3. Garlic Hates Heavy Metal
The heavy metal isn’t music, but the real thing. Heavy metals like lead and mercury cause organ and brain damage and even cause death. If you work around heavy metals or live in an old house, consider adding garlic to your diet. Be careful about adding too much to an infant’s diet –talk to your pediatrician.
Car battery plant workers reduced lead levels by 19% and reduced side effects like headaches. It was so effective that it outperformed the usual manufactured drug treatment.
4. Garlic Busts Fat
Maybe vampires are actually after cholesterol and not blood! Garlic has been shown to affect blood fats. If you have problems with cholesterol, try garlic. Regular garlic supplements can lower total and LDL (the really bad stuff) cholesterols by 10-15%. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have an effect on raising the “good” HDL or on lowering triglycerides.
Ancient physicians recommended garlic to “cleanse the arteries” long before the actual purpose of arteries was discovered. Turns out the ancients were correct!
5. Garlic Tames an Angry Heart
If you are worried about heart disease, heart attacks and stroke, garlic is your new best friend. Garlic lowers blood pressure as effectively as prescription drugs. You need about 4 cloves a day, so it is a big dose. Build up to that amount or you may get an upset stomach.
Garlic’s effectiveness is the same whether you use raw garlic, powdered supplement, or an aged supplement. The biggest benefit to aged garlic is that you won’t be breathing and sweating garlic.
6. Garlic Stops Dementia
Dementias like Alzheimer’s disease are caused by free radicals and their oxidative action. Garlic is full of antioxidants that remove free radicals. When you combine the antioxidant properties with “cleansing the arteries” and lowering blood pressure, your risk of common brain diseases including dementias is decreased.
Antioxidants have additional health properties through limiting cell damage, possibly even slow or stopping cancers. You can’t go wrong adding garlic to your diet. Once again, it doesn’t matter if it is raw, powered, or aged.
7. Garlic – Too Much of a Good Thing?
WebMD is known for extreme caution. And they have cautions about using garlic. If you have concerns about these conditions, talk to your doctor. Garlic is known to lower blood sugar. If you are diabetic, taking garlic might just lower your blood sugar too much.
If you have low blood pressure, garlic’s blood pressure lowing effects might lower your BP too much. There is also a possibility of bleeding, especially during surgery. If you regularly take garlic, stop two weeks before scheduled surgeries.
Conclusion
Garlic gives food a zing and nothing smells better than garlic and onions sautéing in a pan. Garlic is also a super important weapon in your medicinal food arsenal. It’s been used for thousands of years for everything from a cleanse to a tumor fighter. Modern science is able to validate many of the claims.
Interestingly, garlic was considered by upper classes to be a food for peasants, possibly because it was traditionally fed to workers. Maybe in this instance, the peasants were more fortunate than the ruling classes.
If you don’t like the garlicy smell on your hands, feet, sweat and breath, try aged garlic. You still get all the good with none of the odor.