Many authorities related to medical practices are using aiternative medicines for treatments. Hypercoagulation to be a factor in many patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), myofascial pain syndrome (MPS), and other disorders such as osteonecrosis (bone loss due to inadequate blood supply), and fetal loss. Hypercoagulation (thickened blood) results from fibrin being deposited in small blood vessels. Fibrin is the body's natural bandaid: strands of fibrin form across a defect (wound, tear) in the walls of blood vessels, forming a mesh that holds platelets and blood cells. This beneficial clotting of cellular matter and fibrin strands plugs the leak, so to speak, holding things together until the body starts to repair itself. Fibrin production is the last stage in a complex clotting process. The process itself starts off with the release of thrombin which in turn results in the production of soluble fibrin monomer (SFM), a sticky protein that increases blood viscosity. This leads to the deposit of fibrin on the endothelial cells that line the wall of the blood vessels. Under the normal conditions, it takes only a single burst of thrombin to generate a large amount of SFM which in turns produces sufficient amounts of fibrin to clot the defect. Testing of many patients diagnosed with CFS, FM, MPS shows that the thrombin-SFM-fibrin process is not working properly. Instead of a single burst of thrombin producing the amount of SFM needed, the thrombin keeps being produced at low levels. Instead of clots being formed, however, the result is that blood becomes increasingly thickened. The body's own ability to thin blood and break up clots is impaired because the fibrin smothering the endothelial cells prevents those cells from releasing heparans. There are two different ways this scenario can be played out. Ginger has gained interest for its potential to treat various aspects of cardiovascular disease, and the in vitro and animal data supporting the anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antiplatelet, hypotensive, and hypolipidemic effects of this condiment have been reviewed (Nicoll and Henein 2009). However, human trials are less convincing and more investigations are needed. Caution when taking ginger and other herbal extracts has been suggested because of an apparent association of ginger with reported incidences of increased risk of bleeding following surgery (Chang and Whitaker 2001;Pribitkin and Boger 2001) or if taken with anticoagulant drugs such as warfarin (Heck, DeWitt, and Lukes 2000). However, the data are not conclusive (Vaes and Chyka 2000). At least one study indicates that ginger has no effect on blood pressure, heart rate, or coagulation parameters and does not interact with anticoagulant drugs such as warfarin (Weidner and Sigwart 2000). These findings were supported in a later study in which ginger was reported to have no effect on clotting status or the pharmacokinetics or pharmacodynamics of warfarin in healthy subjects (Jiang, Williams et al. 2005). An aqueous ginger extract was reported to induce a dose-dependent decrease in arterial blood pressure in a variety of animal models (Ghayur and Gilani 2005a, b).Based on recent studies, pungent constituents of ginger (Zingiber officinale) and related substances represent a potential new class of anti-platelet agents. The ability of 20 pungent constituents of ginger and related substances to inhibit arachidonic acid (AA) induced platelet activation in human whole blood was studied. This study includes the effect of adding ginger on the clotting parameters of the subjects and a significantly corrective effect was observed.
Hyper-coagulation, Ginger, Intervention, alternative medicines, Clotting time, bleeding time
