You are standing in the kitchen in the morning, the first cold of the season is scratching at your throat, and you reach for ginger. Perhaps as a tea, perhaps as a little shot from the chilled shelf. Ginger is seen as the spice for keeping colds at bay – and yet afterwards you sometimes feel restless, get heartburn or sleep badly. Chinese Medicine has a clear explanation for this: ginger is not a remedy for everyone, but a spice with a very particular action.
How ginger works in Chinese Medicine
In Chinese Medicine, we do not describe foods and herbs primarily by what they contain. We ask about their temperature, their flavour and the direction in which they act. Ginger is pungent and warm to hot. Pungency moves upwards and outwards – it opens and disperses. Warmth drives out cold.
This connects ginger above all with the Spleen and Stomach, our centre, and with the Lungs. It warms the Stomach when cold causes nausea or a cold, heavy feeling there. It supports the Lungs when cold and thin, clear phlegm have settled in. And it helps the body push a beginning cold back outwards – but only if it is what Chinese Medicine calls a Wind-Cold.
This is exactly the point many guides skip. Ginger is a warming remedy for patterns of cold. If there is already heat in your body, or if you are lacking moisture and Yin, it strengthens precisely what is already too much.
Fresh ginger, dried ginger, ginger powder – not the same thing
Ginger is not just ginger. Chinese Medicine distinguishes very precisely which form you use, because processing changes how it acts.
Sheng Jiang is fresh ginger, the root you find in the vegetable aisle. It is pungent and only slightly warm. Its movement goes outwards and upwards, towards the surface of the body and the Lungs. That is why it is the remedy for the very beginning of a Wind-Cold – when you feel chilly, hardly sweat and your nose runs clear. It also acts on the Spleen, but more strongly on the Lungs. At the same time it warms the Stomach and is considered one of the most important remedies for nausea and vomiting caused by cold. Its skin, Sheng Jiang Pi, is also used in Chinese Medicine – it is cooler than the root itself. If you use ginger with its skin on, choose organic ginger, as conventional ginger from the supermarket is often treated with wax.
Gan Jiang is dried ginger. Drying takes away its outward-moving strength and makes it hot. It no longer acts on the surface, nor on the Lungs, but deep in the centre. Gan Jiang warms the Spleen and Stomach when there is true cold – with a cold tip of the nose, cold limbs, a cold upper abdomen or cold around the navel. Cold hands and feet on their own are not a reliable sign of a cold centre, as they can also come from the Liver. In classical formulas, Gan Jiang sits alongside herbs meant to restore weakened Yang. An old saying sums it up: fresh ginger moves and does not stay, dried ginger stays and does not move.
And the ginger powder from your spice rack? It is dried, ground ginger – in other words, Gan Jiang in powdered form. It is hot and acts inwards, not outwards. That makes it the wrong choice for a beginning cold. A pinch in a warming winter stew or a porridge for a cold centre, on the other hand, works very well. Because it is hot, a little goes a long way. A teaspoon of powder is not the equivalent of a few slices of fresh ginger.
There are further forms, such as roasted ginger, Pao Jiang, which has its own role in herbal medicine. Yet these three forms already show: the question is not only whether ginger suits you, but which ginger.
Who should definitely not drink ginger
If ginger warms and dries, it needs a body that carries cold. Where that cold is missing, a helpful spice becomes an additional burden. This does not always show straight away or clearly – often it builds up over weeks.
With Yin deficiency. Yin is the cooling, moistening and nourishing side within us. When it is lacking, a heat arises that comes from the deficiency. You may know it as night sweats, warm hands and feet in the evening, a dry mouth, dry skin or restless sleep. Your tongue is then often red and dry, with little or no coating, or it shows patches where the coating is missing. Many women experience this during menopause as hot flushes. A daily ginger tea dries you out further and fans the heat.
With heat in the Stomach. Heartburn, acid reflux, strong hunger, bad breath or gastritis often point to heat in the Stomach in Chinese Medicine. On the tongue, you will often see this as a yellowish or even brownish coating. Ginger warms the Stomach – and that is exactly the wrong direction here. Even though ginger is often considered kind to the stomach, it only is when the Stomach is cold.
With colds that carry heat. Not every cold is a Wind-Cold. A sore throat, yellow or green mucus, fever and a feeling of heat in the head point to Wind-Heat. This calls for cooling remedies such as peppermint or chrysanthemum flowers, not ginger.
With heat in the Blood and a tendency to bleed. Red, itchy skin rashes, very heavy and bright red periods or frequent nosebleeds can point to heat in the Blood. Dried ginger and ginger powder in particular are unsuitable here. If you take blood-thinning medication, talk to your doctor before taking larger amounts of ginger.
With rising Liver Yang. If you are quickly irritated, prone to headaches at the temples, flush red in the face or have high blood pressure, extra warmth rising upwards is not helpful.
During pregnancy, small amounts of fresh ginger are a well-known remedy for nausea. Gan Jiang in therapeutic doses, however, belongs in the hands of an experienced practitioner.
If you recognise yourself here, it does not mean you can never eat ginger again. A slice in a vegetable curry is something different from a daily shot. It is not about banning ginger. It is about using it where it truly helps.
You will find an overview of common tongue diagnosis patterns and what they mean in the Introduction workbook – in the shop or free in the membership.
Ginger shots: colder than you think
Ginger shots promise warmth and resilience in one small bottle. From the perspective of Chinese Medicine, though, they are above all one thing: cold.
It starts with the temperature. A shot comes from the chilled shelf and is usually drunk straight away, often first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. Our centre works like a cooking pot that warms and transforms food. Anything that arrives ice-cold first has to be brought up to body temperature. That costs Spleen Yang – exactly the strength you need for your defences in autumn and winter.
Then there is what goes into the shot. The ginger is pressed raw, and it is almost always joined by lemon, orange or apple. Lemon and orange are sour and cooling, apple is refreshing and cool. Altogether, you are drinking a cold, sour liquid with a pungent edge. The pungency burns briefly – it feels like warmth, but it does not truly warm the centre.
For anyone who already tends towards heat, it is doubly unfavourable: the raw, concentrated pungency irritates a hot Stomach, while the cold weakens digestion at the same time. This easily creates a pattern Chinese Medicine knows well – heat above, cold in the centre.
If you would like to use ginger because you tend towards cold, a simple tea is the better choice. Pour hot water over two or three thin slices of fresh organic ginger with the skin on and let it steep for five to ten minutes. For a beginning Wind-Cold it may be a little stronger, for example together with spring onion. For a cold centre, a pinch of ginger powder in a warm breakfast works well, such as a millet or oat porridge.
Ginger and turmeric: an unusual combination
Ginger and turmeric almost always appear together today – in shots, in golden milk, in tea, because both are considered anti-inflammatory. Chinese Medicine, however, does not ask what a spice contains, but what it does in the body. Turmeric, Jiang Huang in Chinese, mainly moves Blood and Qi, for example with cramping period pain. Ginger, on the other hand, warms the centre or opens the surface. One is a remedy for stagnation, the other a remedy for cold.
As a daily blend for everyone, the combination is therefore unusual. If you tend towards heavy bleeding, are pregnant or rather have a Blood deficiency, you do not need a remedy that moves Blood, but one that nourishes it.
A spice for Earth and Metal
Ginger is a wonderful spice – for a centre that carries cold, and for Lungs troubled by cold. It warms the Earth element with the Spleen and Stomach, and it opens the Metal element with the Lungs and skin when cold tries to enter from outside. Fresh, it moves outwards; dried, it stays in the centre. Cold-pressed and mixed with citrus and turmeric, it becomes something else entirely. Whether it suits you is decided not by a trend, but by your constitution.
What you can do now
The first step is a look in the mirror: what does your tongue show you? Look at it in the morning in daylight, before you have eaten or drunk anything. If it is pale and moist with a white coating, that points more towards cold – then ginger may do you good. If it is red and dry, without a coating or with patches, or if it has a yellowish to brownish coating, it shows heat. Then leave ginger aside for now.
After that, observe for one week how you respond to ginger. After a ginger tea or a dish with ginger, note how your stomach feels, whether you feel pleasantly warm or rather hot, and how you sleep the following night. If you have been drinking a shot every day, swap it for this week for a warm tea made from two slices of fresh organic ginger with the skin on.
Go deeper with DaoSense
In the DaoSense membership, you learn to recognise your own patterns – cold and heat, deficiency and excess – and the monthly workbooks give you concrete foods, recipes and acupuncture points for your elements. The membership costs $14 a month or $140 a year. Join the membership here.
Ginger is only one of many spices in your kitchen with a clear action. Cinnamon, clove, cardamom, pepper, fennel – each acts on different organs and warms, cools or moves in its own way. A course is currently being created that is dedicated to exactly these spices: how they work, who they suit and how you can use them in everyday life. The course follows the Five Elements: for each element, you receive two recipe videos and one tea recipe, each with the action of the foods and herbs used. On top of that comes a detailed handbook covering more than 30 spices, with an introduction to the organs and Chinese Medicine.
As a DaoSense member, you get the course at the best price. You do not need to sign up anywhere – you will be informed automatically within the membership. If you are not a member yet, join the waiting list here: you will hear in good time when it starts, and you will get the course at a lower price during the first 36 hours.*
*Regular course price $99 · via the waiting list $88 during the first 36 hours after launch · for members $77
Which spice do you use every day without knowing how it actually works?
