Why should I buy the whole roots or extract rather than the capsules or prepackaged tea commonly sold?
Buying the whole roots is your absolute assurance of quality. Many of the ginseng capsules on the market do not contain pure ginseng, and may include any number of fillers. Even those capsules that are pure ginseng may be made from root hairs, discards, and very young or otherwise inferior grade roots. Only the best roots are saved for sale as whole dried ginseng root. Extracts are also an effective means of ingesting ginseng, and are very popular in China. The extract is made from the entire root, rather than trying to isolate any particular components. This is in contraposition to western medicine which has often focused on distilling the active essence of medicinal plants, and has only recently begun to accept that medicinal plants contain many other substances that may be essential for those “active” components to properly function and provide maximum benefit. Eastern medicine has for thousand of years adopted a far more holistic approach to pharmacology, one that western medicine
