Garlic water and its uses:
There are two excellent ways of using garlic's antibiotic properties that can be very helpful in getting garlic to places where there are infections, one is the crushed raw garlic enema discussed above and the other is the garlic bath, including the garlic sits-bath for combating pelvic fungal infections. It doesn't take much garlic, just a few cloves from a bulb is plenty for most applications and it's dosage related so you can always increase the amount of garlic if you are fighting a more persistent adversary. A little garlic can go a long way; it can be a matter of how long you let it set after crushing and before adding to water and then using. Garlic water that has set for a few days can be extremely strong smelling and I regard that as a way of estimating that is has increased in potency.
Because of the wide range of tastes and flavors in garlic and the proclivity of the hotter ones to burn tender skin, I think it is smart to start out with the milder ones so as not to burn sensitive internal tissue and I did. Also because of garlic waters tendency to increase in potency with time, I used fairly fresh garlic waters and found them to be very effective in getting results that made me feel better. For me, feeling better is what it’s all about.
Garlic baths and enemas are very important tools in that they are about the only ways to get allicin inside the human body without it going through the chemical changes imposed by the digestive process. Allicin, which is both fat and water-soluble, cannot exist for long in the human body and has a half-life of less than one minute in blood before being changed into other things, and scientists currently do not know what those other things are or how they fit in. Because allicin kills germs differently than standard antibiotics, it is one of the most powerful antibiotics in nature if you can get it into contact with the staph, strep, etc. A garlic-water enema puts it directly in the colon while still in its most potent antibacterial form and it can kill a lot of bacteria in there. For reasons I don't currently understand, garlic does not harm the natural friendly flora of the intestinal tract, but only the invading cells. I hope to find out more about that soon.
Water doesn't completely stop sulfenic acid from breaking down into allicin, it just slows it down greatly but the solution continues to increase in allicin the longer it sets and after a few days produces such an intense odor that I would be afraid to use it without diluting it greatly. My suspicion is that it would make a great external application antibiotic. The way garlic continuously changes makes it difficult to prescribe any kind of accurate dosage.
Both of these techniques involve using garlic that has been diluted in water. Good things can happen when you dilute crushed raw garlic in water after it has waited enough time after crushing for an ample amount of allicin to have been formed - at least 15 minutes but an hour or two is better because more allicin will have formed, and it's the allicin we want. Placing crushed raw garlic into water sort of stabilizes allicin and preserves it and changes its half-life from 16 hours in air to 28 days in water, while preserving the allicin and its antibiotic properties. Neat deal, huh? Diluting it in water also dissipates its burning sensation and minimizes it to a faint twinge. You don't have to use fresh garlic, properly prepared garlic powder will work well also, just be sure to let it set a couple of hours after a small amount of water is added to reconstitute the garlic powder before adding it to the bath water.
Garlic water doesn't require refrigeration but it can get pretty pungent after a few days and probably highly antibiotic but smells so bad I would be afraid to use it for any internal use. I would like to see more research into this. I once soaked my feet in three day-old garlic water and it really made me feel good and knocked out the athlete's foot fungus on the right foot and the toenail fungus on the left foot. I will bathe my feet in garlic water about once a month or so and let you know about the toenail fungus as the new toenails grow out.
When you do a pelvic soak or a body bath in garlic water, the chemicals go right through the skin and into the subcutaneous areas where there is access to local capillaries and lymphatics as well. I don't quite know how to describe it except to say I was feeling very ill for a few weeks and when I tried my garlic bath it made me feel really good right away but that night I had severe night sweats, like sweating out a fever, but by morning I felt better than I had in years and almost all my aches and pains went away and I had vigor, enthusiasm and peppy energy. I got more done that day than I had in weeks.
I know where all that peppy energy came from and that was the high amount of ATPase found in garlic. ATPase is the enzyme that triggers the conversion of ATP into ADP and the little bit of matter left over is converted into energy at the cellular level like a miniature soft warm nuclear reactor. For those who want details, ATP is Adenosine Tri Phosphate and its conversion into Adenosine Di Phosphate is a normal process but garlic supplies more of the enzyme that triggers the process resulting in much greater immediately available energy. By getting this much ATPase into the body, the reactions were body-wide and resulted in much greater energy that is more easily motivated and it just makes you feel better. This characteristic of garlic was important to the Roman army and it required all soldiers to eat garlic daily to give them an advantage over those who did not.
Another use for garlic water is that it can probably deliver usable amounts of allicin to fight bacteria in the stomach. The water that carries the allicin thins out the stomach acids, slowing down the rate at which it neutralizes the allicin and allowing some of it to kill bacteria and also the water, by thinning out the stomach acids, reduces the pain some people feel when they eat raw garlic . Because it is waterborne, some of its compounds can pass through the capillary walls and get into the bloodstream along with the H2O and have some beneficial effects. In the bloodstream garlic compounds won't last long before being pounced upon by the immune system, which will use these compounds to strengthen itself by making antibodies, for example.
Chemically, an interesting thing about garlic water is that it has both water-soluble and fat-soluble compounds and they work their way through the body in different way with the water-solubles going via the venous system whereas the fat-solubles enter through and travel via the lymphatic system.
Garlic can interfere with prescription medications, particularly anti-clotting agents, resulting in increased dosages, so if I were on any prescriptions, I would check with my doctor to see if garlic interferes with them and to adjust dosages accordingly. Use garlic wisely - the life you save may be your own.
If your house has a foul odor, even after you clean the mud out, garlic can actually be used as a house deodorant and fumigant, believe it or not. I have used this method of overcoming the smell of death twice, once when a small animal died in the heater of my car and again when a mouse died in an inaccessible area in a closet and it worked well both times to overcome the foul odors. Break several bulbs into cloves and crush the cloves and leave them all about the place (on saucers or paper plates) and then close it up for the night. When you come back the next day, the garlic will probably be the dominant odor, but that's usually preferable to a mildewy or sewage or rotting smell. Leave in place as long as necessary. Usually as the odor of garlic diminishes over a few days, the other odor is gone, too. If not, treat again, with more garlic if needed. Of course to be truly effective, you have to remove the source of the foul smell or it will continue to produce the offending odor.
There are going to be many thousands of houses with mold problems as a result of Katrina and Rita. Is the mold, stachybotrys species, toxic? Juries have said yes and insurance companies no longer cover it, but there is a new study by Emil J. Bardana, Jr., M.D. of Oregon Health and Science University that casts doubt on that. He says "We know that mold can make people sick if they end up in the foods they eat, but there is little evidence that inhaled environmental mold exposure can cause the serious illnesses that have been attributed to it." It is implied that other physical conditions present in the people involved in the study could explain the symptoms in most cases. Who do you believe? Is it possible that the smell is so bad it makes you think you are sick?
As pointed out above, garlic's vapors can kill bacteria, I wonder if they can also kill fungi and black mold? I would certainly try to find out. Experts say that the black mold, stachybotrys sp., can be killed with a solution of 9 parts water and one part bleach. I would definitely air the house out if I had just sprayed every nook and cranny in it with bleach water. If you can't get bleach, then crush some raw garlic and let it set a couple of hours to increase the amount of allicin and then dilute it in water and spray it everywhere you would spray with bleach if you had it. It may take multiple treatments and there are going to be some inaccessible places that will be missed. Don't forget the attic and under the house. Is the smell of bleach any more pleasant than the mold?
I am not recommending that people move back into mold-infested houses, what I am saying is that if you already feel you have no other choice and are going to do it anyway, you should take every precaution to protect your health with whatever resources you have on hand. Maybe that week-old garlic water with the strong smell would wipe out some of the fungus? Who knows? Anything is worth a try when times are desperate.
Garlic kills many fungi on contact including athlete's foot fungus, and candida species yeast, also.
Garlic will do nothing to improve the hot muggy days and nights without power or having to return to ancient ways of washing and cooking without modern conveniences. Eating garlic will not repel any mosquitoes, despite what you may have heard elsewhere, although if you're desperate enough not to care about social consequences, rubbing on exposed skin surfaces, oil that has had garlic cooked in it may kill /repel them because that garlicky oil will have large amounts of diallyl disulfide in it and diallyl disulfide is fatal to mosquitoes.
Maybe eating it can give you the stamina to persist. The Roman army thought so and it required all its soldiers to eat garlic for strength and stamina. I can say that eating garlic makes you feel good, at least according to one researcher, whose name escapes me, who said "Eating garlic gives the consumer an enhanced sense of well-being." Maybe it will help you get through the depression and anxiety that comes with the aftermath of disaster. Sometimes your best weapon is a positive attitude and garlic can help with that by helping you to feel better to begin with and the better you feel, the less prone you are to depression.
When I discuss garlic in this article I am referring to fresh garlic that has not been irradiated or de-natured in any way and has not yet sprouted. Unfortunately, this excludes most grocery store garlic as it sprouts too soon to be able to store at room temperature for very long, usually only a week or two. Some grocery store garlic is from China and has been irradiated and will not sprout or grow and irradiated garlic loses pungency (hotness) and is of doubtful benefit since it is no longer alive like normal garlic, it is simply the dead body of a once-living garlic. The enzyme that is the spark of life that causes the chemical reactions that make garlic work is no longer present in irradiated garlic and I do not think it can form the organo-sulfur compounds that make garlic work, although I have seen no research to prove this, specifically, only other research that would imply it.
Homegrown garlic, on the other will usually store 4 to 8 months at room temp. and that makes it the best for emergency use. Homegrown garlic harvests before hurricane season and stores all the way through it, so every family in the hurricane zone should grow some and they will be prepared every year.
Dried, wilted or diseased garlic is not good for the uses suggested above, only healthy, firm bulbs will work. Not all garlics will work equally well as different ones have different characteristics and the stronger, longer storing ones are usually best. Properly dehydrated (high room temperature process) garlic will also work, but not quite as well as fresh garlic. Freeze-dried garlic and garlic dehydrated using higher than room temperature heat will not work as their allicin-producing potential has been destroyed. Room temp dehydration preserves the allicin making potential. Grocery store garlic usually doesn't work because most of it has been stored at 32 degrees and upon returning to room temp, it sprouts and rapidly deteriorates.
Not all types of garlic work equally well, some are better than others for these purposes. Garlics which are hotter when eaten raw have greater pharmacological potential than milder garlics, according to research done by Dr. Larry Lawson and published in his comprehensive treatise, The Science and Therapeutic Application of Allium Sativum L. and Related Species, which is the most authoritative book on the subject written by probably the most qualified researcher.
»Meal garlic recipes
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment