Galangal and dried ginger are generally differentiated from each other by their sources, flavors, attributes and functions, as follows:
1. Source: galangal comes from the dried rhizome of the plant galangal; dried ginger comes from the dried rhizome of the plant ginger.
2. Sexual flavor and meridian: galangal is hot and pungent, and belongs to spleen and stomach meridians; dried ginger is hot and pungent, and belongs to lung, spleen, stomach, heart and kidney meridians.
3. Functions: Galangal has the effect of warming the stomach and driving away cold, eliminating food and relieving pain, and is mainly used for treating vomiting, belching (burping) and gastric pain caused by stomach cold.
Dried ginger, with the efficacy of warming the middle and dispersing cold (using medicine to warm the spleen and stomach to disperse cold) and returning Yang to the veins, is mainly used for treating cold pain in the epigastrium (stomach and epigastric and abdominal cold pain), and cold in the limbs (the limbs are ice-cold, even to the elbows and above the knees), and so on.
The adverse effects of the above two medicines are not clear, and those with Yin deficiency and internal heat should avoid using them.
Patients are advised to take them under the standardized guidance of a Chinese medicine practitioner for identification of symptoms.