Garlic Supplements Can Help Fight Infection And Cholesterol
Owen Jones | May 12, 2011Everybody has to have heard that garlic is very healthy for you by now. In spite of that, there are still sceptics, but that is usually because it is difficult to identify 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 great deal of good. Garlic will be much less effective if you attempt eating it after the event, because it takes so long to build up the quantities you require, depending on how much you eat, of course.
Once you understand that, it becomes obvious that you ought to be eating garlic every day, not only while you are already sick. Some cultures are happy 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 seems to kill the odour on your breath. Chewing parsley or gargling with and then drinking lemon juice are methods of minimizing the smell of garlic.
However, you could eat fresh garlic on the weekend but take supplements during the week, when you have to go to work. If you are looking for garlic supplements, you will come across dozens of different kinds. However, all you actually need 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 purchase, because ‘specialists’ disagree on everything except that garlic is good for you.
Eating garlic on a daily basis ought to make a difference to your cholesterol levels over time – a month or two -, but will also offer longterm help. If you are already being tracked for cholesterol by your doctor, 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 should see garlic as another foot soldier in the battle.
Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on several subjects, but is now concerned with lowering cholesterol without medication. If you want to know more, please visit our web site at What Foods Lower Cholesterol?