Pregnancy, Ginger, and Morning Sickness
Posted on Aug 8, 2011 | Blog Posts, Morning Sickness Remedies Category | | Print This Article
photo credit: stevendepolo
Ginger is one of the most useful herbs you can take during pregnancy. In particular, ginger is very effective for some women in treating morning sickness. Ginger has been used by pregnant women for more than two millennia, appearing in ancient Chinese and Indian Medicine.
Over the past couple of decades, there have been many studies that show just how effective ginger can be at treating a variety of conditions. Ginger can help with inflammation, hypoglycemia, and of course gastrointestinal issues.
It’s those gastrointestinal issues that seem to be most important for pregnant women who use ginger. Ginger is used to treat all sorts of stomach trouble, from motion sickness to colic, from upset stomach to diarrhea, from nausea caused by chemotherapy to gas, from post-surgical vomiting to morning sickness.
How ginger works
Ginger contains two important chemicals that are thought to help with gastrointestinal problems: shogoal and gingerol. These chemicals help to stimulate the flow of your gastrointestinal secretions, such as saliva and bile. Ginger additionally helps to suppress gastric contractions. Some of the components in ginger are believed to interact with your 5HT-3 receptors, which may have something to do with its anti-nausea properties.
How to use it
When you’re pregnant, you have a number of ways to take ginger that can help with your morning sickness. You can take ginger products such as extracts, capsules, oils and tinctures. These are all made from either ginger root itself, or from distilling the oil in ginger root.
You can prepare fresh ginger root yourself in the form of a steeped tea. You can find ginger as a cooking spice, to be added to certain recipes. You’ll find ginger in a number of foods and drinks, including ginger snaps and ginger ale. Just make sure that, if you’re using these ginger products to help with morning sickness, that they contain actual ginger, and not just artificial ginger flavoring.
Generally speaking, you’re going to want to get around 2,000 mg of ginger daily, spread out across the day so as to maximize its effectiveness and contain morning sickness over a longer period of time.
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