Garlic is one of those foods that you either love or hate. Sure, it can make your breath smell bad, but it tastes great and you can always brush your teeth afterwards. It’s the stronger cousin of the onion, and it’s been used for thousands of years. Here are eight great reasons why you might want to incorporate garlic into your daily diet.
You get a variety of nutrients
Garlic was probably the first superfood, because it’s not only delicious, but it also has a number of healthful benefits. Not only is it a low-calorie food, but it also contains a good amount of vitamin C, which helps protect the immune system, and vitamin B6, which promotes brain health and helps reduce symptoms of depression.
But garlic’s main property is that it contains sulfur compounds, which are released through absorption in the digestive system and have a number of positive effects on your body.
You can lower your blood pressure
Some doctors recommend taking garlic supplements as part of an overall campaign to lower blood pressure, and for good reason. Those sulfur compounds we mentioned earlier are converted into gas by blood cells, which expands blood vessels. This makes blood cells move more freely and your circulatory system run more smoothly.
Your immune system works better
The high sulfur content in garlic has antibiotic properties, and it helps fight certain bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Garlic also contains a very powerful compound called allicin that boosts immunity and is known to prevent or shorten colds.
The problem is that allicin is a very unstable compound that breaks down quickly; it only does so when fresh garlic is chopped or crushed. So to get the full health benefits of allicin, you basically have to chew on a clove of raw garlic. Even then, some people swear by its effects.
You Can Lower Your Cholesterol
Not only is high blood pressure a concern, but high levels of LDL cholesterol are too. Fortunately, garlic has an effect on that too. Studies have shown that people taking garlic supplements had a 10% to 15% reduction in LDL levels and no significant effect on HDL (“good”) cholesterol.
Even though it’s more enjoyable to take garlic as part of a prescription rather than a pill, the sad fact is that you’d have to eat the equivalent of four whole cloves of garlic every day to reap the benefits you get from the supplement version.
You Can Protect Your Brain Health
So what else can garlic do? It’s also a powerful antioxidant. This means it’s not just healthy for the body, but also for the mind. After all, if your cholesterol and blood pressure are low, you’re at a lower risk of developing brain damage like Alzheimer’s and dementia. It’s certainly not a cure, but it is a preventative measure.
You Can Get More Out of Your Workouts
There’s a classic Popeye cartoon that shows that before he discovered spinach, Popeye’s ancestor got his super strength from garlic.
This isn’t too far from the truth; Olympic athletes in ancient Greece were given garlic to improve their stamina and keep them running longer. However, modern studies have been inconclusive as to why this happens.
It may be that garlic has properties that increase your ability to exercise for longer periods of time, or it may even be that garlic reduces the rate at which you get tired during workouts. Either way, adding a little garlic to your diet can help you achieve your fitness goals more efficiently.
You Can Prevent Damage Caused by Environmental Toxins
There are a lot of environmental toxins in the modern world, some of which are completely natural. Take lead, for example. Lead is a natural element, and yet it can have devastating effects on children’s ability to grow and learn. This is why we removed lead from paint and gasoline. But that doesn’t mean it’s not still available.
Garlic has been shown to absorb and flush out heavy metal toxins from the bloodstream, and also reduce symptoms of exposure to those toxins, such as headaches. In fact, one study found that eating garlic reduced blood lead levels by 19%. It’s a scary world out there, so be sure to use garlic, whether in food or in supplements.
You can protect your bone health
Finally, garlic can also be beneficial for your bone health. People suffering from osteoarthritis and other bone diseases usually develop these problems due to calcium deficiency and low estrogen levels in both women and men.
Garlic does not contain estrogen, but it does stimulate estrogen production in the body. Therefore, simply consuming garlic will prevent your hormone levels from dropping to such an extent that bone density problems can take over.
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