Everyone must have heard that garlic is very healthy for you by now. In spite of that, there are still sceptics, but that is normally because it is difficult to perceive a difference. Garlic is more preventative than curative.
You have to build up an amount of ‘garlic’ in your body before it can do you a lot of good. Garlic will be far less effective if you try eating it after the event, because it takes so long to make up the levels you need, depending on how much you eat, obviously.
Once you understand that, it becomes obvious that you ought to be eating garlic every day, not only when you are already sick. Some cultures are pleased to smell of garlic all day long, but others are not. For these people, there are garlic supplements and even de-odourized garlic supplements.
Garlic has been utilized as an antiseptic for centuries, if not longer, but contemporary studies have proven that it is also useful in the battle against cholesterol – the bugbear of the Twenty-First Century, as populations all over the world, but especially in the West inflate into obesity.
If you are the type of person who would rather eat the real thing than a supplement, but are not keen on being known for your garlic breath, there are things that you can do to minimize the smell. Thais cook garlic very quickly and it goes into every meal, but you would not know it.
Cooking it quickly appears to kill the smell on your breath. Chewing parsley or gargling with and then drinking lemon juice are ways of reducing the smell of garlic.
However, you could eat fresh garlic on the weekend but take supplements during the week, while you have to go to work. If you are looking for garlic supplements, you will come across dozens of different sorts. However, all you actually have to know is whether the pill is odourless or not and how much alicin is in it. Alicin is the active ingredient that you are interested in.
Cold-pressed garlic is said to be odourless, so you might look out for that on the label. Alicin is also sometimes coupled with other general system boosters or tonics like echinacea. You will have to carry out some research before you buy, because ‘specialists’ disagree on everything except that garlic is healthy for you.
Eating garlic on a daily basis ought to make a difference to your cholesterol levels after a time – a month or two -, but will also offer longterm help. If you are already being watched for cholesterol by your physician, tell him or her what you are doing and then you have a point of reference to judge how effective garlic is in lowering cholesterol in your case
Garlic will almost certainly never be sufficient on its own to protect you from high degrees of cholesterol, but that would be expecting too much anyway. Rather, you ought to see garlic as another foot soldier in the encounter.
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on several topics, but is now concerned with lowering cholesterol without medication. If you want to know more, please visit our site at What Foods Lower Cholesterol?