Bible Health Guide
By Philip St. Vincent Brennan
Chapter Eleven
Garlic
Of all of nature's foods, the humble garlic bulb is the most potent, the most versatile, and the most researched herb in all creation. Studies have shown that garlic has astonishing disease-fighting power. It battles infections, clotting of the blood, arthritis, cancer, heart disease, and hypertension, and boosts the body's all-important immune system.
Herbalists have used garlic for healing as long ago as 3,000 years before the birth of Christ. And healers have been writing about it for at least 2,000 years. Folk literature documenting the benefits of onions and garlic also goes back 2,000 years.
Garlic is a member of the lily family, and according to Dr. Varro Tyler, has been used for healing purposes since the earliest days of recorded history.
Astounding Results
Professor F. G. Piotrowski of Geneva University in Switzerland stunned the medical world when he announced that his research had demonstrated that garlic produced what he called "astounding results" in reducing blood pressure levels in his patients.
Piotrowski said he'd given garlic daily to 100 patients for a period of seven days. As he watched with growing amazement, the blood pressure levels of 40 patients plunged. Dizziness, chest pain, back pain, and other symptoms of hypertension were substantiality relieved and had completely disappeared three to five days after the patients began taking garlic, Piotrowski reported.
Modern Cholesterol Test
Modern garlic research really got rolling in 1977 when Drs. Arun Bordia and H. C. Bonsal studied the effects of garlic on the cholesterol level of 10 healthy patients. Initial measurements revealed that all the patients had average serum cholesterol levels of 221. The patients were given four ounces of cholesterol-rich butter to eat, and their levels shot up to 237 within three hours, and only gradually returned to their original levels.
In second test, the patients were given the same amount of cholesterol-rich butter, but were also given garlic oil with it. This time, however, instead of having their cholesterol levels boosted, they dropped to an average of 212, according to the prestigious British medical journal Lancet.
Prevents Blood Clots
Researchers Drs. Martyn Bailey and Jack Vanderhoek were able to demonstrate garlic's power to prevent heart attacks and strokes by thinning the blood, thus preventing deadly blood clots from forming and clogging arteries.
"Garlic does change the clotting properties of the blood," Dr. Bailey reported. "It seems garlic contains a chemical called adenosine that gets into the bloodstream and inhibits the formation of clots."
Thanks to allicin, a principal ingredient in garlic, it has few equals among natural remedies. According to Dr. Kitty Champion in her book Vegetable Encyclopedia (Century), garlic has been shown to inhibit the growth of many forms of bacteria, fungi, and disease-causing amoeba.
Powerful Disease Fighter
"Garlic oil, juice, or extract has anti fungal and antibacterial qualities which inhibit some microbes and are deadly to others," Dr. Champion writes. "Garlic kills amoebas that cause amoebic dysentery, and trichomoniassis that cause trichomoniasis, a vaginal parasitic infection."
Russian researchers have reported that garlic inhibited the growth of tumors, or even prevented their formation, in laboratory animals. During World War II, Russian doctors used garlic so extensively as a natural antibiotic that the pungent herb became known as "Russian penicillin."
Researchers studying garlic in relation to its effect in preventing heart disease discovered that patients suffering from osteoarthritis and other forms of the crippling disease had substantially less pain in their joints than those subjects not given garlic.