Always Tired, No Energy, Tooth Marks on the Sides of Your Tongue? Doctor Luo Dalun: What You Need Most Is Ginseng (Ren Shen)

Opening: friends with qi deficiency — this is the herb you need most

Have you ever had this feeling: your voice gets lower and lower, you’re exhausted after the slightest bit of work, your stomach feels bloated after meals, you break into a sweat after a few steps, and the sides of your tongue are permanently pressed with a ring of tooth marks? If you checked several of those boxes, then the herb Doctor Luo Dalun is about to talk about today is one you should get to know properly — it is ginseng (ren shen).

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Dear friends, good morning, everyone. Today we continue explaining Chinese medicine through audio. So what are we talking about today? A single Chinese herb called ginseng (ren shen). In ancient times ginseng was extremely precious. Today we all know it’s a good thing, but very few people around us actually take ginseng anymore, right?

How did ginseng go from a treasure everyone chased in ancient times to something people today respect, fear, and won’t touch? Doctor Luo says that to explain this properly, you have to start from ginseng’s hometown.

The story of ginseng: it’s in oracle bone inscriptions, and Doctor Zhang Zhongjing used ‘Shangdang ginseng’

Ginseng has been used in China for an extraordinarily long time. It is recorded in the oldest Chinese materia medica, the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing (Divine Farmer’s Classic of Materia Medica), and even earlier, in non-medical sources — for example oracle bone inscriptions — the character “shen” (参) for ginseng already appears. Paleobotanists even consider ginseng one of the oldest plants on earth.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: In the Shuowen Jiezi (Explaining Simple and Analyzing Compound Characters) written by Xu Shen of the Eastern Han, he explains that shen means ginseng, and that the medicinal herb came from Shangdang. Where is Shangdang? In today’s Shanxi. The ginseng used in ancient times was all ginseng from the Shangdang region. The ginseng used in Doctor Zhang Zhongjing’s Shang Han Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage) was the Shangdang kind — back then everyone used that ginseng. But later, that ginseng was dug up — completely dug out. So the ginseng of Doctor Zhang Zhongjing’s era is something we can no longer see today.

Here’s an important distinction: today’s Shangdang in Shanxi still produces a “shen,” called dang shen (Codonopsis), but it is not the same plant genus as modern ginseng. Codonopsis also tonifies qi, but its action is somewhat weaker — so when we want to tonify qi but don’t need a big boost, we use the gentler dang shen.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: As for this dang shen — in the Republican era, the famous physician Doctor Zhang Xichun, whom you all know, was especially fond of using dang shen.

The rise of northeastern ginseng: a ginseng trade that changed history

So when did today’s mainstream — northeastern ginseng — enter the picture? Around the Ming dynasty, northeastern ginseng began flowing into central China in large quantities.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Starting in the Ming dynasty, many physicians wrote extensively about ginseng’s effects — for example Doctor Miao Xiyong, Doctor Zhang Jingyue, and others. So northeastern ginseng began to spread. Because northeastern ginseng is more potent and works well, it became extremely popular — how popular? At that time, the ginseng sold from the northeast into the pass was an enormous source of income.

How big was this business? Doctor Luo says that some historians even believe it was the ginseng trade pouring vast wealth into the northeast that led to the rise of the Manchu Qing dynasty. That’s why Hong Taiji and Nurhaci were so eager to trade in ginseng. Even the processing method of the red ginseng (hong shen) we know today carries a legend connected to Nurhaci —

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Legend has it that ginseng used to rot easily, and Nurhaci wondered how to keep it from rotting. So he distributed ginseng to his soldiers, telling them to take it home and preserve it by whatever means they could. When it was collected on the appointed day, most of it had rotted. But one person boiled his in sugar until it turned red, then dried it — and it hadn’t spoiled. That method worked, and so the processing method of red ginseng came into being. It’s a legend, but you can see that at the time, huge quantities of ginseng were being sold from the northeast to all parts of the pass.

Kangxi refused to eat ginseng; Qianlong ate it for a lifetime

Once ginseng entered the pass, the imperial family’s attitudes differed greatly. After entering the pass, Emperor Kangxi firmly refused to eat ginseng. Why?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: He was influenced by his ancestors. He thought: what is this for? Making money. The Han Chinese ate ginseng in extravagant luxury every day, and the result was that they ran into disaster and their country fell — so I won’t eat ginseng; I’ll sell it to the Han Chinese. What records remain in the Qing palace archives? He had his household servants — the relatives of Cao Xueqin’s family — sell it. The Cao family was stationed in Jiangnan, so Kangxi shipped ginseng down to Jiangnan, had the Caos sell it, and exchanged the money back to the palace to subsidize palace expenses. He himself never ate a single piece.

So influenced by his ancestors — does that mean ginseng really isn’t good? Doctor Luo says: no, ginseng is actually good. By the Qianlong reign, the attitude flipped —

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Qianlong did eat ginseng. He started in his forties and kept eating it until he died at eighty-nine. So ginseng played a major role in Qianlong’s longevity. At the time, Han Chinese kept eating ginseng, and many physicians wrote about how miraculous it was, so ginseng became widespread.

The Qing dynasty backlash: every household had to take ginseng, and Doctor Xu Lingtai rose up in protest

When a thing reaches its extreme, it reverses. Ginseng became so popular that by the Qing dynasty a serious problem emerged — indiscriminate tonification. Too many people who had no need to tonify anything were gulping ginseng anyway.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: At this point many physicians saw the downsides. Doctor Xu Lingtai pointed out: how far did it go? Every household had to take ginseng — just like the reishi spore powder craze today. You get sick, you get a tumor, and if you don’t take reishi spore powder, your children are considered unfilial — why? Because the marketing has been done. So it was with ginseng: if someone in a family was sick and the children didn’t buy ginseng for their parents, you were unfilial; if the child was sick and the parents didn’t buy ginseng, you were unkind; if the husband was sick and the wife didn’t buy ginseng — sorry, you must be scheming to keep the inheritance. So whoever didn’t buy ginseng was condemned by the whole society.

Doctor Xu Lingtai didn’t just complain — he left behind a memorable case showing that abusing ginseng can actually tonify you into trouble:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: There was a young aristocrat who spent a fortune on prostitutes outside, came home, and was beaten severely by the old master of the house. Then his family secretly fed him ginseng. He kept eating it, and lumps broke out all over his body — lumps that would not go away no matter what. The man was about to die, so they called in Doctor Xu Lingtai. Xu Lingtai took one look and said this is easy to cure — he gave him some medicinal powder, and after taking it, he recovered. Everyone thought the powder must be extremely expensive, and braced themselves for an astronomical bill — but what Xu Lingtai used was just radish seed (lai fu zi), using the radish seed to drain the ginseng qi and dissolve the phlegm nodules that the ginseng had tonified into being.

So you can see from this case how much Doctor Xu Lingtai detested ginseng abuse: indiscriminate ginseng tonification can seal in pathogenic qi and create problems like phlegm nodules. After this attack, the ginseng fever cooled down — and to this day, people don’t dare casually take ginseng anymore.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Up to now, nobody has come forward to vindicate ginseng — it’s as if taking ginseng gives you a nosebleed. Friends, that’s not the case! So what does ginseng actually do? We need to look at it calmly.

What does ginseng actually do? — Greatly tonify yuan qi, restore the pulse and secure collapse, tonify the spleen and benefit the lungs, generate fluids and calm the spirit

The classical accounts of ginseng’s nature differ across the ages. The Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing says it is sweet and slightly cold — clearly not the same plant as today’s ginseng. Today’s ginseng is warm; that Shangdang ginseng of ancient times may have leaned somewhat cold. Later, the Ben Cao Bei Yao (Essentials of the Materia Medica) says raw ginseng is bitter-sweet and slightly cool, while processed ginseng is sweet and warm. And the ginseng we study today is mainly northeastern ginseng: warm in nature, able to tonify qi.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: So what does ginseng do? Mainly greatly tonify yuan qi (original qi), restore the pulse and secure collapse, tonify the spleen and benefit the lungs, generate fluids and calm the spirit (da bu yuan qi, fu mai gu tuo, bu pi yi fei, sheng jin an shen).

Every one of these four phrases carries real meaning:

Greatly tonify yuan qi — that is, tonify the upright qi. Qi deficiency is extremely common in our time. Once qi is deficient, everything from yuan qi, lung qi, heart qi, spleen qi, down to kidney qi weakens, and the whole body’s physiological functions decline — at that point ginseng is what helps pull your qi back up.

Restore the pulse and secure collapse — this one saves lives. When a person’s qi is about to collapse — critically ill, breath coming up with difficulty — you give ginseng and it pours the qi straight back in, pulling back the qi that was about to slip away; that is securing collapse (gu tuo). When the upright qi is nearly exhausted, the pulse may become impossible to feel; replenish the upright qi, and once qi and blood circulate normally, the pulse returns — that is restoring the pulse (fu mai).

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What else does ginseng do? Chinese medicine says it tonifies the spleen and benefits the lungs — it greatly tonifies the qi of the spleen and lungs; and it can generate fluids and calm the spirit — why is it that only once the upright qi is sufficient can fluids gradually be generated? And as for the spirit: if the upright qi is about to collapse and the mind is unsettled, once the qi is replenished the heart-mind becomes calm and all is well. So some people startle violently when someone slams a table — terrified, anxious, restless, as if the world is ending — all of this is related to an unsettled heart-mind, and may be due to insufficient upright qi. Slowly build the upright qi back up, and they gradually recover.

What does modern research say? — Nerves, digestion, appetite: it all comes back to ‘tonifying qi’

Ginseng has also been studied thoroughly in modern times. Modern pharmacology has found that ginseng has a stimulating effect on the central nervous system, while in large doses it instead has an inhibitory effect — in other words, it regulates both excitation and inhibition.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What does this mean? According to modern pharmacological research, when you are in a state of qi deficiency, the body’s regulation of nervous excitation and inhibition weakens, and ginseng, through its qi-tonifying action, strengthens it back up — that’s all it means.

The same goes for the gastrointestinal tract: ginseng can regulate gastrointestinal function and strengthen it. This too is because in qi deficiency the gastrointestinal function weakens; once ginseng replenishes the upright qi, gastrointestinal function recovers, and the appetite returns to normal.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: So the literature usually says ginseng increases appetite — it doesn’t mean eating without end, it means restoring your original appetite. When a person’s spleen and stomach function weakens, transformation and transportation become powerless — that’s why some people’s stomachs bloat right after a meal: powerless transformation. When you return to normal, the food you eat can be transformed and transported, and you’ll find the bloating is gone and your appetite is back to normal.

All of this research proves the same thing: ginseng tonifies qi. When qi is deficient, all the organs’ functions decline; ginseng replenishes the upright qi, and organ function returns to normal.

The ancients already ran a ‘holding ginseng in the mouth’ experiment

Don’t think only modern people run experiments — the ancients already had a simple statistical mindset.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The ancients once ran an experiment like this: two people of equal physical strength ran a stretch together, one holding a slice of ginseng in his mouth, the other holding none. They ran and ran, and when they finished, they compared who could maintain a normal state — less panting, less fatigue, faster recovery. Using this statistical method, the ancients proved that ginseng assists the body’s upright qi and is extremely effective at eliminating fatigue and restoring physical strength.

So Doctor Luo sighs: ginseng is something we modern people no longer really know how to use. It is precisely the good herb modern people need — because far too many modern people have insufficient upright qi.

How do you know if you have qi deficiency? — Stick out your tongue and look

So how do you tell whether your upright qi is sufficient? The method is very simple — stick out your tongue:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Do you see tooth marks along the edges of the tongue? People with tooth marks have insufficient upright qi. And what usually goes with it? A low, weak voice; tiring easily — the slightest exertion wears you out; easy spontaneous sweating; often weak in the four limbs; abdominal bloating after meals; frequent dizziness or blurred vision after exertion; and frequent colds — and so on. These are all signs of qi deficiency.

Why are there so many qi-deficient people today? Doctor Luo says modern people overwork, consume a lot, and don’t get timely exercise — the upright qi is constantly being spent and never replenished, so qi deficiency has become a universal problem.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: So modern people need to rediscover ginseng. And how exactly should ginseng be used? How should ordinary healthy people take ginseng? How do you choose the right ginseng? Next time we’ll talk about how to take ginseng. Today we’ve covered ginseng’s history and why people today are wary of it — let’s leave it here. Thank you, everyone, and see you next time.

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s traditional Chinese medicine lecture series. This is the opening episode of the ginseng series: today we covered ginseng’s origins, its misunderstood history, and its true qi-tonifying power; the next installment will focus on how to take ginseng and how to choose it.

What to take away

• Ginseng is the classic qi tonic — its core functions are to greatly tonify yuan qi (original qi), restore the pulse and secure collapse, tonify the spleen and benefit the lungs, and generate fluids and calm the spirit.
• Its reputation has been distorted by a history of abuse. The Qing-dynasty craze of “every household must take ginseng” (exactly like today’s reishi spore powder fad) led to cases of tonifying pathogens into phlegm nodules — Doctor Xu Lingtai dissolved one with radish seed. The lesson is not “ginseng is bad”; it’s “don’t tonify indiscriminately.”
• Ancient ginseng is not today’s ginseng. Doctor Zhang Zhongjing’s Shang Han Lun used Shangdang ginseng, long since dug to extinction; today’s mild-tempered dang shen (Codonopsis) from the same region is a different genus — and Doctor Zhang Xichun loved it for gentle qi tonification.
• Ginseng has real, research-backed effects: bidirectional regulation of the nervous system, stronger gastrointestinal function, restored (not unlimited) appetite, and anti-fatigue stamina — the ancients proved the last one with a “holding ginseng in the mouth” running experiment.
• Check your tongue for qi deficiency: tooth marks along the tongue edge, plus a low voice, tiring easily, spontaneous sweating, weak limbs, bloating after meals, dizziness after exertion, and frequent colds — if several fit, you are likely in the qi-deficient crowd that modern life keeps producing, and ginseng may be exactly what you need.