does ginger actually help with morning sickness?

Ask anyone who's been pregnant, and she'll tell you that "morning" sickness is a joke. It's really more like all-day-and-night sickness. Even though we know that nausea in the first trimester is often a sign of a healthy pregnancy, that doesn't help when you constantly feel like you're going to lose your lunch--or are struggling to even eat lunch!

Everyone has a solution, amiright? Ginger, mint, citrus, cinnamon gum, eating crackers...if something works for you, regardless of how strange, consider yourself lucky and just do it. Most of my patients knew I was pregnant before my friends and family, because I started feeling bad on week one and was constantly eating popcorn to keep the nausea at bay. I thought they deserved to know why their doctor was eating (and having to sit down) during treatments.

Here's the run down on these suggestions from the Chinese medicine perspective. Spoiler alert: nothing I ate seemed to make much of a difference for me, though I did have better luck with acupuncture treatments themselves. After 13 weeks, thankfully, it magically disappeared.

Ginger: Everyone, and I do mean everyone, is eager to suggest ginger for pregnancy related nausea, but here's why it's highly unlikely that it won't work: Ginger is primarily considered to be a warm herb and is used for nausea caused by cold in the stomach, which might be caused by eating certain foods, the weather, or a good ol' cold virus.

The very act of developing a fetus is a warm process. There is so much going on and developing and growing--all yang functions--which means action, light, and heat. So while there are very few absolutes in medicine, pregnancy-related nausea is, more often than not, due to the excess heat produced as a by product of a growing fetus. Eating or drinking ginger is like adding fuel to the fire and is unlikely to reduce the nausea and may actually make it worse.

Cinnamon would fall under this explanation, as well, since it is also a warm herb. But if it works for you, and your provider says it's ok, go for it! Constant nausea is the pits.