The Many Health Benefits Of Garlic
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The Many Health Benefits of Garlic
We’re quite confident you already know what garlic is, so we’re going to leap straight in there with some science today:
First, let’s talk about allicin
Allicin is a compound in garlic that gives most of its health benefits. A downside of allicin is that it’s not very stable, so what this means is:
- Garlic is best fresh—allicin breaks down soon after garlic is cut/crushed
- So while doing the paperwork isn’t fun, buying it as bulbs is better than buying it as granules or similar
- Allicin also breaks down somewhat in cooking, so raw garlic is best
- Our philosophy is: still use it in cooking as well; just use more!
- Supplements (capsule form etc) use typically use extracts and potency varies (from not great to actually very good)
Read more about that:
- Short-term heating reduces the anti-inflammatory effects of fresh raw garlic extracts
- Allicin Bioavailability and Bioequivalence from Garlic Supplements and Garlic Foods
Now, let’s talk benefits…
Benefits to heart health
Garlic has been found to be as effective as the drug Atenolol at reducing blood pressure:
It also lowers LDL (bad cholesterol):
Benefits to the gut
We weren’t even looking for this, but as it turns out, as an add-on to the heart benefits…
Benefits to the immune system
Whether against the common cold or bringing out the heavy guns, garlic is a booster:
- Preventing the common cold with a garlic supplement: a double-blind, placebo-controlled survey
- Supplementation with aged garlic extract improves both NK and γδ-T cell function and reduces the severity of cold and flu symptoms: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled nutrition intervention
Benefits to the youthfulness of body and brain
Garlic is high in antioxidants that, by virtue of reducing oxidative stress, help slow aging. This effect, combined with the cholesterol and blood pressure benefits, means it may also reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia:
- Antioxidant health effects of aged garlic extract
- Effects of garlic consumption on plasma and erythrocyte antioxidant parameters in elderly subjects
- Garlic reduces heart disease and dementia risk
There are more benefits too…
That’s all we have time to dive into study-wise today, but for the visually-inclined, here are yet more benefits to garlic (at a rate of 3–4 cloves per day):
An incredible awesome recipe using lots of garlic:
- Take small potatoes (still in their skins), cut in half
- Add enough peeled cloves of garlic so that you have perhaps a 1:10 ratio of garlic to potato by mass
- Boil (pressure-cooking is ideal) until soft, and drain
- Keeping them in the pan, add a lashing of olive oil, and any additional seasonings per your preference (consider black pepper, rosemary, thyme, parsley)
- Put a lid on the pan, and holding it closed, shake the pan vigorously
- Note: if you didn’t leave the skins on, or you chopped much larger potatoes smaller instead of cutting in half, the potatoes will break up into a rough mash now. This is actually also fine and still tastes (and honestly, looks) great, but it is different, so just be aware, so that you get the outcome you want.
- The garlic, which—unlike the potatoes—didn’t have a skin to hold it together, will now have melted over the potatoes like butter
You can serve like this (it’s delicious already) or finish up in the oven or air-fryer or under the grill, if you prefer a roasted style dish (an amazing option too).
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Rethinking Diabetes – by Gary Taubes
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We’ve previously reviewed this author’s “The Case Against Sugar” and “Why We Get Fat And What To Do About It“. There’s an obvious theme, and this book caps it off nicely:
By looking at the history of diabetes treatment (types 1 and 2) in the past hundred years, and analysing the patterns over time, we can see how:
- diabetics have been misled a lot over time by healthcare providers
- we can learn from those mistakes going forwards
Happily, he does this without crystal-balling the future or expecting diet to fix, for example, a pancreas that can’t produce insulin. But what he does do is focus on the “can” items rather than the “can’t” items.
In the category of criticism, one of the strategies he argues for is basically the keto diet, which is indeed just fine for diabetes but often not great for the heart in the long-term (it depends on various factors, including genes). However, even if you choose not to implement that, there is plenty more to try out in this book.
Bottom line: whether you have diabetes, love someone who does, or just plain like to be on top of your glycemic health, this book is full of important insights and opportunities to improve things progressively along the way.
Click here to check out Rethinking Diabetes, and rethink diabetes!
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Apple Cider Vinegar vs Balsamic Vinegar – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing apple cider vinegar to balsamic vinegar, we picked the apple cider vinegar.
Why?
It’s close! And it’s a simple one today and they’re both great. Taking either for blood-sugar-balancing benefits is fine, as it’s the acidity that has this effect. But:
- Of the two, balsamic vinegar is the one more likely to contain more sugars, especially if it’s been treated in any fashion, and not by you, e.g. made into a glaze or even a reduction (the latter has no need to add sugar, but sometimes companies do because it is cheaper—so we recommend making your own balsamic vinegar reduction at home)
- Of the two, apple cider vinegar is the one more likely to contain “the mother”, that is to say, the part with extra probiotic benefits (but if the vinegar has been filtered, it won’t have this—it’s just more common to be able to find unfiltered apple cider vinegar, since it has more popular attention for its health benefits than balsamic vinegar does)
So, two wins for apple cider vinegar there.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- 10 Ways To Balance Your Blood Sugars
- An Apple (Cider Vinegar) A Day…
- Apple Cider Vinegar vs Apple Cider Vinegar Gummies – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
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52 Weeks to Better Mental Health – by Dr. Tina Tessina
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We’ve written before about the health benefits of journaling, but how to get started, and how to make it a habit, and what even to write about?
Dr. Tessina presents a year’s worth of journaling prompts with explanations and exercises, and no, they’re not your standard CBT flowchart things, either. Rather, they not only prompt genuine introspection, but also are crafted to be consistently uplifting—yes, even if you are usually the most disinclined to such positivity, and approach such exercises with cynicism.
There’s an element of guidance beyond that, too, and as such, this book is as much a therapist-in-a-book as you might find. Of course, no book can ever replace a competent and compatible therapist, but then, competent and compatible therapists are often harder to find and can’t usually be ordered for a few dollars with next-day shipping.
Bottom line: if undertaken with seriousness, this book will be an excellent investment in your mental health and general wellbeing.
Click here to check out 52 Weeks to Better Mental Health, and get on the best path for you!
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Elderhood – by Dr. Louise Aronson
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Where does “middle age” end, and “old age” begin? By the United States’ CDC’s categorization, human life involves:
- 17 stages of childhood, deemed 0–18
- 5 stages of adulthood, deemed 18–60
- 1 stage of elderhood, deemed 60+
Isn’t there something missing here? Do we just fall off some sort of conveyor belt on our sixtieth birthdays, into one big bucket marked “old”?
Yesterday you were 59 and enjoying your middle age; today you have, apparently, the same medical factors and care needs as a 114-year-old.
Dr. Louise Aronson, a geriatrician, notes however that medical science tends to underestimate the differences found in more advanced old age, and underresearch them. That elders consume half of a country’s medicines, but are not required to be included in clinical trials. That side effects not only are often different than for younger adults, but also can cause symptoms that are then dismissed as “Oh she’s just old”.
She explores, mostly through personal career anecdotes, the well-intentioned disregard that is frequently given by the medical profession, and—importantly—how we might overcome that, as individuals and as a society.
Bottom line: if you are over the age of 60, love someone over the age of 60, this is a book for you. Similarly if you and/or they plan to live past the age of 60, this is also a book for you.
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Red Light, Go!
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Casting Yourself In A Healthier Light
In Tuesday’s newsletter, we asked you for your opinion of red light therapy (henceforth: RLT), and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:
- About 51% said “I have no idea whether light therapy works or not”
- About 24% said “Red light therapy is a valuable skin rejuvenation therapy”
- About 23% said “I have not previously heard of red light therapy”
- One (1) person said: “Red light therapy is a scam to sell shiny gadgets”
A number of subscribers wrote with personal anecdotes of using red light therapy to beneficial effect, for example:
❝My husband used red light therapy after surgery on his hand. It did seem to speed healing of the incision and there is very minimal scarring. I would like to know if the red light really helped or if he was just lucky❞
~ 10almonds subscriber
And one wrote to report having observed mixed results amongst friends, per:
❝Some people it works, others I’ve seen it breaks them out❞
~ 10almonds subscriber
So, what does the science say?
RLT rejuvenates skin, insofar as it reduces wrinkles and fine lines: True or False?
True! This one’s pretty clear-cut, so we’ll just give one example study of many, which found:
❝The treated subjects experienced significantly improved skin complexion and skin feeling, profilometrically assessed skin roughness, and ultrasonographically measured collagen density.
The blinded clinical evaluation of photographs confirmed significant improvement in the intervention groups compared with the control❞
~ Dr. Alexander Wunsch & Dr. Karsten Matuschka
RLT helps speed up healing of wounds: True or False?
True! There is less science for this than the above claim, but the studies that have been done are quite compelling, for example this NASA technology study found that…
❝LED produced improvement of greater than 40% in musculoskeletal training injuries in Navy SEAL team members, and decreased wound healing time in crew members aboard a U.S. Naval submarine.❞
Read more: Effect of NASA light-emitting diode irradiation on wound healing
RLT’s benefits are only skin-deep: True or False?
False, probably, but we’d love to see more science for this, to be sure.
However, it does look like wavelengths in the near-infrared spectrum reduce the abnormal tau protein and neurofibrillary tangles associated with Alzheimer’s disease, resulting in increased blood flow to the brain, and a decrease in neuroinflammation:
Therapeutic Potential of Photobiomodulation In Alzheimer’s Disease: A Systematic Review
Would you like to try RLT for yourself?
There are some contraindications, for example:
- if you have photosensitivity (for obvious reasons)
- if you have Lupus (mostly because of the above)
- if you have hyperthyroidism (because if you use RLT to your neck as well as face, it may help stimulate thyroid function, which in your case is not what you want)
As ever, please check with your own doctor if you’re not completely sure; we can’t cover all bases here, and cannot speak for your individual circumstances.
For most people though, it’s very safe, and if you’d like to try it, here’s an example product on Amazon, and by all means do read reviews and shop around for the ideal device for you
Take care! 😎
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Anti-Inflammatory Piña Colada Baked Oats
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If you like piña coladas and getting songs stuck in your head, then enjoy this very anti-inflammatory, gut-healthy, blood-sugar-balancing, and frankly delicious dish:
You will need
- 9 oz pineapple, diced
- 7 oz rolled oats
- 3 oz desiccated coconut
- 14 fl oz coconut milk (full fat, the kind from a can)
- 14 fl oz milk (your choice what kind, but we recommend coconut, the kind for drinking)
- Optional: some kind of drizzling sugar such as honey or maple syrup
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Preheat the oven to 350℉ / 180℃.
2) Mix all the ingredients (except the drizzling sugar, if using) well, and put them in an ovenproof dish, compacting the mixture down gently so that the surface is flat.
3) Drizzle the drizzling sugar, if drizzling.
4) Bake in the oven for 30–40 minutes, until lightly golden-brown.
5) Serve hot or cold:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Bromelain vs Inflammation & Much More ← as found (uniquely!) in pineapple
- Can Saturated Fats Be Healthy? ← coconut certainly can!
- The Best Kind Of Fiber For Overall Health? ← it’s β-glucan, as found in abundance in oats
Take care!
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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