For over 5,000 years, many cultures around the world have used garlic in cooking, due to its pungent taste, but also in medicine, for its antimicrobial properties. Modern science has discovered that garlic's potent antioxidants and other nutritional components may help prevent and treat diseases such as cancer and high blood pressure. Please consult your physician before attempting home treatment with garlic or any other herbal supplement.
Identification
Garlic is a member of the Allium lily family that also includes onions and leeks. Garlic is encased in a paper-like covering and arranged in a head, or "bulb" that's approximately two inches in height and diameter and consists of four to 20 small separate cloves. Although not all components of garlic have been identified, important ones named thus far include the sulfur-containing compounds thiosulfinates, especially allicin.
Nutrition
A typical garlic clove weighs around 3 g, and 1 oz. of garlic, or approximately nine cloves, contains 42 calories. In addition to the sulfur compounds, which are antioxidants, garlic is an excellent source of the mineral manganese, as well as a good source of other vitamins and minerals such as vitamin B1, vitamin B6, vitamin C, phosphorus, selenium, calcium, potassium and copper. The nine cloves of garlic also have almost 4 percent of your recommended Daily Value of protein, as well as three percent of your DV of carbohydrates and dietary fiber.
Considerations
If you allow garlic cloves to sit and "rest" for at least five minutes after you've chopped or crushed them, it will increase their health benefits by giving the alliinase enzymes in garlic time to adapt to their surroundings. Boiling garlic cloves or adding an ingredient such as lemon juice can reduce the properties of those enzymes. To protect garlic's nutritional properties, whole fresh garlic bulbs should be stored in a cool dark place, away from exposure to heat and sunlight, for no longer than a month. Once you break the head of garlic into separate cloves, it reduces the shelf life to just a few days.
Effects
Garlic may help improve your iron metabolism in addition to keeping your blood pressure in check. According to the World's Healthiest Foods website, preliminary laboratory studies are showing that high intakes of garlic may help protect against gastric and colorectal cancer and may help regulate the number of fat cells that get formed in your body.
Expert Insight
A review led by Sanjay K. Banerjee and published in 2002 in "Nutrition Journal" noted that there have been more than 46 human studies since 1975 on the lipid-lowering effects of garlic that found a significant decrease in blood levels of total cholesterol and triglycerides, as well as a decrease in bad LDL-cholesterol. Several human trials also looked at aortic stiffening, which creates a high systolic blood pressure, raised pulse pressure, reduced subendocardial blood flow and increased stress in the peripheral arteries, and found that garlic provided a significant protective effect on the aorta in aging adults. A 2001 study led by P. Josling and published in "Advances in Therapy" discovered that people receiving garlic had significantly fewer colds than those who were on placebos, and if they did contract a cold, it didn't last as long.
Warning
Although garlic isn't a common allergen, the diallyl disulphide in garlic has been known to cause contact dermatitis and more systemic reactions. Also, according to the Environmental Working Group's 2010 report "Shopper's Guide to Pesticides," garlic was listed as one of the 12 foods that most frequently contained pesticide residue. Common side effects from garlic include upset stomach, bloating, bad breath, body odor and a stinging sensation on the skin from handling too much fresh or dried garlic. Garlic also has blood-thinning properties, so if you're on a blood thinner such as Plavix or Coumadin, you should use caution in consuming garlic.
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