Gingko Biloba
An Herb for the Mind, Body, and Heart

HERBS! What do you think of when you hear the word? The spicy fragrance of cinnamon?
The unique taste of dill pickles? Your sunny window-box of parsley and mint? Or your kitchen garden, daily supplying freshly- picked herbs to grace your salads, beans, breads, and cooked vegetables?
Herbs certainly do contribute delicious variation to our meals and pleasant aromas to our surroundings. In addition, the herbal plants or plant parts used for their medicinal properties can be of great contribution to our lives, as well. Many drugs now in conventional use were originally available only as plant leaves. But today, standardized, purified, and packaged precisely in dependable amounts per tablet, capsule, or syringe, they compose a large number of currently prescribed pharmaceutical agents.
Of the medicinal herbs used throughout the world, one of the oldest, and no doubt the one with the most widely and scientifically-based use for its medicinal qualities, is Gingko Biloba. * To avoid reading like a drug reference-book, we have selected, with a bit of added history and special interest, several of the principal properties and effects of this herb to share.
Known, greatly valued, and emphasized medicinally in China for at least 4,000 years, Gingko Biloba is one of the oldest surviving trees on earth, a jewel of beauty and worth among trees of ancient origin, Although the young trees are somewhat gawky-looking, they grow at a rate of up to 2 feet a year into stately trees of 100 or more feet in height. Also called "maidenhaired trees" for the beauty of their fan shaped leaves, they are popular as ornamental trees, adorning streets and parks throughout the world.
It is the leaves that are used for medicine. The green-picked leaves are especially grown on dedicated plantations for medicinal use in the United States, France, Japan, and South Korea. They are dried, processed into Gingko biloba extract (GBE), adjusted to a uniform, standard potency, and marketed by the best herbal suppliers in solid tablet, capsule, and liquid extract formats.

Effects of Gingko Biloba on Body Tissues
GBE exerts its effects principally upon tissues, in particular by stabilizing cell membranes, scavenging free radicals, and serving as an antioxidant. To better appreciate GBE's role here, we will briefly explain the nature and physiology of free radicals, Individual cell membranes are very fragile and easily damaged, especially by oxygen and free radicals. Free radicals are products of cell metabolism, and consist of oxygen atoms with a free electron in their outer shell. This renegade electron latches onto the nearest available atom it can grasp and prevents it from performing its proper function.
Let's compare the life processes of our bodies to a chain, of which the weakest link is the individual cell, and the cell membrane maintains the cell's integrity. Free radicals sabotage the cell membrane, permitting the entry of damaging oxidized molecules and the loss of those required for cell life. If this process (called peroxidation) is maintained, death of the individual cell will ultimately result.
In its role as an antioxidant, GBE's ability to effectively protect cell membranes from this detrimental peroxidation is thus clearly appreciated.

Effects of Gingko Biloba on the Nerves
GBE also assists cell transportation of potassium across cell membranes into cells, and sodium out of cells. This is the process by which nerve messages are received and transmitted, Obviously, the balance of the potassium and sodium exchange is essential for body function and life, The effects of this exchange are most noticeable in brain and nerve cells.

Effects of Gingko Biloba on Cognition
Brain cells are especially sensitive to inadequate blood supply because they must be constantly supplied with energy by glucose (blood sugar) and oxygen. When circulation of blood in the brain is deficient, these supplies are inadequate and function decreases. If this process continues, cell death finally results. GBE can help reestablish adequate blood supply by dilating the tiny blood vessels that deliver blood to the cells.
Studies of blood supply to the brain demonstrate that GBE speeds the relay of messages between nerve cells-this means improved long-term memory! And this effect was noted even in healthy young women, not only elderly people.
Memory impairment in general directs attention to Alzheimer's Disease (AD), that dread condition which eventually robs its victims of personhood. AD is caused in part by (multi-infarct dementia) many tiny blood clots in the cerebral vessels. Here again, GBE stars. It has been shown not only to improve brain function by increased blood supply, but also by enhanced nerve transmission. One way this is accomplished is by GBE's demonstrated ability to help restore the brain's normal capacity to receive and process acetyl choline (ACh)-an important transmitter involved in communication between nerve cells.
This is particularly the case in early stage AD. However, if the patient's mental difficulty is not from AD but from inadequate blood supply to the brain, this can be helped as well by using GBE.
GBE also normalizes circulation in the brain's hippocampus and striatum, areas most damaged by blockage of the tiniest blood vessels by miniscule clot formation (which contributes to "mini-strokes").
In addition, GBE can improve communication between brain cells, especially in the hippocampus, the area often affected by AD.

Effects of Gingko Biloba on Blood Vessels
Much research has been done on the use of Gingko biloba to treat inadequacy of blood-vessel supply to the brain and to those nerves outside of the brain and spinal column. Insufficiency of blood vessels supplying blood to the brain is markedly noted in elderly people in affluent countries. This extreme prevalence of blood vessel stiffening (hardening) is due principally to faulty diet and other lifestyle errors. Extensive research indicates that GBE is effective in reducing some symptoms of cerebral insufficiency, including impaired mental function as in early senility.

Effects of Gingko Biloba on Blood Cells
Let's pause for a moment to discuss this most significant effect of GBE on circulating blood. Both GBE and isolated ginkgolides (other compounds found in Gingko biloba which are related to, but not constituents of, GBE) markedly affect the function of platelets. These are the very small blood cells that circulate constantly in the blood, on-the-ready to cause blood to clot so that an injured person will not die or be greatly injured from blood loss. They are instantly activated by a chain of chemical reactions in the blood to form platelet activation factor (PAF). A clot results, and blood loss is stopped.
But this is a delicate balancing act; blood clots in the wrong places can cause heart attacks, strokes, or other serious or even lethal problems. It is here that GBE and its related compounds exert their lifesaving action. They antagonize PAF and thus inhibit clot formation and increase circulation-the blood and oxygen supplied to the areas involved. It is thought that many of GBE's effects are related to this inhibition of platelet clumping.

Additional Benefits of Gingko Biloba
Symptoms that have been decreased by GBE and are statistically significant include, among others, short-term memory loss, vertigo (dizziness in which things or the person seem to be whirling or spinning), headache, ringing in the ears, decreased alertness, depression, premenstrual tension, and allergies.
GBE can also provide relief for asthma, a condition which can be provoked by allergens, among other factors. The shortness of breath common to this condition can be caused in part by a kind of PAF stimulated bronchial constriction. Gingko interferes with the PAF, and so helps prevent this potentially problematic constriction of the lung passages.
GBE also has been shown to improve the sharpness of long-distance vision in senile macular degeneration; however the many factors involved in this improvement are still currently under study.

Side Effects of Gingko Biloba and Precautions of Gingko Biloba
So many substances that have beneficial effects also have side effects that are undesirable or definitely harmful. But GBE, with its thousands of years of widespread use, has been found remarkably free of such effects.
From a review of more than 40 "double-blind" clinical studies of patients with cerebral insufficiency, 8 studies, totaling 846 patients, stood out as being extremely well-designed. Diagnoses included chronic cerebral insufficiency, cerebral organic syndrome, cerebral vascular accidents, and dementia.
In another double blind study, 40 patients with a preliminary diagnosis of senile dementia of the Alzheimer's type, receive either 80 mg GBE or placebo, 3 times daily, for 3 months. Data were assessed by standard tests including the SKT Sandez Clinical Assessment Geriatrics Scale and EEG at baseline and at one, two, and three months. Results indicated that GBE improved all parameters, usually in the first month, compared with the placebo. Consistent with other studies involving GBE, the longer it is used, the more obvious the benefits become. GBE was well-tolerated and no side effects were noted in the trial.
In a review of 44 double-blind* clinical studies, involving 9,772 patients taking GBE, the number of side effects reported was extremely small. The most common side effect, gastrointestinal discomfort, occurred in only 21 cases, followed by headache (7 cases), and dizziness (6 cases), for a total of only 34 cases!
However, a word of warning regarding the edible fruit of the Gingko tree: if eaten with the leaf extract, it was found to cause severe allergic reactions. It is the fruit pulp, specifically, that appeared to be the responsible irritant; even external contact with this pulp can cause small, extremely itchy blisters like those of poison oak, ivy, or sumac on the skin. The almond-like nuts encased within the fruits are prized in Asian markets, and were traditionally eaten to aid digestion.
Patients known to be at risk for hemorrhage inside the skull-from too high arterial blood pressure, diabetes or diabetes amyloid senile placques, should avoid the use of GBE if there is possibility of subarachnoid hemorrhage (bleeding of the delicate spider-web-like membrane that covers the brain inside the skull).
Attesting to GBE's safety and desirability is the fact that it is listed as effective by the German Regulatory Authority, "Commission E,"** for Symptomatic relief of organic brain dysfunction, intermittent claudication (the spasm of leg muscles when exercised, due to constriction of blood vessels), vertigo of vascular (blood vessel) origin, and "ringing of the ears," also of vascular origin.
What a track record has Gingko! Appearing first in the oldest Chinese medical book-2,800 BC-and historically utilized in traditional Chinese medicine for coughs, the brain, the worm filaria, and other applications, its medical use today has grown extensively throughout the world .


Dr. Baldwin taught Physiology of the Digestive System at Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, California. A staff physician at Wildwood Lifestyle Center & Hospital since 1977, she has been Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Health & Healing since 1981

*Gingko may be spelled either with a "gk" or "kg."
*Double-blind studies are those in which neither
subject nor investigator knows which medicine
offered is the test substance and which one is a
totally inert look-alike.
**"Because of the expense and lack of patient
production, very little research has been done
during this century on whole plants or crude
plant extracts as medicinal agents, per se, by the
large American pharmaceutical firms. In contrast,
European regulatory policies and practices
have made it economically feasible for companies
to research and develop herbs as medicine..
The proof required by a manufacturer in Germany
to illustrate safety and effectiveness for an
herbal product is less (and more appropriate) than
the proof required by the FDA for drugs in the
USA. In Germany, a special Commission,
Commission E, developed a series of 400 monographs
on herbal products similar to the GTC monographs
in the U.S..
In Germany, as well as in France, extracts of
Gingko Biloba leaves are registered for the treatment of
cerebral and peripheral vascular insufficiency.
Gingko products are available by prescription
and GTC purchase.
GBE is among the top three most widely prescribed
drugs in both Germany. and France, with a combined
annual sale of more than five million. In contrast, in
the USA, extracts which are identical to those approved
in Germany and France are available as 'food supplements.'''
Pizzorno and Murray,Volume I, p. 268.

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