Medicinal Herbs: Health Benefits of Garlic

I tend to feel like I'm just getting started with herbalism, but when I think about it I realize there are a few herbs I have used regularly for a while. At the top of that list are garlic and ginger, and I've decided to start posting about herbs with garlic because it's easier to cultivate and more common in locations like mine.

Theoretically one can grow garlic by separating a head of garlic into individual cloves, planting them in a sunny location in the late fall or early spring, and waiting for the clove to form into a whole new head after the next growing season. In our case we left some cloves in the ground for several years, and although they produced beautiful greens every year, the few cloves we dug up didn't seem to have expanded at all, so I don't know what was up with that.

Anyway, I guess I can't realistically offer any advice on growing garlic. Luckily, it's pretty ubiquitous in grocery stores, so as medicinal herbs go it's extremely convenient for almost everyone. Garlic's most popular medicinal use is as an antibiotic. It's not as powerful against bacteria as commercial antibiotics, but it has several relative advantages: it's much gentler on the body, it can be used against viruses and fungal infections (which antibiotic drugs generally don't treat at all) and it doesn't seem to create stronger, more resistant strains of bacteria, which are a major problem with conventional antibiotics today.

It is quite stimulating, and for this reason isn't recommended by and for everyone. For example, garlic isn't used in Ayurvedic or Macrobiotic cooking, for the reason that it's considered to be too unbalancing, too stimulating, and may even increase aggression. However, while too much garlic may unbalance an otherwise balanced person, it can help correct a system that's already out of balance. Raw garlic can also be kind of rough on the stomach, so I generally wouldn't use it for any type of stomach or digestive problem.

If you want to use garlic as an immune booster, try to start taking it at the first sign of illness. Eating crushed, raw, fresh garlic is the best. I would try to at least one whole clove every few hours until you're feeling quite a bit better, skipping the night if you want. Chewing it up alone is rough, even for garlic-lovers, but some methods I find tolerable include making a very garlicky guacamole or creamy dip for vegetables, or sprinkling crushed garlic on a piece of bread with hummus.

creative commons photo by Flickr user CarbonNYC