It’s no coincidence that almost every natural medication out there includes ginger. If you read the ingredient list of natural cold medication, you’ll see what we’re talking about. It turns out this miraculous root has many surprising uses we’ve never thought of, and we wish someone had let us in on this secret earlier. While ginger is most widely used as in the culinary world, it has many health benefits most people aren’t aware of.

Your best friend in the kitchen

Ginger can be used to spruce up any meal, from chicken to fish and even cookies or bread. Ginger is a popular spice in some cuisines, such as the Indian cuisine, but it can be used in almost every dish you make, sweet and salty alike. Ginger has been found to have many health benefits, including nausea relief, reducing muscle pain, digestion problems and lowering blood sugar. Thus, adding just a bit of ginger to your meals can go a long way.

Ginger tea to prevent bad breath

When we’re sick, one of the most popular home remedies is a cup of hot tea with ginger and lemon, which is said to ease a soar throat. However, did you know that drinking ginger tea also helps to prevent bad breath? The spicy root contains a compound called gingerol which stimulates an enzyme in our saliva that break down the sulfur compounds in our mouth, which are often responsible for bad breath. It turns out drinking ginger tea isn’t beneficial only when we have a cold, but all year round.

Ginger oil or facial cleanser

We’ve said that ginger has been found to relieve muscle pain, which means you can use it as body oil. You can easily make a homemade ginger oil with three simple ingredients, using ginger, olive oil and hot water – look up recipes online, there are plenty of them – or you can buy a ready-made oil at the drugstore. Either way, rubbing it on your skin can help treat soar muscles and alleviate your pain and stiffness. In a similar way, it can be used as a facial cleanser, as it contains antioxidants that protect our skin from aging. There are plenty of recipes for a homemade ginger face scrub you can look up online, but simply mixing ginger with a bit of honey is enough to do the trick.