What Allicin Can Do for You

PHILLIP DAY: Now winter is upon us, you might have need of Nature's little garlic miracle to treat everything from the common cold to chronic fatigue syndrome and pneumonia. Allicin is the extract of garlic that does all the things you hear garlic doing. Today scientists have stabilised this most ephemeral of compounds to produce a remarkable natural antibiotic capable of treating everything from warts to MRSA. When allicin is combined with beta-sitosterol, a powerful natural statin is produced. Below are some interesting articles and further research on this most intriguing of compounds.

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INDEPENDENT RESEARCH ON THE
BENEFITS OF ALLICIN

You may have heard that garlic provides some heart health benefits - especially for management of high blood pressure. But you may have also heard that garlic studies tend to vary widely in their results - some showing benefits, others not.

New research suggests a reason why those results are varied, and why garlic actually IS a heart healthy dietary choice.

CLOVE CRUSH
Root? Vegetable? Herb? Spice? Ask people what category garlic falls into and you'll probably hear each of those answers at least once - but only one is correct. Garlic is a vegetable, in the allium family along with leeks and onions.

But garlic has a unique characteristic. When you crush a garlic clove, a cascade of chemicals is released, activating the components of garlic that are believed to provide healthy benefits such as protection against bacterial and fungal infections, blood clots, and high blood pressure.

Recent laboratory research at the University of Alabama in the US reveals the likely mechanism that makes garlic a heart helper. And according to a HealthDay News report, the UA team began their research just as you might begin making a pungent marinara sauce: They crushed the garlic.

The published study (in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) is a bit weighed down with highly technical chemistry jargon. So I'll do what we laymen do: I'll keep it simple. After exposing human red blood cells to crushed garlic, the UA tests showed that the cells converted garlic-derived components called organic polysulfides into hydrogen sulfide, a molecule that protects blood vessels by reducing inflammation and relaxing vessel walls.

IT'S ALL IN THE PREPARATION
So, if hydrogen sulfide helps keep blood vessels elastic and healthy, and garlic works with the body to create hydrogen sulfide, why are some garlic studies inconclusive or show little benefit for the heart?

According to Dr David Kraus, the lead UA researcher, if garlic is not prepared properly its benefits are negligible or lost altogether. And the key, apparently, is in the crushing. Dr. Kraus told HealthDay that he and his team not only crushed the garlic used in their study, they allowed about 15 minutes for the resulting chemical cascade to fully take effect.

Dr. Kraus also noted that some garlic trials have tested the vegetable as an LDL-lowering agent. Such research is bound to fail, he says, because the trials are looking for garlic activity that he calls "impossible." Another nutrition researcher confirmed this, telling HealthDay that hydrogen sulfide has no effect on cholesterol.

Of course, the UA study only gives us an insight into the effects of properly prepared fresh garlic. But according to Simon Mills and Kerry Bone in their textbook on botanical medicine, "Principles and Practice of Phytotherapy," when garlic is dried in powered form at low temperatures, the garlic enzyme allinase and the active compound alliin remain intact, converting to allicin in the digestive tract, which is the same chemical chain of events that follows the crushing of a garlic clove.
Rachael Linkie
Health Sciences Institute

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NEBULIZED ALLICIN FOR PNEUMONIA
AND UPPER RESPIRATORY INFECTIONS
This winter I'm treating patients with Upper Respiratory Infections (URI) with nebulized allicin and having dramatic results. One of those successes was with pneumonia.

Treatment:
Standard nebulizer with sterile tubing is used. Five drops of stabalized allicin (Allimax liquid) and 10 drops of sterile saline placed in the receptacle. Patient controls the nebulizer by turning it on and off while breathing the vapors. Instruct them to turn nebulizer on, inhale deeply into their lungs, turn the nebulizer off, hold for 30 seconds, and then slowly breathe out through their nose. Repeat until the solution is gone.

This technique exposes all the respiratory membranes to the Allimax's anti-viral, fungal and bacterial affects.

Send patient home with the remains of the Allimax, instructing them to gargle five times a day using five drops in ¼ cup of warm, but not hot, water.

Outcomes:
I've treated eight severe URI patients on this protocol. They've all felt relief from the nebulization and none have returned for further treatment.

The pneumonia patient came in complaining of malaise, lungs "heavy", mildly productive cough with yellow-greenish sputum, mild sore throat, and frontal headache. His temperature was 99. His throat and nasal mucosa were red and he had a slight amount of yellow nasal discharge. Moist rales in all lung fields.

After the Allimax treatment I gave him a prescription for antibiotics and told him to fill it if he felt worse over the next few hours or was not better in 24 hours. I called him a few days later and he said he felt great and never filled the antibiotic prescription.
Tom Ballard, RN, ND
Seattle

OTHER AREAS OF RESEARCH:
· WHAT IS ALLICIN?
· PHILLIP DAY'S VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH PETER JOSLING, director of the Garlic Centre
· ALLICIN USED TO TREAT CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME
· IT'S ENOUGH TO GET YOUR BLOOD UP! Natural statins are better in the long run, says health reporter Phillip Day. But there's a few other things you must do too.
· A REVIEW OF PETER JOSLING'S EXCELLENT BOOK

RESOURCES:
Allicin, the Heart of Garlic by Peter Josling
Lesterol (allicin and beta-sitosterol)
Allicin capsules
Allicin spray
Allicin cream