Why Taking Ginseng Won't Help You Live to 100

Now if you're like me you're very intrigued when you read one of these stories about some ancient Taoist master deep in the mountains of China in a remote cave meditating and drinking and consuming ginseng every day to live forever. In this video I want to share some very interesting things about that a lot of people outside of the field of Chinese medicine probably do not know about it and why I don't think it's a good tonic for everyday use for the average person. Hey it's Alex Hein author of the health book Master the Day. Now the first link below I've accrued a free PDF which is five daily rituals that can possibly help you add ten years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. So enter your email down there below and you'll get it in the first email you receive from me. So let's start with a very unpopular idea. In ancient times ginseng was never intended to be taken just as a tonic herb for anybody all the time. You know it's interesting there is a story here shared by an old Jesuit priest traveling in Smithsonian magazine. In 1713 Pierre Jartout a Jesuit missionary in China wrote in a letter that after eating ginseng I found my pulse much fuller and quicker. I had an appetite and found myself much more vigorous. Four days later so tired he could hardly stay in his saddle he chewed some more. After an hour he reported feeling like a new man. There's another article in New York magazine that shared how the price for wild ginseng is so insane that a Chinese buyer paid four hundred thousand dollars for a 300 year old root from America weighing less than a pound. And another business insider article shared what a half a million dollars gets you in terms of ginseng. But first of all what did ancient herbalists use this for? Because at the end of the day if the best herbalists in history in the world who are very familiar with the plant wrenchen, ginseng, how would they use that? Were they taking that daily as a tonic? Well going back to one of our most important herbal texts probably the most famous physician in Chinese medicine a guy named Zhang Zhongjing wrote a book called the Shang Han Lun. From around the year 250 AD so a couple hundred years after Christ this book is the single most important book for herbalists in the world in Chinese medicine. Most famous herbalists still base their practice off this and this is one of the earliest references to using wrenchen ginseng clinically. Now in this book ginseng is almost like an herbal IV and you know what it was taken? It was taken basically in the case of acute fluid loss like vomiting or diarrhea that's unrelenting. You use ginseng to quickly replenish the fluids in the stomach and in the intestines. It's not taken daily as a longevity tonic. It's not taken daily to give you stronger erections and make you live forever. This kind of modern extrapolation of ginseng and many many other plants that are abused in China as well as the US it's very important to know this. In fact one of my main mentors is a renowned herbalist in this country and even in China and he purely practices Chinese herbal formulas. He doesn't even stock ginseng in his whole medicinary. One of the top herbalists doesn't even stock ginseng instead uses all kinds of ginseng substitutes. So let's talk about this a bit more. The second thing is that this idea of over optimizing to be healthy is very very flawed. You know I had an anatomy and physiology professor and he said that this idea of cleanses and detoxes and liver cleanses he thought they were the dumbest thing imaginable because the body is hundreds of thousands, millions, billions of years of evolution if you want to trace it all the way back and knows how to detoxify itself. Hopefully you sleep, hopefully you poop, hopefully you eat, hopefully you sweat, hopefully you urinate, hopefully you breathe. These are all methods of detoxification the body has built in and trying to take another substance to accelerate what is already the optimized through however many hundreds of thousands, millions of years of evolution in my mind is a logical fallacy. So in my opinion trying to optimize if you already have healthy digestion, you sleep well, you have a good mood, good appetite, you're not that exhausted. If you already have these things your body is optimized and it's running on all cylinders in which case you probably don't need ginseng or any other tonic herbs or practices or supplements for that matter. But in an era where everybody's addicted to bulletproof this and bulletproof that and this new magical superfood goji berries and this Himalayan pink salt, all these ridiculous methods of over optimizing what has already been optimized by nature. Our longevity is not something you have to try and do, it's something you just remove the barriers to and longevity will naturally happen. So what do I recommend doing instead? Ginseng and a lot of like goji berries and a lot of these herbs and supplements we take to try and optimize and get adaptogens in our diet really end up being expensive bowel movements and for a lot of modern people ginseng is even contraindicated. One mentor I studied with the reason he doesn't stock ginseng is because he finds that a lot of people with SIBO, digestive bloating, candida, all these fungal infections often get worse on ginseng containing formulas. Those symptoms increase and so he uses all these other substitutes instead. Now how could ginseng possibly become so popular if this is not how it's used? I mean in ancient times the reason why it was popular was because like that Jesuit priest, starvation is a time to consume ginseng. If you're fasting in a cave, if you're fasting in general, no food, that is a great time to take ginseng to moderate your energy and because again remember it's a tonifying herb so it's building up and if you already have excess in your stomach, your digestion, your intestines, you're already prone to bloating, frequently it can increase that. So fasting of course would be indicated for and that's probably why it was so highly prized in some level but that is increased over time and in my opinion a lot of the marketplace for that is the same marketplaces for things like tiger penis which were never a primary herb used in Chinese medicine anyway by many famous physicians. Many of these other herbs have gained this kind of folk popularity because they're aphrodisiacs or some generic longevity tonic, whatever it is and it builds almost like this marketplace among the super wealthy Chinese, Koreans and Japanese. So that's just my opinion about how ginseng became so popular, what it was used for clinically, historically in ancient times, why maybe it's so popular now and why I don't think honestly it's a good herb for most people. So what to be taking instead? In my opinion it depends on constitutional medicine. You know for some people ginseng is actually a good herb including the many ginseng substitutes but for others, other Chinese formulas that use high doses of cinnamon, bark or twig, even aconite, fuzi are maybe more well-suited through a trained, skilled, board-licensed practitioner. So pardon the rant but this is hopefully saving you thousands of dollars on supplements and these mysterious tonic herbs that you think are gonna help you live forever when in reality historically that is not how they were frequently used. So my two cents on wrenshen, ginseng and why I don't take it every day, in fact I almost never take it. Hope that helps you guys. Before you go click the link below, download the free guide, 5 Daily Rituals That Can Possibly Help You Add 10 Years To Your Life With Traditional Chinese Medicine and come check out my next related video right here.