If you've heard that you can use ginger -- candied ginger, for instance -- to help ease your nausea, you're right. There's a solid physiological foundation for the effect ginger has on you when you're nauseated, and even better, ginger is safe to use when you don't want to -- or can't -- take pharmaceuticals.
Ginger
Ginger in any form -- powdered, raw, cooked into food, or candied -- contains a chemical called zingerone which is responsible for the root's characteristic heat in your mouth. Zingerone, explain Drs. Penny Le Couteur and Jay Bureson, is very similar in shape to the more familiar hot molecule capsaicin, which comes from peppers, and also to piperine, from black peppercorns. Molecules with similar shapes generally behave similarly, explaining ginger's bite.
Ginger and Nausea
The zingerone molecule does more than just taste hot, however. It also binds to pain receptors in your mouth, sending signals to your brain. This results in the hot sensation, but also confuses your nervous system by giving it so much information to process. The brain can't simultaneously process the signals resulting from zingerone binding to pain receptors and the signals that cause you to feel nauseated, so it temporarily ignores the nausea -- and you don't feel queasy.
Use
You can use ginger in any form you like, as long as you taste it. That is, you can't simply swallow ginger pills to relieve nausea. Candied ginger is especially pleasant to many people because the sugar helps to smooth ginger's bite a bit without reducing its effectiveness at diminishing your nausea. You can get candied ginger at many grocery and most health food stores. Asian grocery stores usually stock candied ginger in the candy section. Chew it as often as you need to for nausea symptoms.
Considerations
While anyone with nausea can benefit from candied ginger, it's especially helpful to those with motion sickness and morning sickness. If you're driving long distances, you may not want to use drugs to reduce your motion sickness-related nausea, since the compounds in the drugs generally also make you sleepy. Although pregnant women typically have to avoid pharmaceuticals for safety reasons. it's completely safe to use ginger during pregnancy, explain Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel in their book "What To Expect When You're Expecting.
References
- "Napoleon's Buttons"; Penny Le Couteur and Jay Bureson; 2004
- "What to Expect When You're Expecting"; Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel; 2008
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