It absolutely is fascinating. I only happened to be looking at ginger root because my wife asked me to get some for her, and I was curious if it actually did anything beyond placebo.

I shouldn’t be surprised, and yet I am, when some biological/medical system isn’t fully understood. The human genome was sequenced years ago and yet we still don’t know why a simple plant root helps our tummies.

I had to look up “paracetamol” and learned that I know it by the name “acetaminophen.” Reading the wiki page on it revealed that by itself it only functions as a mild pain reliever, but when combined with caffeine or ibuprofen it becomes much more effective. What about combining all three? I’m not a pharmacist or a chemist though, so I won’t be trying it unless advised to.

Crazy considering how long we've been using it and yet we know so little about how it works!