! Dandelion, rhubarb, and ginseng take the last three spots.

Dandelion is an herbal workhorse. It’s inexpensive because it’s ubiquitous, and its resilience is legendary – dandelion coming up through the concrete is one of the herbalist’s favorite symbols of resistance and the power of nature. Much more than a simple “detox” herb, dandelion root and leaf improve the functions of our liver and kidneys, feed both us and our gut flora, and eliminate excess fluids from the system. Its bright yellow flowers can even lift our spirits when taken in tincture or wine – this is one of Ryn’s indispensable herbal remedies for the winter doldrums.

Rhubarb root used to be much more of an herbal mainstay than it is in contemporary herbalism. The Eclectics of the 19th century worked with it extensively, largely for its “cathartic” – stimulant laxative – properties. It is a key ingredient in the famous “neutralizing cordial”, a formula developed in that era and designed to be a nearly-universal remedy for digestive upsets of all sorts. This remedy is still prepared by herbalists today, though often with some variations in the ingredient list.

Ginseng needs no introduction. It is one of the most famous medicinal herbs in the world, and it is “the original adaptogen” – the category which has spawned millions of dollars in product sales in our stressed-out, depleted, fatigued society. Ginseng products can be extremely helpful, but you absolutely cannot simply buy the first one you find: these remedies are very prone to adulteration. That, too, is an old problem: historical texts are littered with descriptions of adulteration and falsification of supposedly mature, supposedly Panax roots which were nothing of the kind. Some things never change…

38. Dandelion – Taraxacum officinale

39. Rhubarb – Rheum spp.

40. Ginseng – Panax spp.

“Detox” came up in this episode (again), and we hinted at the issues rampant in this category of supplement products. For the full story, you’ll want to dig in to our course Elements of Detoxification. This course takes a fresh look at the concepts of “toxicity” and “detoxification”, a holistic perspective that goes beyond “cleanses” and products. Learn a memorable, practical model for understanding how the body’s detox functions work, along with the roles herbs can play in supporting them.

Elements of

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Episode Transcript

Ryn (00:00:00):
Hi, I’m Ryn. And I’m here at Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism in Boston, Massachusetts and on the internet everywhere, thanks to the power of the podcast. All right. Well, today we come to part 14 of this series that I’ve been doing on the herbalists’ views on the top-selling herbs. Remember that we’ve been looking at a list of the 40 bestselling herbs in commerce, and that’s what’s called the mainstream list. There is a natural channel list, which we’ll come back to at the end of this episode today. But for now, we have actually reached the end of the top 40 mainstream, bestselling herbal supplements list in the United States. Whew. Okay. So, those three that we’re going to finish off with are dandelion, rhubarb and ginseng. Mmm, ginseng, yes. All right. So, I have a lot to say about each of these. They’re interesting herbs, fascinating plants with a lot going for them. And as usual for this series, the goal here is to describe both their current market presentation. What are you going to find if you go searching for these herbs on Amazon or vitacost.com. Or just if you go to the shelves of a grocery store or a pharmacy, and you look at herbal supplements. What are the ones you’re most likely to find, and what are the bottles going to say? What kind of marketing language and advertising language is going to be used for these herbs and remedies made from them by the people who sell them? And then how can we compare that to what does the traditional herbalist think about these plants? What have people known and understood about them historically? What have people done with them in the ancient world or in historical times? And what do we do with them today in clinical herbalism as we practice with these herbs? And how does that differ and how does that overlap with those market presentations? Yeah.

Ryn (00:02:06):
So, that’s the topic. Those are the three herbs. And before we jump in, I just want to remind everybody that we are not herbalists. Nope, we are herbalists. Hang on. How does this go? Ah, yes. We are not doctors. There you go. We are not doctors. We are herbalists and holistic health educators. The ideas discussed in this podcast do not constitute medical advice. No state or federal authority licenses herbalists in the United States. So, these discussions are for educational purposes only. We want to remind you that good health doesn’t mean the same thing for everyone. Good health doesn’t exist as one objective standard. It’s influenced by the individual needs, experiences, and goals of each person. So, keep in mind we’re not attempting to present one single dogmatic right way that you must adhere to if you want to work with herbs or be an herbalist. Everyone’s body is different. So, the things that we’re talking about may or may not apply directly to you. But we hope that they’ll give you some new information to think about and some ideas to research and to experiment with further. Finding a way to better health is both your right and your own personal responsibility. Now, this doesn’t mean that you’re alone on the journey, and it doesn’t mean that you’re to blame for your current state of health. But it does mean that the final decision when you’re considering any course of action, whether that was discussed on the internet or prescribed by a physician, that’s always your choice to make. And we want to make it an informed choice. Okay.

#38 Dandelion: A Common Detox/Cleanse & Diuretic Herb

Ryn (00:03:29):
So, here we go. We’re talking about dandelion first today. That is Taraxacum officinale in the botanical Latin name. All right. All right. So, when we go and look at dandelion supplements, what we’re going to find is that most of them are focusing their claims, their advertising, their statements on cleansing and detoxification. So, if you’ve listened to the podcast for any amount of time, you’ve probably heard some of our comments on cleanses and detoxes and the way in which these concepts are most often misapplied or abused in the service of selling products. At the same time I think we’ve also mentioned repeatedly that these are very popular categories of product when it comes to herbal supplements. They account for a large share of the sales in a given pharmacy or a given supplement store. People are looking for this. People want to do a cleanse. They want to detoxify themselves. And I mean, who wouldn’t, right? It sounds great to get some crud out of your body, to get some toxins out of you, to feel clean and pure, right? Everybody, I think, wants that, or a lot of people do anyway. And the issue we run into with this is less the intention behind that, which I do agree with. I work to keep poisons, and toxins, and pesticides, and microplastics out of my life as much as I can, right?

Ryn (00:05:02):
But what I run into the problem with this idea of detox and cleansing is that oftentimes the way it’s executed is we’re going to go in, and we’re going to stimulate your bowels. We’ll talk about rhubarb and that concept in just a short time here, right? Or it’s I’m going to go in, and I’m going to amp up liver function. And I’m going to squeeze the bile out of it, and get that stuff flowing, and get the crud out of you real good. And in some cases these approaches could be helpful short term. In other cases what you end up doing is you just give somebody a bunch of diarrhea for a while, and you empty out their bowels real good. And then maybe you follow that up in your little detox kit with some fiber supplements. And they have a nice big heavy bowel movement, and they’re like ah, now I’m empty. But that’s not the whole story, right? Because toxins are something that we do get exposed to in the world. Our bodies do have systems for coping with them. And in general that’s something you want to be humming along at a good, steady pace all the time. And to have its moments when there’s higher activity, like when you’re asleep, is a particularly important one, right? But you want it to be an ongoing process rather than something that’s kind of like not functioning at all until you give it a big heavy stimulus, and you make it happen, right? And a lot of times the concepts, the way that detox products and kits are presented, is very much in that latter mode of like you have to force your body to detox. It’s got to be a strong, heavy, intense intervention. You’re going to cleanse yourself. We’re going to flush you out, right, that kind of thing.

Ryn (00:06:35):
Whereas the approach that I would take to detox is more steady, more measured, and it plays out over longer spans of time. And dandelion is an herb that I would say it’s fair to comment that this herb can enhance your body’s natural capacity for coping with and eliminating substances that don’t belong in the body. Whether they came in from outside of you in food, in pollutants, in stuff you inhale, whatever. Or if they were things generated within your own body. Because we make plenty of trash as part of our metabolism, and we have to get rid of that too. And for a lot of people the major toxin load that they’re coping with is actually endogenously-produced substances that you’re having trouble disposing of. Okay. So, you can hear more about that whole concept of toxicity, and detoxification, and cleansing, and how to do that in a more appropriate, sustainable, and I would say effective manner in a course that we teach called Elements of Detoxification. I’ll put a link in the show notes. I may have some more comments about that at the end of this episode. But I just wanted to lead and say there’s a lot that can be said about that. A lot of clarity that we can provide about what are toxins, where do they come from, what are the major ones we’re actually dealing with? And how can we deal with them more effectively with the help of holistic interventions and of course, with herbs?

Ryn (00:08:00):
And there is a place for dandelion in that work as well, right? Dandelion is an interesting herb because it’s not super intense. It’s not like a heavy hitter in terms of liver stimulation, or in terms of kidney stimulation, or certainly in terms of having some kind of a laxative quality. Dandelion is a fairly gentle plant, and this is one of the reasons why it’s one of my favorites. It’s one of, I would say, most herbalist operating in the US today at least in the circles that I run in or that I contact in the course of my life, dandelion is a pretty much perennial favorite. And part of that is because it’s inexpensive. It’s widely available. You’ve got people who are there trying to kill the dandelions in their lawn. And then you’ve got folks like us that are trying to harvest the dandelions from the yard and be like, well, you’re pretty much organically grown. You have some good quality material. I’m going to work with this. Okay. So, a wide array of approaches to dandelion out there in the world. But let’s just say when it comes to products in the market, on the websites, whatever, again, focused on cleansing, focused on detox in terms of their advertising. I found some, or you’ll find some when you go looking that highlight support for quote, water balance or for fluid levels. Like that would be the little label claim on the front. And that I read as a way to just refer to the diuretic effects of dandelion. Some brands will simply just say this is an herbal diuretic. Eh, pretty straightforward. I kind of like that. I appreciate that when people are clear and specific about what they’re trying to express to others. Remember that there are barriers to that kind of clarity in the market because of the laws that exist around what kind of label claims you can make, and the regulations, and all of that kind of thing. But anyway, sometimes herbal diuretic, pretty straightforward, okay?

Dandelion Product Types

Ryn (00:09:52):
Products made from dandelion, the majority of them are made with the root. We can actually work with all different parts of the plant: the root, the leaf, the stem, the flower. And I’ll describe some of those applications in just a moment. But when we look at herbal products in the marketplace, we mainly see root-based remedies more so than the leaf, which would be like second. And you don’t really see the others so much. I have recently found one herbal supplier who will sell you dried dandelion flowers. And I tried them out, pretty nice. I definitely prefer gathering my own and having them fresh. But anyway, that’s rare, unusual, and not very common at all, right? So root, leaf, okay. When you do see leaf products, there tends to be a little differentiation from the root. They’re more often going to express a focus on quote, circulatory health. But again, that is something that doesn’t explain to people what is actually going on. The way, the way in which dandelion can support circulatory health would be by eliminating excess fluid from your system. And when we carry too much fluid in our bodies, that drives apart blood pressure. There’s literally just more fluid in your pipes, in your tubes, right, pressing against the walls of the hoses that run through your body, right? So, if there’s too much fluid, and we can drain some out with an herbal diuretic like dandelion leaf, we can reduce that pressure. And that can ease the job of the circulatory system. And it can ease the pressure on the blood vessels, their propensity to stretch or burst even, leading into things like varicosities, or spider veins, or stuff like that, or hemorrhoids for that matter. Easing some of the pressure on the heart and the work that it has to do, right?

Ryn (00:11:48):
So, that can all be very helpful, but let’s be clear, that only makes sense, you only give an herbal diuretic to drain excess fluids, when there are excess fluids to drain, right? If we have somebody with a very dry constitution. And you can see all of the veins under their skin. And they have dry expressions on the skin, or on the scalp, or other places in the body. They don’t need an herbal diuretic to improve their circulation. They don’t need an herbal diuretic to improve their blood pressure. Somebody with that pattern could have high blood pressure. But they would get better relief from that with relaxants and maybe something like linden in particular to improve hydration, improve fluid movement, and to release the tension. That’s probably the major cause for someone with a dry constitution to have elevated blood pressure. So, this is one of those many cases that we’ve highlighted through the course of this series and elsewhere where supports fluid balance or improved circulatory health doesn’t really tell you with clarity what the herb is actually doing, and therefore who it makes sense to try it. All right. So, as herbalists, that’s our job, right? Get out there and do that.

Ryn (00:13:04):
Okay, so when we look at dandelion products that come in the form of a capsule, what we find there are mostly straight-up powdered herb. Sometimes you will find concentrated extracts, right? Like this is a 4:1 concentrate of dandelion root extract, or this is a 10:1 concentrate. I’ve seen products made in those manners. But what I haven’t seen, at least so far, in the marketplace of dandelion supplements is this is standardized to X percent taraxacoside or something like that. Some key constituent of the herb being looked at as the active agent in there. And we’re going to set it as a marker. And we’re going to make sure that our remedy has X percent of that, because that’s how we guarantee that it’s going to be effective for you. This is one of the herbs that doesn’t seem to have happened yet, if it’s ever going to happen at all. And so this one again, is more likely to just be powder durable material. Or maybe they made some extract and then dried it and concentrated it. But it’s not receiving that kind of standardization effect as we get with rhodiola, or St. John’s wort, or ginkgo, or other products like this. Okay.

Ryn (00:14:24):
What you will find fairly frequently for dandelion is tinctures, alcohol extracts or glycerites, right, an herbal extract either made or suspended in glycerin. Those are fairly common. And then also more than a number of other herbs that we’ve looked at in this series, the commercialized plants, you’re going to see dandelion root sold as a cut and sifted material. So dried, chopped it into pieces, sold in a bag to make tea out of it. And with the root in particular, you’ll see that fairly often. It’s not unusual for people to take that as a coffee substitute. And especially when it’s kind of sold with that idea in mind, generally they’re going to chop the roots and then roast them as that kind of changes the flavor a little bit. It does make the dandelion root a little bit less bitter. And the decoction you make from it is an inch closer to the flavor of coffee. Dandelion root coffee doesn’t taste like coffee. I don’t think almost anybody would say it’s a one-to-one substitute. It can move kind of in that direction, right? It’s bitter, it’s earthy. Okay. Yeah, sure. It can be robust. All right, fine. But coffee is something else. So, when people make an actually convincing herbal coffee substitute, the closest ones that I found include putting in some chaga or putting in some other medicinal mushrooms into there. And then sometimes I think it’s also a really good idea to include something like angelica, which has a bitter note to it but has some aromatics. Because coffee has a lot of aromatics. Dandelion root, nah, not so much, not so much. So, that that piece of the flavor and sensory profile would be really lacking. So, don’t try to pawn off roasted dandelion as a perfect coffee substitute for your friends. Because they’re going to be disappointed, and they’re not going to trust you about your suggestions next time. Okay.

Benefits of Dandelion Leaf & Root

Ryn (00:16:22):
Now, when we herbalist are working with dandelion, like I said before, we work with lots of different parts of it. We’ll work with the root, we’ll work with the leaf, we’ll work with the stem and even the flowers, right? And there are some overlapping purposes for all those different parts. And there are some distinct purposes. So, just briefly here, the root we think of primarily as a liver remedy. That it’s going to stimulate bile secretion. That it’s going to stimulate liver function in kind of a broad sense. Your liver has lots of jobs. It has to produce things, it has to store things, it has to transform things. And it has to run all of those jobs at the same time. So, dandelion is a nice, generalized, not too intense, but persistent liver activator, right? And by that I just want to say that it can enhance your liver’s capacity to metabolize things that it gets exposed to from the digestive tract coming up to the liver for filtering, if you want to say, in a very broad sense. It’s much more active than a filter, but filtering, cleaning. Investigating might be a good word because there’s a lot of immune surveillance that goes on at that stage as well. So that’s part of its function, but then also it has to produce bile. And that’s a complex substance to make. So, the liver has to work pretty hard to do that. Dandelion can enhance that capacity. It can also stimulate a little extra release of bile. And that’s where it makes sense to take dandelion before meals, right? Like other bitter herbs, you take the dandelion root. You taste the bitterness. It triggers these responses in your body. And your stomach, your liver, your pancreas, they’re all secreting their juices a little more enthusiastically. So, that can be a nice effect from that.

Ryn (00:18:08):
Dandelion root is also fibrous, and you would know that if you had one in front of you and tried to cut through it. It’s going to take a lot of work, right, especially if it’s been dried. It’s not just fresh. Some of the fibers in there are insoluble. If you just chew it up and eat it, they’re going to swallow and go right through you. Some of them are soluble. And some of them are prebiotic. Dandelion root is famous for its inulin content. Inulin is one of the most famous prebiotic fibers that we consume through herbs and foods. We find it in burdock. We find it in elecampane. We find it in sunchokes. We find it in a lot of different places. But dandelion root is a fantastic source for inulin. And when you make a decoction of dandelion root, and the water gets cloudy or quote-unquote milky as you boil it, that’s the inulin being released. You can drink that cloudy fluid. You can get the inulin into your body. And if you take a decent amount, it can have this important prebiotic effect feeding your gut flora. Feeding them preferentially, not all of them indiscriminately but basically feeding your friends. Feeding your best friends, microbes that produce butyrate and other things that are beneficial to your local intestinal health and to your broader metabolic health.

Ryn (00:19:22):
So, dandelion can be very helpful that way. Now, you do have to eat the root or decoct the root in order to get inulin. If you make a dandelion tincture. And you have dandelion root that you harvested yourself or that you bought from the herb supplier, and you soak it in alcohol for a while. You will see a cloudy, milky, white layer settling down at the bottom of your jar as it sits there macerating. That is the inulin that came out of the plant. And then it’s heavy, and it settled down to the bottom, right? The thing about tinctures though, is that you’re not going to take a lot at once. So, you’re going to take a squirt of a dandelion tincture, 10 drops. You might take a spoonful if you’re taking a big dose. But you’re not going to drink a cup of dandelion tincture or a quart of dandelion tincture in a day. And so the amount of inulin you’re actually going to receive from tincture, or for that matter from a capsule, is pretty small. If you want the inulin effect from your dandelion, make a decoction and drink a lot of it through the whole day and do that for many days consistently, or get some dandelion roots and eat them like food. Yeah.

Ryn (00:20:27):
Okay. Now, how about the leaf? So, the leaves of dandelion are another really good food. I love them in salads. They have a bitterness to them. It’s not overwhelming. It’s not so much more intense than radicchio, or something like that, or really good arugula. They have a lot of crispiness to them. They have a lot of good fiber content that you get when you eat up the leaves. They have a lot of chlorophyll, which is really beneficial to your body. They have a ton of mineral content. This herb is really good at pulling minerals up out of the soil for you. They’re fantastic, right? The leaves also have a bit of a diuretic effect. And when we prepare them as tea, you know, we do a long infusion of dandelion leaf tea. Or when we make a tincture out of dandelion leaf. The major effect from the tincture, let’s say, would be that diuretic action. Stimulation to the kidneys, it’s going to enhance elimination of certain kinds of wastes. That’s great. It’s going to do that effect I mentioned earlier about being a diuretic and draining excess fluids from your body. So, that’s all nice as long as you need it. As long as you’re not running really dry and then taking a bunch of a very diuretic herb and drying yourself out even further. Watch out for that.

Dandelion Stems & Flowers

Ryn (00:21:40):
If you want a diuretic, but maybe there’s a mixed pattern going on. We’ve got a bunch of dryness over here and a bunch of dampness over there. I don’t want only dry herbs. I don’t want only moist herbs. What do I do? We formulate, right? We have a combination. We get both effects coming in. We try to send them where they belong. Lots of steps to do in that kind of formulation. But we could begin by saying all right, I do want a diuretic for you. I do want to drain some excess fluids, but I don’t want to dry you out too much. So, your tea blend is going to be dandelion and violet, or dandelion and linden, or dandelion and marshmallow leaf, right? A lot of the same kind of calculus that we’re going to put in when we’re working with nettle leaf in different people who don’t have that very damp constitutional pattern going on. All right? Okay. So, then because the root and the leaf both have palpable bitterness to them, they can do that job of stimulating digestive secretions that I mentioned a moment ago just like any other bitter herb. All right, cool.

Ryn (00:22:42):
The stem of dandelion is a pretty mild remedy for warts and some other kinds of skin eruptions or skin irritations. What you would do for that is you would take the dandelion stem, crush it up real good, apply it to the spot. You know, you’ve got a wart on your finger, or your toe, or something. You apply it right on there, put a bandage on, keep it in place, keep it in contact with the skin, and leave it in there for several hours. You can often just do this overnight. It’s going to be the way to go. But with dandelion stem, you’ve got to do this over and over and over again for a while. This is not as potent for that job as something like greater celandine, which is much more fast-acting than dandelion stem is. But if you’ve got a lot of time, or if you have very sensitive skin. Like maybe you tried celandine for a wart before, and it irritated your tissue too much. You could try the dandelion stem thing, just don’t give up too early. Keep at it. Okay.

Ryn (00:23:37):
And then the flowers, possibly my favorite part of the dandelion plant, right? So, first off, they’re bright yellow. Why? Because they’re really saturated with carotenoids. Those are pigments that in the plant they serve some functions about protecting from UV damage and too much sunlight and so on. In us they serve antioxidant functions. They serve anti-inflammatory functions. And they protect certain kinds of tissue, including certain areas in your eyes, certain areas in the uterus. A few other spots in your body where these particular yellow pigments will actually be sequestered or concentrated because they’re essential to the function of that part of the body.

Ryn (00:24:22):
So, it’s good to get carotenoids from lots of sources. You can get them from carrots. You can get them from almost any yellow or orange-colored fruit and vegetable. Almost any, not entirely any, but most of them will have some carotenoids in there. They’re one of the many categories of antioxidant pigments that we want to be getting from our diets, from our food, and from our herbs. Dandelion flowers, especially when they’re fresh or freshly preserved, like you gather them fresh and then make a tincture out of them. I have found, and I’m not alone in this observation, that they have a bit of a mood-lifting effect. And I usually refer to that as exhilarant action. There’s another term sometimes people use called thymoleptic. It’s a pretty rare term in American herbalism. But in any case, these are herbs that can lift your mood and lift your spirits. And with the dandelion flower, I find that especially true when you prepare them as a tincture. Or if you prepare dandelion wine, which some people’s grandmothers might still know how to do. I’m sure that there are places we can go to look up instructions for that. But that is to take the dandelion flowers, and soak them in a sugar solution, and allow them to ferment and produce an alcohol. But it’s all infused with that bright, yellow goodness of the dandelion flower, lots of carotenoid activity into there.

Ryn (00:25:41):
When you make a tincture of dandelion, you do a similar extraction, right? It will be a fairly yellow tincture when you got that finished and ready to go. And I like to have dandelion flower tincture on hand for the late winter and early spring. When it’s like February, March, and it’s been gray, and rainy, and heavy skies, and cold temperatures for a long time. And we’re maybe going to come out of it soon, but it seems like the horizon keeps receding. That’s when I want dandelion flower. And I find that it does lift my mood. That it is a bit of a remedy for the seasonal affective depression kind of a thing. Yeah. So, that’s one of my favorite ways to take dandelion personally. All right, I’ve got some links for you as always. We’ve got a mini-monograph on dandelion for you. We’ve addressed dandelion in some detail previously on the Holistic Herbalism podcast. You can check out episode 220 for that. And we also have dandelion as one of our computer wallpaper and phone background options. So, I’ve got the direct link to that for you if you want to have a beautiful dandelion to look at every time you pick up your smartphone. Maybe it could remind you to go outside to the actual dandelions and spend time with them. That sounds all right to me. Yeah.

#39 Rhubarb: A Slower-Acting Astringent, Stimulant Laxative

Ryn (00:26:55):
But for now, let’s go ahead and move on and talk about rhubarb. So, rhubarb is actually an herb that I myself have worked with only to the smallest degree personally. But it is one that historically speaking was a much more everyday part of the herbalists’ work. So, this was a very important herb to the eclectic herbalists of the 1800s to early 1900s, the physiomedicalists from the same era. And then also for herbalists prior to that time in history, rhubarb was considered a very important plant. And one of the links I’ve included in the show notes for you today is to a book called the United States Dispensatory. This is from 1918. This is one of the last times that herbs were included among the quote-unquote standard medicines of the United States. And in the entry there for rhubarb, there are many, many pages of texts about rhubarb varieties, about how to assess the quality of rhubarb roots, about preservation of them. All of this before we even get to notes about the chemistry or the practical applications of the rhubarb root. And so there was just a lot of attention to detail being paid by these authors in this time about how do you know you’ve got good rhubarb root? How do you know one variety from another? When is the right time to choose one versus another? And a lot of that nuance has been lost, I would say, in contemporary herbalism, at least for most practitioners who just don’t work with rhubarb very often.

Ryn (00:28:35):
One of the reasons for that is at that time in history and in the history of herbal practice, there was much greater emphasis on laxative herbs, especially stimulant laxatives. And for this category they would use the term cathartic. And the kind of catharsis they’re talking about is not the one where you go see the really moving story, or the opera, or the ballet performance, or whatever. But they mean catharsis in the sense of we gave you a stimulant laxative. And you went to the potty and got the desired result from that, right? So, that used to be a much bigger part of what herbalists would do. And to be fair, it was also at that time a pretty big part of what the quote-unquote regular physicians were doing. And they might do that with a medicine made out of mercury. And so the herbalists were doing it with something much gentler, actually much safer. And that was actually part of the reason why there were many cases where the herbal practitioners had a better reputation among their patients than did the chemical practitioners of the day.

Ryn (00:29:40):
All right, but now we’re getting into history. So anyway, rhubarb and aloe latex, which we discussed prior in an episode in this series. Senna, which I think we just talked about in one of the more recent episodes of this sequence. We talked about this issue of the stimulant laxatives there, and how there can be concerns about somebody becoming dependent upon the stimulant laxative effect in order to have a bowel movement at all. That won’t happen from one use of senna, or aloe latex, or rhubarb root. But if you’re taking it day after day for many days at a time, you can fall into that problem, right? Now, rhubarb is a little bit separate from aloe latex and from senna in this discussion because rhubarb has a fair amount of astringency to it, which the other two don’t so much. And that’s due to the high tannin content of the plant and of the root here. And tannins work to tonify the bowels. They tighten them up. And to some extent that countervails against the peristaltic influence of the anthraquinone chemistry in the rhubarb, in the senna, in the aloe vera latex, right? Remember that the anthraquinone are the ones that stimulate those wave-like muscle contractions in the intestine and move things along. Many of these herbs also draw moisture into the intestine. When there is high tannin content present, that kind of tightens up the intestinal lining and reduces the amount of water that gets drawn in. So, it reduces that part of the effect a little bit. But that peristalsis is still going to be present.

Ryn (00:31:27):
This is actually one reason why if you look at the old writings about this, there’s a pretty heavy emphasis on if you’re going to give rhubarb root, you want to make sure the person is drinking a lot of fluids. This wouldn’t be a good herb to give to somebody who’s really dried out, even dried out through their bowels and then gives this to them on top of that. Because they’re going to have that astringency kind of keeping the bowel surface a little bit on the dry side, but they’re still going to have that muscle movement at the same time. And that kind of contraction with some dry material internally, that’s not going to feel good. That’s not going to be very nice. So, take lots of fluids if you ever consume rhubarb remedies. Yeah. But the practitioners of that day were pretty nuanced about the variations in the preparation method, the dosing that they would administer to each person. Because that can modulate which of these influences is going to dominate, the sort of movement, laxative effect or the tonification quality from the tannins. Rhubarb is also a bit different from the other stimulant laxatives because it acts more slowly. And so whereas you could take a dose of something like senna latex or Cascara sagrada, and you could expect to have bowel movements within the hour. With rhubarb it was often like you’re going to take this, but it might be six or eight hours before you have a productive bowel movement, right? So, there’s a fairly significant difference there. All right.

A Neutralizing Cordial to Aid Digestion

Ryn (00:32:56):
Another thing that you’ll notice if you look into some of these historical applications of rhubarb, especially during this period we’re talking about – late 1800s, early 1900s – is that it was a major ingredient in a remedy called neutralizing cordial. It also had some other more complicated names like Syrupus Rhei et Potassii Compositus. Or in English: compound syrup of rhubarb and potassa. So, that’s one of the links I’ve got in the show notes for you, so you can see that kind of recipe from 1898 for what was frequently just referred to from that on forward as neutralizing cordial. So, what is this stuff if you’ve never heard of it before? This is a combination of herbs and historically also some mineral content. Some potassium carbonate is what it would be. And it was a remedy for a broad array of different digestive complaints, which we can sort of see when we look at the ingredients that went into it. So, one version included goldenseal, peppermint, cinnamon, and rhubarb, and then that potassium carbonate. Now, in some presentations of this recipe, the potassium carbonate is there to be an anti-acid agent for excess stomach acid, or for heartburn if it’s actually coming from excess stomach acid. The others, when we look at that, what do we see? Well, we see a strong bitter with the goldenseal, also with a lot of mucosal astringency that’s going to manifest in the stomach especially and then to some extent in the intestines and further down. We see peppermint, a strong carminative with a lot of relaxant capacities from the menthol effect and some related compounds there. So, reducing spasms and constriction. We have cinnamon, a very warming herb and carminative for that reason, also inducing some relaxation in the muscular layers. But cinnamon also has a little bit of astringency on the mucus layers. So, kind of a mixed effect in that regard. And then the rhubarb, as we’ve been describing, has both the peristalsis influence as well as some tannin astringency for the intestinal lining.

Ryn (00:35:09):
So, you put all of that together into a remedy, and that would be given for a really wide variety of digestive issues. And variations of this formula are still a mainstay of practice for a number of herbalists today. They might use it or work with it straight up as it is. They might include it in a kit that they’re going to bring to do first aid work or things like that. Or it might be taken where we’re going to have this ready-to-go, premixed formula. And then we’re going to add that to a specific formula made for this individual in this moment, right? So, we’re going to take a base of neutralizing cordial. And then for you, ah, you run on the cold and damp side. So, we’re going to take that, we’re going to bump in another two parts worth of ginger tincture or ginger syrup. And that’s going to be the remedy that we’re going to put for you specifically, right? Or for somebody else we’re going to go with wild cherry syrup, or we’re going to go with centaury tincture, or whatever else it is that we’re going to blend in for the individual. The herbalist Michael Moore referred to this as the single closest thing to a universal gastrointestinal tonic, right? So, that’s kind of the idea with neutralizing cordial. In a sense trying to touch lightly on several different predictable trouble spots through the GI tract and through those organs. All right Now, in contrast to all of that, the contemporary framing for rhubarb products tends to focus on the stimulant laxative effect. But, and it won’t surprise you given the introduction today, these are generally framed simply as detox functions. We are going to detoxify you. We are going to cleanse you. And you’ll see it turn up here and there in those products with that orientation. Okay. So, enough said about that.

Rhubarb’s Unclear Role in Hormonal Support

Ryn (00:37:10):
Another note though, some rhubarb products, and especially combination formulae that include rhubarb as one of the ingredients, they might indicate that this remedy, this supplement is there to quote, support hormonal balance or to provide some relief from symptoms of menopause. When you see a product like that, and when they specify any particular chemistry or standardization, you’re going to see that they focus on two constituents. Most of the time the major ones are called rhaponticin and they deoxy rhaponticin. And these, according to laboratory science, they exert some degree of phytoestrogenic activity. So, that would be the role that this would be playing in a quote-unquote menopause formula, right? It wouldn’t be oh, you’ve got menopause? Let me give you a laxative. It would be oh, you’ve got menopause? Well, can I give you herbal estrogens? And looking at these constituents from this herb, from this root and saying well, these seem to be like herbal estrogens. Let’s give those and see what kind of effects we get, right? So, when you dig through some studies about this, you’ll find that certain proprietary, which is to say secret methods for preparing an extract from rhubarb centered on these two constituents, have shown some promising results in some studies, right? People feeling some relief from certain symptoms, fewer hot flashes, not as severe, better able to sleep through the night. Okay, cool.

Ryn (00:38:44):
But what I did notice is that the concentrations and the preparation methods that are used there, they might differ really significantly from what’s available to the consumer. So, for instance, one of the only studies I was able to find that was directly about humans taking an extract or a preparation of rhubarb root to see if it would improve their menopause symptoms. It was all prepared in a very specific way. It had, I think, two or three times the concentration of those constituents as the commercialized products that I was able to see on Amazon orienting themselves to this purpose. And it was prepared in what you call an enteric-coated capsule. Which means that it’s not going to open in the stomach the way most capsules do. It’s going to hold until it gets down deeper into the intestines, and then it’s going to open and deliver its chemistry out there. So, it’s entirely possible that the effects observed in that particular trial would not be replicable by this menopause formula that includes rhubarb roots that you can go buy on Amazon today. It may be that the one that you can buy for yourself is a little less potent than the one that they studied, or something else like that might be going on. But at the moment it’s kind of unclear. We would need more data, and we would actually need more clarity around the way the commercial products are actually made before we could make that judgment. All right. And again, if you’ve been listening to this series for a while, you can probably sing along with what I just said. Because these are repeated comments that we have to make over and over again about herbal supplement products as they exist in the marketplace.

Ryn (00:40:34):
All right, one last comment. I just want to come back to the cathartic thing, the stimulant laxative thing, right? I would say, and I’m not alone in this, but I would say that all cathartics like this should be avoided if a person is suffering from inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn’s disease, or celiac disease, or ulcerative colitis. Even if that person has constipation, it’s not a great idea for them to take the stimulant laxatives. They could work with yellow dock safely. They can definitely work with marshmallow, seaweeds fibers, hydrating herbs, demulcent, yes, good move. But the stimulant laxatives are not a good move when there is damage, erosion, or ulceration in the bowels or in the GI tract at large. Better to avoid in those circumstances. Okay.

#40 Ginseng: Natural Energy & Chemistry

Ryn (00:41:36):
All right, number 40 on the bestselling list was ginseng. Now, ginseng has moved up and down its position on the bestseller list on the mainstream channel, on the natural channel over the years. If you scroll back, or you look back through the prior years of the herbal market report, ginseng will turn up at different spots on there. But it’s almost always on there, right? And if we had a bestselling herbs list from a hundred years ago, we would see ginseng in one form or another on that list, right? This has been a top-selling herb for hundreds of years in global commerce and thousands of years in China where it originates from. Or for the American ginseng version, it was certainly an important herb to humans from the moment that they made it to that part of the world, right? It’s an herb with an incredible reputation, right, second to none. So, the market presentation you’re going to find for the majority of ginseng products today is going to be focused on natural energy. It’s going to be focused on performance. It’s going to be focused on athleticism. Sometimes you’re also going to see it focused on cognitive performance or focus as well. Now, like almost every herb we’ve talked about, its historical applications have been significantly broader than that, right? And these have included both long-term effects to sustain, to activate the life force and all the different manifestations of it inside the body and beyond, as well as acute-term applications and even some emergency applications in traditional medicine, and folk medicine, and contemporary true herbalism as well.

Ryn (00:43:26):
Now, ginseng products in the marketplace today, they do take a wide array of different forms, and formats, and preparations, and methods, right? And that does include several standardized extracts. With ginseng, when a product is standardized, it’s usually going to be standardized to either the whole group or specific members of this group called ginsenosides. And there are varying degrees of specificity that the product manufacturers will give you. Sometimes they’ll just say we guarantee X percent ginsenoside content. Some of them will be more specific and be like well, we’re going to guarantee X percent of ginsenoside Rb and Y percent of ginsenoside Rg. These are just labels for the different members of the group, right? But in general, you’re going to see if there’s going to be some standardization, it’s going to be about the ginsenoside content. These are steroidal saponins, which we’ve seen from eleuthero, we’ve seen from ashwagandha in other contexts. They turn up very frequently in adaptogenic herbs. They contribute to the adaptogenic effects of the plant. I don’t want to say that they are responsible solely for the adaptogenic effects of the plant. Because I, like most herbalists, believe that the whole synergy of the whole plant is what gives you the whole effect, right? And so there are other interesting chemistries to be found beyond the ginsenosides. Just like in ashwagandha, it was more than just the withanolide content, right? That that is responsible for the action there. But they are certainly the most well researched and the most highly attended elements of what we find in there.

Ryn (00:45:24):
Now, I’ve been speaking generically about ginseng so far. And that’s because in this market report, the two primary species of ginseng and some other less famous species as well are all collapsed into this one entry. So, this is just listed as ginseng, Panax spp., right? So, spp., whenever you see that in a botanical name, it means species, plural. So, they’re saying any of the species, any of the plants that are in the Panax group, they’re going to be included here in our calculation, in our tally of sales, right? But to the herbalist, it’s actually pretty important that we differentiate which species we’re talking about. So, let’s break it down a little bit. The primary ones are going to be the Asian and American ginseng.

Ryn (00:46:18):
So, Asian ginseng, it’s botanical name is Panax ginseng. It’s the original, right? And this one, traditionally speaking, the main focus for this would be conditions or situations in which vitality was low. Vitality in a general sense: life force, qi, prana, whatever name you prefer to give to that. So, that could be someone who was an elder, and the life force was naturally fading, but we want to sustain that for as long as we can, okay? It could be somebody who was chronically ill in contemporary parlance. Maybe infirmed is an older word people would use for that, right? It could be someone recovering from an illness or an injury. That can take time, and that can definitely sap your vitality. We want to build strength, we want to provide a little extra life fire to somebody. That would be a situation to give ginseng. And then it is true that in certain circumstances this would also be done to enhance fire and energy in an otherwise healthy person.

Ryn (00:47:21):
And so historically that might be framed around war and combat. And in the modern world, it’s more often framed around athletic performance or in some cases really long hours of work. Yeah, adaptogens, this is how they go, right? They have kind of gone over time from this is an herb we give to somebody who’s very important to our society, and is starting to flag and fail, and we want to support them and bring them back to life as much as we can. And it has become how hard can we push these workers? How many breaks do we really need to give them, right? What if we give ginseng to these laborers? Can they work twice as long? Hmm, let’s find out. So, sometimes that’s done to people. And there have been a number of large-scale studies about the effects of adaptogens where they’ve been done to people. Putting them into really rough circumstances and seeing how well they survive if you give them ginseng, or you give them eleuthero. And then, you know, sometimes we do it to ourselves. And sometimes we’re like well, I could rest. But I could just take a ginseng product, and maybe I’ll have more energy today, and I can keep going. Yeah, sometimes we do it to ourselves, right?

The Original Adaptogen & Safety Considerations

Ryn (00:48:31):
But look, ginseng does have this capacity to help the body cope with a stressor, whether it’s acute, or whether it’s long term. It does have this capacity to enable you to cope with your stressors, to adapt to them more smoothly, more readily, and to continue on and to survive from moment to moment. And so it is the original adaptogen. It’s true, right? Let’s just say though, this is a stimulating adaptogen. This is a stimulating herb, especially, especially in the more concentrated and the standardized forms that are available today. Even more so if it’s then combined with other stimulants, which could be a polyherbal formula, right? If we take Asian ginseng, and we take eleuthero, and we take rhodiola, and we take fo-ti, excuse me, he shou wu, right? If we take those and combine all of them together, we’ve got multiple different kinds of stimulation coming in. Or if we take ginseng, and we combine it with coffee or other caffeine sources. Or we combine it with ephedra, right, another kind of a stimulant chemistry. That is much more likely to cause problems. Much more likely to cause problems of overstimulation, excess heat, excess dryness, agitation, headache, insomnia, anxiety. All of these things can result simply from excessive intake of ginseng. But they’re more likely to happen if it’s ginseng plus a bunch of other stimulants, herbal, chemical, whatever. It can happen. And it’s also as always relative to the individual’s constitution and their current state. So, somebody who’s already more hot, more dry, more agitated, more of a choleric temperament, more of a pitta dosha, whatever language you like to use for this. That person is going to be closer to the edge of ginseng adverse effects than somebody who runs cold, who runs damp, who’s sluggish, who’s slow, more of a phlegmatic, more of a kapha type, right? That individual is going to have a much broader range of safe or appropriate ginseng doses that they can work with before they’re ever going to encounter some of these adverse effects that come from being overheated, being overstimulated, being dried out.

Ryn (00:51:00):
Now, back in the 80s and even into the 70s, there were a few scientific papers that were put out there when ginseng was kind of newish in a sense to the sort of American population. Let’s just say maybe it was newly popularized in the form of supplements and over-the-counter products, okay. So, at that time there were a few papers that were put out about something called ginseng abuse syndrome. And they were identifying some of the same potential symptoms that I was just naming: anxiety, headache, insomnia, agitation, things like that as well as high blood pressure and a few other elements. So, some of the studies that were written up about quote-unquote ginseng abuse syndrome, there was a lot to critique about them. And herbalists had many critiques to give then and now. Basically saying that these studies were underpowered for the claims they were making. There was also a significant, serious, and entirely predictable problem with them. Which was that there was a lack of clarity about what each individual that was being reported upon had actually taken. Because they were just like we saw people who took ginseng had high blood pressure. Well, okay, what did it mean to quote, take ginseng in that circumstance? Were they buying actual ginseng roots from a trusty supplier, making a decoction of three slices prepared each day, and drinking that every day for months at a time? Or were they buying some product from some kind of seller making something that they claimed was a ginseng extract, but who knows what was actually in it? Maybe caffeine, maybe some other weird chemistry, maybe ginseng, maybe not. A lot of uncertainty around that.

Ryn (00:52:51):
And so these studies that were reporting this ginseng abuse syndrome, there’s a lot of critique to be made for them, right? And in general the consensus is that what was being observed by those people was essentially a problem of poor products or poor combinations of a ginseng product and a ton of caffeine, or a ginseng product and quote-unquote diet pills, or something like that leading to some of these more serious adverse event reports. And so a lot of people kind of consider this issue to be solved. Because now we’ve got better clarity about proper plant identification. And there are steps that are being taken and monitoring groups that are trying to prevent adulteration of supplement products. And we’ve got materials and methods in place to catch that and to make sure it doesn’t happen so much, right? But I would just point out that none of this means that all doses and all preparations of ginseng are safe for all people. The motivation to produce a supposedly herbal, all-natural remedy that supposedly contains ginseng but is actually adulterated with a chemical stimulant, or a cheaper herb, or whatever else, that all remains as strong as it ever was. Okay?

Ryn (00:54:14):
And beyond that, humans love stimulants, and they love to combine their stimulants. And they don’t always think o hmm, if I’ve had six cups of coffee today and I take this 20x concentrate ginseng extract tablet, is that going to be a problem for me? People don’t tend to think that way. They think I drink coffee because it helps me to not feel like a zombie. And I’m still kind of tired, and I need a little bit of an extra boost. And maybe I can take this ginseng capsule and get it, right? So, herbalists, this is our job, right? We have to try to spread the word for people and let them know listen. If you’re already hot, and agitated, and on edge, then maybe you don’t need red ginseng today, right? If you are actually depleted, maybe you work with ginseng instead of caffeine for a while, right, and see if that does a little bit better job for you. So, these are things that it’s on us to share and to teach to other people.

Varieties of Ginseng

Ryn (00:55:09):
Okay. A couple other thoughts on Asian ginseng. So, you’ll sometimes see products that are being sold as red ginseng and white ginseng. And you might think are these different species? Are they different flower colors? Like what’s going on here? But they’re actually both from the same plant. They’re from Panax ginseng, and they’re about preparation. So, when you get white ginseng, that means that you had the root. You sliced it, you dried it, and that’s it. Now you have that. Red is where it’s been sliced, but then it was quote cured, or some people say fermented. Probably a better word, would be oxidized. But it’s going to be steamed. It’s going to be exposed to damp heat and then maybe dried fast or maybe smoked. Or there’s different things that are done at that point. But the steaming process does actually change the color of the root and make it more red. And so therefore it’s called red ginseng, okay. Now they’re from the same plant, but the process does change the chemistry a little bit. So, the white ginseng is significantly less stimulating in comparison to the red. This is why red ginseng is much more popular, okay? Now, there are many regional varieties, and you’ll sometimes see those named or stamped on the product. It will say this is Korean red ginseng, or this is Manchurian ginseng, or something like that. Regional varieties, again, are going to be the same species. Call it Asian ginseng broadly, call it Panax ginseng if you use the botanical name. That’s what they’re talking about. But let’s be clear, local ecology can produce some variation in chemistry. And so if somebody was coming forth and saying no, actually for this particular purpose, what you really want is ginsenoside Rf, and you want to get tons and tons of that. And this variety of ginseng grown in this microclimate makes more ginsenoside Rf than the others. Like okay, maybe there’s an argument to be made for something like that. But for most products, that’s not going to come up. And for most people, that’s not going to be necessary for you to work with ginseng and get the benefits you want. Yeah. All right.

Ryn (00:57:18):
Okay. So, American ginseng then. American Ginseng is a Panax species, but it’s Panax quinquefolius, okay? It’s the species that’s native to North America and it’s significantly less heating than Asian ginseng. Some herbalists will go so far as to say Asian ginseng is a heating herb. American ginseng is a cooling herb. Other herbalists would say well look, Asian ginseng is strongly heating. American ginseng is only weakly heating, but it is on that side of the spectrum. So, I think in some senses that’s kind of like where do you define your center? Like where do you press the tare button on your scale? Where do you define the zero point for that? And I think honestly for a lot of people, that the determinant factor there is going to be their own constitution. And so people who run hot tend to work with American ginseng and experience it as cooling. And people who run more on the cool side might work with either ginseng and say these actually warm me up and liberate some energy for me. But the Asian ginseng does it a lot more than the American does, right? So, these are just some ways to think about nuances in report about energetics. Because this is something that we base off of our sensory perceptions, and our sensory perceptions do differ from each other, sometimes in predictable ways. And we need to think ourselves through that whole process if we want to draw on this source of knowledge in a thoughtful and informed manner.

Ryn (00:58:54):
Now, American ginseng in Chinese medicine is at least as revered and coveted as Asian ginseng is from the moment that there was global commerce and there was transfer of American ginseng roots from the eastern forests across the world to China. And they looked at the plant and said yeah, this is a ginseng. This is a man root. This is a good plant. We want to work with it. It was recognized that this was a really good remedy, but also that it was different. So, in traditional Chinese medicine terms, the American ginseng would be considered a yin tonic and a blood tonic. Whereas the Asian ginseng would be considered a yang tonic and a qi tonic. And so we could get into the terminology. And we could spend hours or maybe years talking about what exactly is meant by each of these terms, and how do they manifest, and so on. So, just for a very simple transliteration of that, we could say that American ginseng has greater capacity as a restorative and a regenerative agent. Where the Asian ginseng is more of a stimulant and more of an invigorating kind of a remedy. Yeah, I think that’s the simplest way to compare the two of them. A lot of people have commented, and not just in recent years but even 50, even a hundred years ago, that for city dwellers or people with a very high-stress lifestyle, it makes more sense to take the American ginseng than the Asian. Because you don’t necessarily need more stimulation on top of all your agitation. Maybe what you just need is a little bit more of fluid flow, a little bit more of a capacity to access calm and to maintain with that. And that the American ginseng would actually be better able to bring that to you.

Ryn (01:00:58):
So, you know, these two are often just discussed in the same breath, in the way that this herb market report is just listing them as Panax species. That’s often done in products as well. My favorite example of this ever was actually a little chocolate product that you would see right near the checkout register when you go to the store. And I don’t think it’s available anymore. But it was like, I forget what they called it, but they were clearly advertising this is chocolate with ginseng in it. It’s going to give you energy. It’s going to give you focus. It’s going to help you cope with stress. And the give you energy thing was definitely part of the marketing presentation, and the colors, and the symbols on the thing, and all of that, right? And so I looked at it, and I was like oh, they must be using Asian ginseng, right? They want a stimulant. But then I read the label, and they actually specified Panax quinquefolius. And I said huh, that’s a little bit misleading, but it’s probably for the good. Because most of the people who are looking for energy in the form of a chocolate that they can grab as they rush out of the store, they would probably be better off taking the American ginseng product actually. So, I thought that was sneaky but maybe more appropriate. Yeah. It could have just been that that was the material that they had access to. Who even knows? But I still think about that whenever I think about Asian and American ginseng.

Ryn (01:02:26):
So yeah, again, those are the two main species you’re going to run into. There are others. There are other species of Panax. There’s like maybe a dozen, maybe nine. People argue about this. You know how taxonomist can get. One that’s a clearly defined different species unto itself is called Panax notoginseng. This was previously known as Panax pseudoginseng, like false ginseng, okay? It’s usually referred to as tian qi ginseng. And it’s a closely related species. It does share a lot of overlap in terms of chemistry. By the way, I should have said before, Panax quinquefolius does contain ginsenosides, right? A different ratio, a different composition of them in comparison to Panax ginseng itself. But they both contain ginsenosides and so does Panax notoginseng. It’s maybe a little bit lighter. It’s maybe not quite as stimulating, not quite as potent. Not as much of a tonic herb as either of those two major species are. But it is considered an important remedy. It does have some other applications entirely though in traditional medicine, including a remedy which is really a first aid remedy. It’s called yunnan baiyao. And that was taken or is taken – like you can still go and buy that – for acute injuries like swelling, bleeding, pain. You can take this, and it will bring that down. It has some interesting capacity to modulate blood clotting. Like if somebody is bleeding, they can take this, and it can slow down the bleeding and help it to clot faster. But also if there’s blood stagnation in an area, then it can break that up and get that moving again. A complicated herb, interesting herb.

Ryn (01:04:12):
And you know, honestly, that’s fair to say for all of the ginsengs because I’ve given very short shrift to the medicinal virtues of ginseng today. That’s not the major focus of this presentation. But there are libraries worth of books just about ginsengs and tons of different applications for them, different preparation methods to draw out this or that feature. And you find that both in formal herbal literature, primarily in in China but also in in western herbal literature as well. You also find that in folk practice. So, the herbalist Phyllis Light from down in Alabama, I’ve heard her say several times that her… Ooh, I forget which exact, so I’ll just say one of her relatives. She considered him to be an herbalist, but he only had two herbs in his whole life. And for most of his life only one herb, and that was American ginseng. And he would work with it in different ways for a cold, or joint pain, or fatigue, or this kind of chronic illness versus that one. Including different preparation methods for internal consumption, including topical preparations, including working with different parts of the plant, and all of those oriented towards each particular application. So, I think that’s a way to emphasize, like that story is a way to encapsulate and to emphasize that these herbs are complex, multifaceted. They’re not as simple as herbs for energy. They’re not at all as simple as herbs for stress in a fully-developed folk or traditional perspective upon them. So, I can only give little hints of that in my format today, but I do want to try to make that as clear as I can given those constraints. All right.

Other Plants Called Ginseng

Ryn (01:06:08):
Couple other notes on ginseng. From one thing, many other plants are sometimes referred to as X ginseng or adjective ginseng. And that’s always done to draw on the reputation, the cachet, the aura of the original ginsengs, right? So, some examples. Poor man’s ginseng, you’ve heard me talk about that as jiaogulan, right, Gynostemma pentaphyllum. That’s a leafy plant from Southeast Asia, which does actually produce ginsenosides. And so it does have some chemical connection to the true ginsengs, but it’s in a different plant family. It’s just a separate herb, right? And we can think about it differently. Eleuthero, which I mentioned in a previous episode in this sequence, Eleutherococcus senticosus, that’s been referred to as Siberian ginseng. And that used to be done so frequently that there was actually some legislation put in place here in the United States to say that if you want to put the name ginseng on your product, it has to contain a Panax species. Otherwise you can’t do that anymore, right? But people will still kind of break the rules for marketing, and label claims, and website advertisements, and so on. And so you’ll still see today people advertising Siberian ginseng. And they don’t mean Panax grown in Siberia, they mean Eleutherococcus. Yeah. Okay. Can you guess which plant has been referred to as Indian ginseng? Ashwagandha, right, Withania somnifera. Because it’s an adaptogen. Because it’s an herb that can help people cope with stress. Because it’s a fantastic herb that a lot of people get a lot of benefit from. And if we can advertise it as a ginseng, why not, right? That used to be a little more common. It’s kind of reduced now. But I think that’s simply because the name ashwagandha has started to become more familiar to more people. Okay. There’s a plant called suma or Hebanthe eriantha, which in some older books you’re going to see under the name Pfaffia paniculata. That one for a while and in some cases is referred to as Brazilian ginseng. Maca, Lepidium meyenii has sometimes been called Peruvian ginseng. And devil’s club, Oplopanax horridus, has sometimes been called Alaskan ginseng.

Ryn (01:08:43):
So, not all of these are ginseng. Most of these are adaptogens. The devil’s club, that one I’m really not sure about. I haven’t gotten a chance to work with enough of it to have my own opinion. Most of the others, jiaogulan, eleuthero, ashwagandha, suma, maca, most of those qualify as adaptogens, especially if you’re not being too strict about the definition. But you can see what’s happening here, right? Somebody finds an herb, especially an herb that has that kind of polycrest or panacea reputation. And they say well, where are we? Where does it grow? Okay, put that in front. Put ginseng after that. We’re going to make a million. Yeah. So, just be aware of those things. Generally not true ginseng’s. And my last note is probably obvious at this point, but just be very picky. Be very discerning about where you get your ginseng or your ginseng remedy from. There are a lot of poor-quality products that claim to be made of ginseng out there in the marketplace and out there on the internet. They may be adulterated with other plants. They may be adulterated with other quote-unquote X ginseng herbs. They might be adulterated with some other herb entirely. They might be adulterated with sawdust, okay? They might be adulterated with caffeine, or ephedrine, or some other herbal stimulant. So, those things happen a lot because people want ginseng. And as long as people have wanted ginseng, there has been somebody out there trying to sell them something and claim it’s ginseng, but it really wasn’t. I mean, you can read texts from hundreds of years ago saying beware. Because unscrupulous vendors will take a young ginseng root and tie cords around it as it dries to make it look more wrinkled like an old ginseng root, right? Because generally the older the root is, the more valuable it is, the more potent the medicine is, right? So, this is not a new problem, right? But it is one that probably won’t ever actually go away. And it’s one more reason to be very again, thoughtful, picky, discerning, or even maybe demanding of your herbal suppliers to know that it’s ginseng. Here’s a simple one. If it’s cheap, it’s probably not ginseng. Or if it does contain some ginseng, maybe there’s like a drop of it in the ocean of what you’re buying, right? Like a tiny little amount, but not enough to actually do anything for you. That’s pretty common as well when it comes to ginseng. So, be picky, be thoughtful about it. If you want to work with ginseng, you should be willing to pay a little bit more for the good quality stuff. That’s how it goes.

Ryn (01:11:31):
Okay, I think that’s it for today. So, thanks for listening. We have come to the end of the mainstream channel list. I am going to do a little bit more on this series. I’ll try not to drag it out too much longer, but there are a number of herbs that turned up on the quote-unquote natural channel list that I thought were interesting and didn’t turn up on the mainstream list. And so I wanted to address those as well. So, I’ll do an episode or two on that topic. And then there was a few other noteworthy herbs of commerce that weren’t on this particular version of the bestseller list but have been other times. Or for other reasons I wanted to make sure and do an episode about. So, there will be some more top-selling herbs herbalists’ view episode comments coming. But we’ll also have some other topics and some other subjects come up on the podcast feed for you in the next few episodes.

Ryn (01:12:27):
So, we hope you’ll keep us in your in your list. We hope that you’ll like, and subscribe, and all of that kind of stuff so that you get updates when we have some new material for you. Really appreciate that. Remember that does also make it more likely for other people to find our content and to get some good, helpful information about herbs. So that they can be well-informed as herbalists, or as consumers, or as both because aren’t we all? Yeah. All right, one last thought before we go. Detox came up in this episode a couple times with the dandelion, with the rhubarb. You’ve heard it come up in other episodes in this sequence. And so I just wanted to make one more reminder that we do have a whole course all about our view on detoxification. What it is, how it works, how we can enhance it, what gets in the way of it. And methods of working with holistic interventions around food, around sleep, around movement, around stress management, and around actual herbs to help your body to cope with toxins, metabolic wastes, overload of all different kinds. And to make sure that those systems are humming along in the best possible way. So, if that interests you, you can check out our course: Elements of Detoxification. I break it down into a very simple way to understand these ideas and to orient according to an elemental compass. So, I think it should be something that is both clear and also actionable for you to put into your own life.

Ryn (01:13:56):
And like every other course that we offer at our online herbalism school, it’s a self-paced video course. You go through it on your own schedule. You have access to it for life. It’s not like on a countdown timer. You’ve got to complete everything in two weeks, and then it disappears from you. You have it as long as the internet exists and we’re on it, you have access to your course material. You also get free access to our twice-weekly live Q&A sessions. You get twice weekly… Nope, that’s what I just said. Okay. And there’s also open discussion threads and every lesson in the course. So that if you’ve got a question, you can type it right up, put it in there. You get an answer from our staff and from us. You get access to our student community. There’s study guides, there’s quizzes, there’s a capstone at the end, all that kind of good stuff. So, I think it’s fantastic. And if you’re into detox or you want to know more about it, then I hope you’ll check it out. I’ve got the link in the show notes. That’s going to be it for today. One more time, thank you for listening. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Drink some tea. And if it’s ginseng, make sure it really is ginseng. All right, bye.

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