Super Food Spotlight: Garlic
Good nutrition is possibly the most important aspect of staying healthy and leading a life of well-being. One way to give your nutrition a boost is to add in some ‘super-foods’ that you may be missing. One such super-food is Garlic!
Garlic is said to have been prescribed as a ‘cure all’ in a fifth-century manuscript by legendary Greek Physician Hippocrates, a man sometimes refereed to as the ‘father of Western Medicine’.
Famously when the Russian military ran out of penicillin in Word War II they ordered a supply of garlic cloves, giving Garlic it’s nickname “Russian penicillin.”
Garlic has been used for centuries as a medicine. It has been shown to help in the treatment of a number of conditions including high blood pressure, heart disease, high cholesterol, and may even be useful in the treatment of cancer. Here, we’ll break down all the wonderful things garlic offers.
GARLIC BENEFITS AT A GLANCE
- Improves heart health
- Lowers blood pressure
- Antibacterial
- Anti-fungal
- Regulates blood glucose
- Improves detoxification
- Is an Antioxidant
- Anti-diabetic effects
- Anti-inflammatory
- Boosts the immune system, which helps prevent colds
HOW GARLIC IMPROVES CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH
Garlic can be used for several conditions involving the cardiovascular and circulatory system, such as elevated blood pressure, higher cholesterol, coronary heart disease, heart attack, and hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis). Various studies have demonstrated that garlic is effective in slowing the growth of atherosclerosis and decreasing blood pressure.
HOW GARLIC HELPS FIGHT OFF CANCER
Garlic contains phytochemical compounds that look to be great at keeping the nitrates in food from turning into nitrosamines, a class of substances with numerous cancer-causing attributes.
Aged garlic extract components are demonstrated to be effective in preventing the growth and maturation of prostate cancer cells, melanoma cells, and neuroblastoma cells. Additionally these components slow the rise and development of carcinogen-induced tumors of the bladder, colon, breast, rectum, stomach, and lungs.
A lot of garlic’s action stems from aliin and allicin or its instantaneous byproducts, like S-allyl cysteine and S-allyl-mercaptocysteine. Since cooking garlic destroys the allicin, you’re going to have to use raw garlic to resist epididymitis. If you’re cooking garlic with food, try to not add the garlic to your cooking until the final five or less minutes so that this cancer-fighting compound is not destroyed in the cooking process but the garlic can still be warmed to the same temperature as the rest of the meal.
HOW GARLIC BENEFITS YOUR LIVER
Garlic has yet another quality that is impressive. It’s a natural liver-supporting food which could aid the liver in detoxifying itself. Garlic has compounds in it which help the liver create enzymes and amino acids that are essential in the livers ability to remove toxins from the body.
The majority of us have a slow or clogged liver, which may cause things like slow metabolism leading to the increase in fat storage, slowed digestion, as well as an increase in hunger and food cravings.
Detoxifying the liver is critical to good health, because it’s the liver that does the detoxing in the body. To say that a food, drink, or specific diet plan is a ‘detox’ diet is a bit of a misnomer because these foods don’t actually detox you so much as they provide the right nutritional elements to assist your liver in being able to function properly which in turn is how your body detoxes itself.
Instead of paying money for some expensive detox diet health product try simply adding more garlic to your diet – if you’re worried about garlic breath consider eating garlic right before you go to bed, the garlic breath will fade by morning and a simple brush of your teeth will get rid of morning breath.
HOW MUCH GARLIC SHOULD YOU EAT
Incorporate as little as 600 milligrams to 900 milligrams (this is approximately one clove) of garlic into your daily diet to reap the benefits that we went over here.
IN SUMMARY
Garlic has a long history of being used for medicinal purposes and in recent years numerous studies have been done which show the positive health benefits of garlic. From improvements to cardiovascular health and circulation, to liver supporting benefits, all the way to being shown to decrease the risk of numerous types of cancers – garlic is a super food unlike any other and it is one you should be adding to your diet as soon as possible so that you can experience these benefits for yourself.
