Actually, ginseng itself could not act anti-cancer; the anti-cancer ingredients of ginseng indeed is ginsenosides — the metabolic products of processed ginseng.
Ginseng occupies a prominent position on the list of best natural health product. Instead of acting anti-cancer, ginseng is widely applied to blood pressure adjustment, restoring heart function, neurasthenia, expectorant, stomachic and etc. However, ginsenosides, known as an important anti-cancer ingredient, doesn’t exist in original ginseng. Ginsenosides could only be obtained from the degradation and transformation of processed ginseng.
Ginsenosides are neither water-soluble nor lipid-soluble, traditional dispersion technology of preparation cannot achieve optimal absorption and utilization.
Chief properties of ginsenosides are as listed:
- Induce cancerous cells apoptosis
Under normal circumstances, a dynamic equilibrium state is maintained between cell proliferation and apoptosis, which could also maintain the normal and stable cell proliferation. If cell proliferation beyond control was caused and cell apoptosis blocked, abnormal cell proliferation and cancer will be caused as a result.
- Enhance the immune functions
Disorder and poor performance of immunity are two of the main causes of cancer while chemotherapy drug or radiotherapy applied in curing cancer will continue destroying the immunity. Ginsenosides alone could perform adjusting body immunity function effectively, protecting the immunity organs and boosting immunity system when applied after surgery and during chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
- Relieve therapy toxic effect
The failure of tumor therapy is mainly related to drug resistance to chemotherapy drugs. Usually, the chemotherapy drug is unable to access into the cancerous cells, besides, p-glycoprotein of cancer cell could drive away chemotherapeutic drug. Consequently, cancer cells gain drug resistance to the chemotherapeutic drug. With its characteristics, hydrophilic and lipophilic, ginsenoside is accessible into then kill cancerous cell.
- Anti-fatigue property
According to the experiment carried on mice, ginsenosides play a role in extending weight-bearing swimming time and decreasing glycogen consumption; reducing serum urea levels and inhibiting the uprise in blood lactate after the exercise. Thus, ginsenoside is concluded to be effective in anti-fatigue.