BOTALYS has adopted Asian ginseng (Panax ginseng) through the American Botanical Council’s (ABC) Adopt-an-Herb botanical research and education program.

BOTALYS’ adoption supports ABC’s extensive HerbMedPro database, ensuring that this research and educational resource remains up to date for researchers, health professionals, industry members, students, consumers, and other members of the herbal and dietary supplements and natural medicine communities.

HerbMedPro is a comprehensive, interactive online database that provides access to important scientific and clinical research data on the uses and health effects of more than 265 herbs, spices, medicinal plants, and fungi.

According to Gaelle Stockman, marketing communications manager of BOTALYS, the company’s adoption of Asian ginseng constitutes “a great opportunity to increase the scientific knowledge” about this important plant. “We did not choose ginseng as a key botanical by coincidence,” Stockman wrote. “It helps people adapt to our challenging 21st-century lifestyle.”

She added that Asian ginseng has many health benefits. “Ginseng not only mildly stimulates the central nervous system, but it also modulates the immune and endocrine systems. It also works as a stress reliever, helping us live dynamically and serenely,” she wrote.

ABC Founder and Executive Director Mark Blumenthal said: “ABC is deeply grateful to the people at BOTALYS for their adoption of Asian ginseng on ABC’s robust and unique HerbMedPro database. Asian ginseng has a long reputation as a major herb in traditional Chinese medicine and also in the West in the past 50 years as a premium tonic and adaptogenic herb. The adoption by BOTALYS will enable ABC to provide increased benefit to the international herb and medicinal plant community by ensuring that the HerbMedPro database is constantly maintained to reflect the most recent scientific and clinical publications on ginseng.”

Asian ginseng is a slow-growing deciduous perennial that is native to eastern Asia, primarily China and the Korean Peninsula, where it has been used for at least 2,000 years. It is now rare in its original range but is cultivated extensively in China, Japan, Korea, and Russia. Panax ginseng is one of about a dozen species in the genus Panax, all but two of which are found in Asia.

Ginseng roots traditionally have been used as a tonic and adaptogen (a substance that increases the state of non-specific resistance to stress). It is suggested their greatest value may be their normalizing, restorative effects on the whole body, rather than effects on specific body organs/systems or for specific diseases. Most of Asian ginseng’s effects are attributed to a mixture of saponins called ginsenosides.