Garlic! Wonderful garlic!
September 5th 2009
The National Academy of Sciences states that eating garlic boosts our natural supply of hydrogen sulfide…which acts as an antioxidant and sends signals in our cells to relax our blood vessels and increase the flow of blood.
Way back to the time of the ancients, garlic has had known medicinal properties. And through research in modern times we’re learning the ancients were (big surprise) right all along! By eating garlic and thus giving your body the ability to ramp up its production of hydrogen sulfide…you are protecting your heart and a big boost to your immune system. Garlic helps make the platelets sticky which helps reduce blood coagulation.
Two or three cloves a day (cook it into your food) reduced subsequent heart attacks in people who have had them by 50%.
Studies are also finding there is a correlation between people who have a garlic rich diet have some sort of protection against certain cancers like colon, breast, prostate, stomach, liver and lung. Garlic contains more than 30 anticancer compounds and antioxidants. The most powerful are allin, ajoene, quercetin, nitrosamine and aflatoxin. Apparently…ajoene and allicin have been found to be like a natural chemotherapy to cancer cells.
Another benefit of garlic is it helps regulate the body’s blood pressure. So whether you have problems with low or high blood pressure, garlic can help equalize it.
Garlic is stuffed full with vitamins and nutrients including Vitamins A, B, B2 and C, Calcium, Zinc, protein, potassium, and the minerals selenium and manganese.
Garlic helps to strengthen your body’s natural defenses against allergies and colds. It’s a wonderful natural expectorant and decongestant and can even help protect the body from bacteria and viruses. Chop up 3-4 cloves and put it in soup to relieve a cold or flu.
It helps loosen plaque from artery walls, regulates blood sugar levels and blood pressure (whether your pressure is high or low, it will help balance it). Garlic makes your body produce nitric oxide in the walls of your blood vessels…which helps you relax.
There are many homeopathic remedies using garlic. From ringworm to warts, toothaches to tonsillitis, ear infections to sore throats and sinus infections, asthma to herpes.
You can take garlic in a pill form also (available at health food stores). Although I think they are still studying the effects of pill form garlic in comparison to actually ingesting it.
Special notes!
Garlic (and onions) are toxic to cats and dogs.
Garlic thins the blood similar to the effect of an aspirin.
To get rid of the garlic smell on your breath (ewe) eat a couple lemon wedges.
Don’t eat garlic before surgery or delivering a baby. (thins blood)
Don’t eat garlic if you have a blood disorder.
Don’t eat it in excess! A clove or two daily should be sufficient.
Recipe for stuffed peppers:
1 pound ground beef
1/2 pound ground pork
3/4 cup uncooked rice
salt
pepper
5 green peppers (or in photo: 3 green peppers & 4 banana peppers)
3 cloves garlic (grated on a cheese grater)
1 can of tomato soup
handful of shredded mozzarella cheese
While cooking the rice, start browning the meat. (you can brown it all together in one pan). Drain grease.
Sprinkle meat with salt and pepper. Take off heat and set aside.
Wash your peppers and remove the inside parts including seeds and stem. Cut banana peppers on one side (longways) all the way down. Cut off the tip and dice it up. Throw the diced part into the meat mixture. For the green peppers, turn them on their side and cut them in half, so you have two halves each with a bottom (like a bowl).
Mix your meat, rice, garlic, salt, pepper, and bits of banana pepper if 
using banana peppers, 1/2 the can of tomato soup (do not dilute this portion of the soup). Mix well. Stuff it into the peppers letting it heap out of the tops.
Lay them on a cookie sheet and bake in a 325 degree oven for 45 minutes uncovered. *10 minutes before your timer goes off…top with a pinch or two of mozzarella cheese. Serve with your favorite side dishes.
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Maybe I am more cat-like and dog-like than I thought…
I tend to get a cloudy head or a headache if I eat a lot of garlic. Sometimes it doesn’t even have to be that much.
Do you know what it is about the garlic that would lead me to react that way?
It happens in a similar way if I eat a lot of raw onion. But it’s way more intense with garlic.
I hadn’t heard about the blood thinning part of garlic. Maybe it’s thinning my blood and it’s rushing out of or toward my head area?
you just found a new daily reader
I recently found out that I have high cholesterol!!! I couldn’t believe it, because Im only 28.