By Derek Henry, Holistic Health Coach for Healing the Body
Garlic is not a particularly sexy food and doesn’t get a lot of love due to the fact that it often makes breath and body odour very offensive. However, it would be a serious mistake to not include garlic into your diet due to it’s strong antibacterial, viral, and fungal effects, as well as other disease fighting properties. It’s time to unveil the healing benefits of garlic.
Garlic Nutritional Profile
Garlic is considered one of the most versatile foods when it comes to healing the body. It’s strong antibacterial, viral, and fungal properties support the immune system and helps destroy any foreign invaders which may cause disease in the body.
What are some of the things garlic contains that make it so powerful? Check out the following nutritional profile:
- Contains beneficial amounts of vitamin B-6 and vitamin C, as well as thiamin
- Rich in manganese, selenium, calcium, phosphorus, copper, potassium, and zinc
- Contains powerful antioxidants
- Is renowned for allicin, a phytochemical that is a very potent immune stimulator
The healing benefits of garlic are large in part due to its potent allicin content.
Healing Action of Garlic
Due to its remarkable immune stimulating properties, garlic has some incredible healing action that is hard to beat. It has been used successfully for the following:
- Increasing the powers of the immune systems natural killer (NK) cells
- Shrinking tumours, including stomach, colon, and breast and prostate cancer
- Detoxifying lead, mercury, and aluminum from your body
- Promoting cardiovascular health
- Treatment of yeast overgrowth (Candida)
- Destruction of meningitis
- Lowering blood pressure and cholesterol
- Destroying pathogenic bacteria
- Repelling mosquitos, ticks, and parasites (as well as removing internal parasites such as tapeworm)
With such a wide variety of benefits and healing action that addresses the root of many diseases today (compromised immune function), garlic is well worth the stink.
How to Use Garlic in Your Diet
Garlic has a wide variety of uses in your diet, but the key to its benefits is to eat it as raw as possible, and within 10-30 minutes after being chopped, pressed, chewed, or juiced. This will ensure you get the maximum benefits from the key component, allicin.
Garlic can be added to most vegetable and grain based dishes, dressings, fish, beef, and chicken. It can also be juiced or added to lemon, honey, and water to make a strong antibacterial and immune supporting tea.
If eating garlic gives you bad garlic breath, this is a sign of an over taxed body.
*Image of “garlic” via Shutterstock
