What Happens To Your Body When You Eat Raw Garlic Everyday

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The 10almonds Team

Garlic’s benefits are not all in its most talked-about active compound, allicin (some are in other parts of the garlic), but the allicin is certainly very potent. However, allicin breaks down easily, which means that cooking reduces its value greatly, meaning that for health purposes, it is best consumed raw. Pickled garlic cloves are great, by the way, and you should try them if you haven’t already.

Garlic’s benefits (aside from being delicious)

Benefits that can be expected include:

  1. Boosts immunity: allicin enhances white blood cell function, helping fight off colds and flu
  2. Supports heart health: lowers blood pressure, reduces cholesterol, and prevents blood clots, reducing the risk of heart disease and stroke
  3. Anti-cancer properties: it contains sulfur compounds that may inhibit cancer cell growth, particularly in the digestive system
  4. Improves digestion: stimulates digestive enzymes and promotes gut health, helping with better nutrient absorption and digestion
  5. Enhances brain function: antioxidants in garlic are neuroprotective, reducing cognitive decline
  6. Good for your skin: its antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties can help improve skin health
  7. Regulates blood sugar levels: helps regulate blood sugar and improves insulin sensitivity
  8. Anti-inflammatory effects: contains compounds that reduce inflammation, helping to combat inflammatory diseases such as arthritis
  9. Supports weight loss: stimulates metabolism, suppresses appetite, and helps break down fats, aiding in weight management
  10. May protect against osteoporosis: increases estrogen levels in women, potentially reducing the risk of osteoporosis (no effect on estrogen levels if you don’t have ovaries)

The daily dose that this video recommends is 1–2 cloves of garlic or 3600mg of aged garlic extract as a supplement.

For more on all of these, enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

The Many Health Benefits Of Garlic

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  • Captivate – by Vanessa van Edwards

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    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    This book isn’t just for one area of human interactions. It covers everything from the boardroom to the bedroom (not necessarily a progression with the same person!), business associates, friends, partners, kids, and more.

    She presents information in a layered manner, covering for example, chapter-by-chapter:

    • the first five minutes
    • the first five hours
    • the first five days

    She also covers such things as:

    • starting conversations in a way that makes you memorable (without making it weird!)
    • the importance of really listening (and how to do that)
    • collecting like-minded people appropriately
    • introducing other people! Because a) it’s not all about you, but also b) you’re the person who knows everybody now
    • where to stand at parties / networking events!
    • dating and early-days dating messages
    • reading the room, reading the people

    All in all, a great resource for anyone who wants to make (and maintain!) meaningful relationships with those around you.

    Grab Your Copy of “Captivate” on Amazon Now!

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  • Natural Tips for Falling Asleep

    The 10almonds Team

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Questions and Answers at 10almonds

    Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

    This newsletter has been growing a lot lately, and so have the questions/requests, and we love that! In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small

    How to get to sleep at night as fast and as naturally as possible? Thank you!

    We’ll definitely write more on that! You might like these articles we wrote already, meanwhile:

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  • Lower Your Cortisol! (Here’s Why & How)

    The 10almonds Team

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Lower Your Cortisol! Here’s Why & How…

    Cortisol, or “the stress hormone” to its friends, is produced by your adrenal glands, and as generally considered “not fun”.

    It does serve a purpose, of course, just like everything else our body does. It serves as part of the “fight or flight” response, for example, and helps you to wake up in the morning.

    While you do need some cortisol (and a small percentage of people have too little), most of us have too much.

    Why? Simply put, modern life is not what 200,000* years of human evolution prepared us for:

    *the 200,000 years figure is conservative and doesn’t take into account the 200,000,000 years of pre-hominid mammalian evolution. Doing so, on the basis of the mammalian brain & physiology being what’s important here, means our modern stressors have been around for <0.0001% of the time we have.

    So guess what, our bodies haven’t caught up. As far as our bodies are concerned, we are supposed to be enjoying the sunshine of grassy plains and the shade of woodland while eating fruit.

    • When the alarm clock goes off, our body panics and prepares us to either flee or help fight the predator, because why else would we have been woken so?
    • When we have a pressing deadline for work, our brain processes this as “if we don’t do this, we will literally starve and die”.
    • When people are upset or angry with us, there’s a part of our brain that fears exile from the tribe and resultant death.

    …and so on.

    Health Risks of High Cortisol

    The long-term stressors are the biggest issue for health. Unless you have a heart condition or other relevant health problem, almost anyone can weather a brief unpleasant surprise. But if something persists? That prompts the body to try to protect you, bless it. The body’s attempts backfire, because…

    • One way it does this by making sure to save as much food as possible in the form of body fat
    • It’ll also increase your appetite, to make sure you eat anything you can while you still can
    • It additionally tries to protect you by keeping you on the brink of fight-or-flight readiness, e.g:
      • High blood pressure
      • High blood sugar levels
      • Rapid mood changes—gotta be able to do those heel-turns as necessary and react quickly to any possible threat!

    Suffice it to say, these things are not good for your long-term health.

    That’s the “Why”—now here’s the “How”:

    Lowering your cortisol levels mostly means lowering your stress and/or lowering your stress response. We previously gave some powerful tools for lowering anxiety, which for these purposes amounts to the same thing.

    However, we can also make nutritional and lifestyle changes that will reduce our cortisol levels, for example:

    • Reduce (ideally: eliminate from your lifestyle) caffeine
    • Reduce (ideally: eliminate from your lifestyle) alcohol
      • Yes, really. While many understandably turn to alcohol specifically to help manage stress, it only makes it worse long-term.
      • Additionally, alcohol directly stimulates cortisol production, counterintuitive as that may be.

    Read: Alcohol, Aging, and the Stress Response ← full article (with 37 sources of its own) from the NYMC covering how alcohol stimulates cortisol production and what that means for us

    As well as reductions/eliminations, are some things you can add into your lifestyle that will help!

    We’ve written previously about some:

    Read: Ashwagandha / Read: L-Theanine / Read: CBD Oil

    Other things include, no surprises here:

    Progressive Relaxation

    We’ll give this one its own section because we’ve not talked about it before. Maybe you’re familiar. If not, then in a nutshell: progressive relaxation means progressively tensing and then relaxing each part of your body in turn.

    Why does this work? Part of it is just a physical trick involving biofeedback and the natural function of muscles to contract and relax in turn, but the other part is even cleverer:

    It basically tricks the most primitive part of your brain, the limbic system, into thinking you had a fight and won, telling it “thank you very much for the cortisol but we don’t need it anymore”.

    Take a Hike! Or a Stroll… You Do You!

    Last but not least: go connect with your roots. Spend time in the park, or at least the garden. Have a picnic, if the weather suits. Go somewhere you can spend time around leafy green things under a blue sky (we realize the blue sky may be subject to availability in some locations, but do what you can!).

    Remember also: just as your body’s responses will be tricked by the alarm clock or the housework, they will also be easily tricked by blue and green stuff around you. If a sunny garden isn’t available in your location, a picture of one as your desktop background is the next best thing.

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Related Posts

  • What Is Making The Ringing In Your Ears Worse?

  • Keep Inflammation At Bay

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The 10almonds Team

    How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation

    You asked us to do a main feature on inflammation, so here we go!

    Before we start, it’s worth noting an important difference between acute and chronic inflammation:

    • Acute inflammation is generally when the body detects some invader, and goes to war against it. This (except in cases such as allergic responses) is usually helpful.
    • Chronic inflammation is generally when the body does a civil war. This is almost never helpful.

    We’ll be tackling the latter, which frees up your body’s resources to do better at the former.

    First, the obvious…

    These five things are as important for this as they are for most things:

    1. Get a good diet—the Mediterranean diet is once again a top-scorer
    2. Exercise—move and stretch your body; don’t overdo it, but do what you reasonably can, or the inflammation will get worse.
    3. Reduce (or ideally eliminate) alcohol consumption. When in pain, it’s easy to turn to the bottle, and say “isn’t this one of red wine’s benefits?” (it isn’t, functionally*). Alcohol will cause your inflammation to flare up like little else.
    4. Don’t smoke—it’s bad for everything, and that goes for inflammation too.
    5. Get good sleep. Obviously this can be difficult with chronic pain, but do take your sleep seriously. For example, invest in a good mattress, nice bedding, a good bedtime routine, etc.

    *Resveratrol (which is a polyphenol, by the way), famously found in red wine, does have anti-inflammatory properties. However, to get enough resveratrol to be of benefit would require drinking far more wine than will be good for your inflammation or, indeed, the rest of you. So if you’d like resveratrol benefits, consider taking it as a supplement. Superficially it doesn’t seem as much fun as drinking red wine, but we assure you that the results will be much more fun than the inflammation flare-up after drinking.

    About the Mediterranean Diet for this…

    There are many causes of chronic inflammation, but here are some studies done with some of the most common ones:

    *Type 1 diabetes is a congenital autoimmune disorder, as the pancreas goes to war with itself. Type 2 diabetes is different, being a) acquired and b) primarily about insulin resistance, and/but this is related to chronic inflammation regardless. It is also possible to have T1D and go on to develop insulin resistance, and that’s very bad, and/but beyond the scope of today’s newsletter, in which we are focusing on the inflammation aspects.

    Some specific foods to eat or avoid…

    Eat these:

    • Leafy greens
    • Cruciferous vegetables
    • Tomatoes
    • Fruits in general (berries in particular)
    • Healthy fats, e.g. olives and olive oil
    • Almonds and other nuts
    • Dark chocolate (choose high cocoa, low sugar)

    Avoid these:

    • Processed meats (absolute worst offenders are hot dogs, followed by sausages in general)
    • Red meats
    • Sugar (includes most fruit juices, but not most actual fruits—the difference with actual fruits is they still contain plenty of fiber, and in many cases, antioxidants/polyphenols that reduce inflammation)
    • Dairy products (unless fermented, in which case it seems to be at worst neutral, sometimes even a benefit, in moderation)
    • White flour (and white flour products, e.g. white bread, white pasta, etc)
    • Processed vegetable oils

    See also: 9 Best Drinks To Reduce Inflammation, Says Science

    Supplements?

    Some supplements that have been found to reduce inflammation include:

    (links are to studies showing their efficacy)

    Consider Intermittent Fasting

    Remember when we talked about the difference between acute and chronic inflammation? It’s fair to wonder “if I reduce my inflammatory response, will I be weakening my immune system?”, and the answer is: generally, no.

    Often, as with the above supplements and dietary considerations, reducing inflammation actually results in a better immune response when it’s actually needed! This is because your immune system works better when it hasn’t been working in overdrive constantly.

    Here’s another good example: intermittent fasting reduces the number of circulating monocytes (a way of measuring inflammation) in healthy humans—but doesn‘t compromise antimicrobial (e.g. against bacteria and viruses) immune response.

    See for yourself: Dietary Intake Regulates the Circulating Inflammatory Monocyte Pool ← the study is about the anti-inflammatory effects of fasting

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

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  • Altered Traits – by Dr. Daniel Goleman & Dr. Richard Davidson

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    The 10almonds Team

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  • Marrakesh Sorghum Salad

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    The 10almonds Team

    As the name suggests, it’s a Maghreb dish today! Using sorghum, a naturally gluten-free whole grain with a stack of vitamins and minerals. This salad also comes with fruit and nuts (apricots and almonds; a heavenly combination for both taste and nutrients) as well as greens, herbs, and spices.

    Note: to keep things simple today, we’ve listed ras el-hanout as one ingredient. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a spice blend; you can probably buy a version locally, but you might as well know how to make it yourself—so here’s our recipe for that!

    You will need

    • 1½ cups sorghum, soaked overnight in water (if you can’t find it locally, you can order it online (here’s an example product on Amazon), or substitute quinoa) and if you have time, soaked overnight and then kept in a jar with just a little moisture for a few days until they begin to sprout—this will be best of all. But if you don’t have time, don’t worry about it; overnight soaking is sufficient already.
    • 1 carrot, grated
    • ½ cup chopped parsley
    • 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
    • ½ tbsp chopped chives
    • 2 tbsp ras el-hanout
    • 3 cloves garlic, crushed
    • 2 tbsp almond butter
    • 1 tbsp lemon juice
    • 1 tsp white miso paste
    • ½ cup sliced almonds
    • 4 fresh apricots, pitted and cut into wedges
    • 1 cup mint leaves, chopped
    • To serve: your choice of salad greens; we suggest chopped romaine lettuce and rocket

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Cook the sorghum, which means boiling it for about 45 minutes, or 30 in a pressure cooker. If unsure, err on the side of cooking longer—even up to an hour will be totally fine. You have a lot of wiggle room, and will soon get used to how long it takes with your device/setup. Drain the cooked sorghum, and set it aside to cool. If you’re entertaining, we recommend doing this part the day before and keeping it in the fridge.

    2) When it’s cool, add the carrot, the parsley, the chives, the vinegar, and 1 tbsp of the ras el-hanout. Toss gently but thoroughly to combine.

    3) Make the dressing, which means putting ¼ cup water into a blender with the other 1 tbsp of the ras el-hanout, the garlic, the almond butter, the lemon juice, and the miso paste. Blend until smooth.

    4) Assemble the salad, which means adding the dressing to sorghum-and-ingredients bowl, along with the almonds, apricots, and mint leaves. Toss gently, but sufficiently that everything is coated.

    5) Serve on a bed of salad greens.

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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