It’s not something you would eat before a date, but if you think that all garlic does is give you bad breath, you’re sadly mistaken. This spicy herb is almost a wonder drug that has a host of medicinal properties and a large number of health benefits.

• It is a powerful antioxidant and helps reduce the number of free radicals in your body. This means that it slows down aging and prevents diseases like cancer. A study conducted by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Ontario Ministry of Innovation has found that garlic is very effective in trapping free radicals because of the allicin it contains. This compound contains sulfenic acid which reacts very quickly with free radicals to “trap” them and so prevent them from causing cancerous tumors. While onions and shallots are rich in allicin too, they don’t have the same antioxidant properties that garlic does because they have a lower level of sulfenic acid, leading to a slower reaction rate with free radicals.
• It is good in controlling your healthy cholesterol levels – garlic brings down the level of bad cholesterol in your blood.
• It is a great natural antibiotic that protects you from a host of illnesses. And the best part is that because it is natural, your body does not build a resistance to it like it does to other antibiotics.
• It lowers your blood pressure and prevents strokes and heart attacks.
• Because it is a natural anticoagulant, it reduces the risk of blood clots that could lead to coronary disease and cardiac arrests.
• It boosts your immune system and destroys bacteria and virus that cause infections and diseases.
• Eating one or two cloves when you have a cold helps reduce the symptoms of this nagging illness.
• Garlic blocks cancer-causing compounds and prevents them from forming tumors in our body. It also slows the growth of tumor cells.

Garlic is best when the sulfur content is high; you could eat it in the raw form or use it to season food by crushing or dicing it into tiny pieces. A word of caution to the overeager – eating too much garlic in the raw form could irritate and even damage your digestive tract because it is very strong. Also, it’s best to consult your doctor and check if you can eat foods that contain garlic a day or two before a surgery because this herb could disrupt your anticoagulant and cause your blood to clot.

By-line:

This post is contributed by Shannon Wills, who writes on the topic of x-ray technician schools . She welcomes you comments at her email id: shannonwills23@gmail.com

Tags: Food, Garlic, Herbs

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 11:57 pm and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.