Discover The Amazing Benefits Of Ginseng

This miracle herb has been used for generations in Asia as a general health tonic to aid circulation and increase energy. However, Aster Lim discovers that it delivers some lesser-known but very exciting benefits to our skin as well.

In the beauty world, wonder ingredients that promise to deliver the glassiest of skin and plumpest of complexions are a dime a dozen. Some, like retinol and hyaluronic acid, are used so regularly they have become familiar names, while others, like lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, are less well known. However, as the author Dean Hughes once pointed out, “Sometimes, when you’re looking for an answer, you search everywhere else before you take a look at what’s in front of you.” And what was placed in front of me one fine day on a trip to Korea was a humble bowl of steaming hot ginseng chicken soup or samgyetang.

Koreans have, over the centuries turned to their version of the chicken soup — a rejuvenating concoction of whole young chicken stuffed with chestnut, dates and sticky rice boiled in a hearty and delicious ginseng broth with loads of garlic — as a cure-all for everything from malaise to a stressed-out soul. Of course, all the ingredients in the soup play a part in making samgyetang internationally popular today, but the star of the soup has been and will always be, the revered Korean ginseng.

Known as man root because of its human-like form, Korean ginseng has been used for generations in its country of origin as a tonic to aid healing and improve memory, circulation and mental performance. What makes Korean ginseng so valuable are the ginseng saponin components in it. Ginseng saponins have been revered for thousands of years as a superfood due to its anti-inflammatory qualities and ability to strengthen one’s immunity to illness.