Gingko Biloba

[Former castleva]

Still warm;
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/11/031111070042.htm

Older;
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0005D1A1-2400-1E64-A98A809EC5880105&chanID=sa008

[Tak]

Just goes to show that these kinds of studies should be conducted by statisticians and not medical doctors.

[looking_up]

http://pulsemed.org/memconcherbs.htm

"Memory and Concentration Herbs (and Why Gingko Doesn't Always Work)
By Brian Benjamin Carter, MSci, LAc
Brian is an author of international renown and public speaker. He is currently writing his book Chinese Medicine: A Practical Guide to Optimal Healing. Brian practices acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine in sunny San Diego, California.

When reading, I can't seem to focus or retain information as I once did. I was wondering if you had any suggestions, herbal remedies, or insight to offer. I appreciate your assistance.
Memory function is a complex issue that an overly simplistic herbal approach cannot solve.

Why Gingko Doesn’t Always Work For Memory
Popular magazines said that gingko was the herbal memory cure, but people's experience and science have not borne this out. I'm not surprised. In Chinese medicine, we recognize that one symptom can be have multiple causes. We have to look for the root, and look at the surrounding symptoms and signs to find the appropriate cure.

Your memory loss/concentration could be due to something that gingko can address, or to something else. If you give it to a bunch of people without first differentiating the cause of their problem, you won't know who will get better and who won't. Although gingko is a Chinese herb, we generally don't use it for memory or concentration problems. It does "move the blood," though, so problems due to "blood stagnation" might improve with it."


I'm not posting this to debate how TCM works with someone who has not studied TCM, but to point out that you can't just take an herb out of the traditional context in which it is applied and use it like it's Tylenol or a Centrum multivitamin.

[Former castleva]

I'm not posting this to debate how TCM works with someone who has not studied TCM, but to point out that you can't just take an herb out of the traditional context in which it is applied and use it like it's Tylenol or a Centrum multivitamin.

Heh.I don´t think that´s the case but in order to establish a foundation for-,or remove it,the comfort zone of the subject has to be penetrated.
It is said,as far as I read,that the herb supposedly treats memory (on vague grounds we are,but),would you not like to test the hypothesis?

[looking_up]

OK - yes, test the gingko, but don't for a minute think it has anything to do with TCM.

[Former castleva]

Hmmm.So is your conclusion that the whole TCM is outside of very basic scientific testing? Non-testable even? Not saying that those are your points,yet.That´s what I´ve been arguing for before,to some degree.

[Vash]

My memory sucks. 'Specially on GB. Once took seventeen, one every 15 minutes, cuz I didn't know I'd just taken one.

(sly Memento reference)

[vikinggoddess]

Waves to FC.

I went through the Chinese Materia Medica (over 350 herbs) with a stellar Chinese herbalist in a TCM school. She pretty much just ignored Gingko leaves, as if they weren't really worth mentioning. Maybe she mentioned something about them moving some blood when someone asked about memory. We did however cover the Gingko Nuts extensively. Heres the info.:

Yin Xing "Silver Apricot" AKA Bai Guo "White Fruit" (Sm. Gingko Bilobae)

Sweet, bitter, astringent, neutral temperature, slightly toxic
Goes to Lung and Kidney

Functions and clinical use: Astringes Lung qi, expels phlegm and stops wheezing; for wheezing with coughing and copious sputum

Use nutritionally for acute or chronic asthma:

Preparation: Crush with out shell, put in cold water and cook with chicken.
10 nuts per chicken or 20-30 nuts per 2 chickens (traditionally with the small black-boned chickens)
for an adult 10 pieces is okay, for a child 5 pieces.
One can eat this dish 2-3 X per week if ill.

Dosage in decoction is 6-10g, again must be crushed before use

Cautions: -dangerous when consumed raw in large dosage
-not for use with excess conditons (this is based on Chinese medical theory which differentiating a patient's condition as deficieny or excess)
-not for cough with difficult expectoration of sputum


Also you practitioners/students and of course anyone else are invited to come play on my server as I just added a little forum too. Hoping to go into a little more depth on various techniques, sharing case studies, discussing classics and modern Chinese med. philosophy, etc. http://chinesetherapeutics.org/phorum/index.php

[vikinggoddess]

BTW, that info is from Dr. Li Jin, OMD from Su & Jin Family Acupuncture and Herb Clinic in Seattle. Great Drs.

[looking_up]

"Hmmm.So is your conclusion that the whole TCM is outside of very basic scientific testing? Non-testable even? Not saying that those are your points,yet.That´s what I´ve been arguing for before,to some degree."

No, I'm not saying that TCM is outside of scientific testing, but this is how I understand things:

A TCM doctor will not prescribe the same herbal formula (never just one herb, far as I know) to two different people just because they have the same symptom(s), unless, they are suffering from the same sort of imbalance. Different imbalances can cause the same sort of symptoms. So in order to test the efficacy of an herbal formula for a particular condition/symptom, you'd have to make sure that the underlying cause of the symptom was the same in all of the subjects. That's not very likely. So it proves/disproves very little to say "herb X did not consistently help people with [insert symptom]". I believe that TCM treatments do have scientific explanations, but you have to understand the rationale for why certain treatments are selected. This means you have to understand how TCM diagnoses illness.

I hope this makes sense, I"m not trying to tell you you are wrong, and my understanding of TCM is still very shallow. I just hope I am helping someone to see something from a slightly different point of view.

Thanks. Have a good weekend, FC!

[Former castleva]

OK.Looking_up,am afraid it´s going to take some time before useful trials,as described by you,do show up.


Have a good weekend, FC!

Thank you,you too.


Waves to FC.

*Waves*.Thanks for the info.I think many other members will find it useful.

[cha kuen]

Western MD's are not sure if it really works. So I called a couple well known TCM guys and they said it's useless. But they said those multi vitamins are good.

I take their word for it. =]

I'd rather sharpen my mind etc with proven things like chi kung and meditation.

[Scythefall]

I used Gingko for about 8 months and never noticed any benefit and actually, during a rather difficult time of my life, it failed to help me with the "scatterbrain" I was developing from everything going on. THere are some good Gingko teas out there though if you just want a refreshing beverage.

[GeneChing]

There are some ancient gingko trees in the front courtyard of Shaolin Temple. For a while, Grandmaster Suxi was cultivating them for tea.

I used to take gingko daily to alleviate my tinnitus. It seemed to work at the time. Can't remember if it helped my memory much. Maybe if I took it again regularly, I would remember. Eventually, I attenuated to my tinnitus, so I stopped taking gingko daily. Now I'll take it in those herbal drinks now and again, but that's about it.

[fa_jing]

I used to take ginko to help me sleep. It goes to show you that it does something, just not necessarily what is advertised, and depending on the causes as was stated may or may not help your problem, whatever that is hehe ;)

[GeneChing]

I've a great believer in placebo methodologies. In fact, if I wasn't such a skeptic, I'd just use placebos. Often, it's a game with me personally, find some new palcebo, exhaust it, then move on. Perhaps that's why I've progressed through so many different therapeutic systems.

I think that gingko may have been more placebo effect for the initial stages of my malady, just because I needed something, anything. But after a while, the daily ritual of dosage became too troublesome for the minimal effects.

[ctoepker]

Another problem with herbal treatments is that they are very random in their dosage. Some supplements have too much, others none at all...

http://www.sciencenews.org/20030607/bob8.asp

Food for thought,
CT

[GeneChing]

With anything organic, it's all about getting the kynd green, just think of salads. Most of us settle for iceberg drowned in ranch dressing, but fresher is better and more nutritious. The same goes for those fad-ish herbal fusion drinks I mentioend earlier. How fresh is that? Nothing like a good fresh dose, and with gingko, it's easy to grow your own tree, or at least it's easy to find them in our area.

[GeneChing]

I've lived near gingko trees. They are messy.


The Great Ginkgo Leaf Dump Is Here (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/the-great-gingko-dump-climate-change-autumn/545585/)
Thanks to climate change, it’s getting a little later every year.

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2017/11/RTR1J8CO/lead_960.jpg?1510344070
A girl plays in the aftermath of a giant ginkgo dump in Beijing in 2006.Jason Lee / Reuters

ROBINSON MEYER NOV 10, 2017 SCIENCE

The day is finally here. From the northern reaches of New England to the southernmost stretch of the Chesapeake Bay, one of autumn’s most famous performances will take place this weekend.

On Friday or Saturday night, the first hard frost will likely sweep down the coast. Ginkgo trees—known for their fractured, twisted branches and broad, fan-shaped leaves—will react like a surprised burglar and drop all their leaves to the ground at the same time. On city streets lined with ginkgo trees—like my old block in northwest Washington, D.C.— a soft yellow padding will cover everything, erasing the distinction between sidewalk and street. Only the occasional fire hydrant hints at the synthetic understory.

Early on Thursday morning, the ginkgo tree in front of James Hall at the University of New Hampshire got an early start on the act, sloughing its leaves to form a small circle of gold. The event is affectionately anticipated by the school’s department of natural resources, which is housed inside the red brick hall. Since 1977, students and faculty in the department have played a guessing game, trying to anticipate when the tree’s leaves will dump. A box in the building’s foyer entreats students to place their guesses.

“I’ve been in the department for 15 years, and I knew this was going on but didn’t pay too much attention,” says Serita Frey, a soil microbiologist and a professor at the university.“It didn’t have anything to do with climate change at first. Everyone just knew that the ginkgo tree dumps its leaves in one day.”

Why the single-day drop? In the autumn, deciduous trees form a scar between their leaves and stems to protect themselves from diseases and winter’s coming chill. Most flowering trees, like oaks and maples, form the scar at different rates, in different parts of the tree, over the course of weeks. Their leaves then fall off individually. But ginkgoes form the scar across all their stems at once. The first hard frost finishes severing every leaf, and they rain to the ground in unison.

A few years ago, Frey became curious about whether there was data documenting the ginkgo-dump day over the years. According to the National Climatic Data Center, fall temperatures in New Hampshire are now more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they were in the late 1970s. Did that affect the flagship ginkgo tree? Had someone even kept records about the contest that far back?

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2017/11/RTR22BHR/1234364ff.jpg
The aftermath of a ginkgo dump in Shanghai (Aly Song / Reuters)

For the first few days of her search, she couldn’t locate the record. “And then I found a piece of paper with handwriting on it that some secretary back in 1977 started, and that someone from the department had been adding to every year,” she said. “I put all that information in a spreadsheet, and I’ve been updating that graph every year since.”


The graph revealed that the ginkgo-dump day had been sliding forward over the ensuing decades. Every decade, the ginkgo tree loses its leaves an average of three days later than it had 10 years prior. When the James Hall ginkgo dumped its leaves this Thursday, November 9, it was the second-latest that the tree had ever hit the autumn milestone.

When Did the James Hall Ginkgo Lose Its Leaves?

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2017/11/Gingko_Tree/7f326ed3a.jpg
Data was collected by the University of New Hampshire’s students and staff since 1977. (Courtesy of Serita Frey)

“It’s our poster tree—our local example of climate change,” she told me. Frey uses the slide in her classes about global warming.

The James Hall ginkgo is not, of course, the only organism subject to the creeping relocation of the seasons. In 2016, the U.S. National Park Service examined when the first leaf or first bloom of spring arrived in 276 of its parks. In three-quarters of parks, spring was arriving earlier than it had in the past; in half of the parks, spring now arrives earlier than it did in 95 percent of the years since 1901.

Nor is the story of the James Hall ginkgo data trove unique. About two decades ago, climate scientists realized that springtime bloom records were some of the longest-running observations of the climate system available. By examining and digitizing old records, they have found:

that a certain type of oak in Surrey, U.K., blooms a month earlier now than it did in the 1950s;
that European birds now begin their southerly migration later than they did 40 years ago;
that American aspens bloomed 26 days earlier at the end of the 20th century than they did at the beginning;
and that Swiss horse-chestnut trees bloom 40 days earlier than they did 200 years ago.
The most impressive of these seasonal records exists in Japan, where an environmental scientist has compiled the date of the first cherry-blossom bloom in the city of Kyoto, going back to 800 BCE. That study found that cherry blossoms in that city now flower earlier than they have in almost 1,000 years.

But all these measurements examine the first (and often advancing) appearance of spring. Frey’s ginkgo-tree record looks at the often-regressing signature of autumn. The ginkgo-leaf rain is also a seasonal symbol that appears across the East Coast: I have seen great-leafed ginkgoes sprout on small farms, on suburban streets, and in tiny downtown Manhattan parks. Urban arborists often plant ginkgoes because they are more resistant to pollutants and pesticides than other trees. And why not? Ginkgoes have persevered in something close to their current form since dinosaurs walked the Earth.

Not that everyone loves the tree’s annual autumnal transformation. Along with their leaves, ginkgoes also dump their big pungent berries, which split and rot on the pavement. A frustrated New Yorker once complained that they reeked of “boiled egg ****s.”