As far as vitamins and supplements go, the benefits of taking garlic pills are incredibly vast. Garlic itself is hailed as an anti-aging, anti-bacterial wonder drug and virtual cure-all. The use of garlic dates back nearly five thousand years, when it was originally used as an ancient medicinal herb.
Garlic bulb contains about 400 hundred different substances including antioxidants, which gives it great power when it comes to guarding cells from the outside threat of free radicals.
This is all good news for people who love to eat garlic, but for the many that don’t care for it, garlic supplements are the way to go. Like most other vitamins and supplements, garlic pills have been stringently tested and for the most part have been proven to have the same qualities as fresh-cut garlic. Garlic supplements, like fresh garlic, are able to act as antibiotics, antiviral agents, cholesterol reducers, anticoagulants, blood pressure reducers, cancer inhibitors, decongestants, and anti-inflammatory agents. So if you don’t like garlic and don’t want garlic breath, garlic supplements can help you in the same ways as the real thing.
The first serious illness that regular doses of garlic supplements can help you with is cancer. Studies show that people who eat garlic on a regular basis are less likely to get certain cancers, like stomach and colon cancers. Other studies show that garlic supplements also inhibit the growth of existing cancer cells. This means that garlic supplements can be helpful to prevent cancer as well as inhibit its spread after a patient has been diagnosed with this illness.
Regular doses of garlic supplements also lower cholesterol on an average of 9%, researchers find. This is close to the effectiveness of cholesterol reducing drugs, which lower cholesterol on average about 15%. When attempting to reduce cholesterol with garlic supplements, it is recommended to take them for at least one month before expecting any significant results. Besides reducing cholesterol levels, garlic supplements also block free radicals from oxidizing bad type LDL cholesterol, thus crippling its ability to clog arteries.
Another important way that garlic supplements fight heart disease is by slowing down the formation of blood clots. The chemicals in garlic supplements do this by stopping blood platelets from sticking to one another and the walls of the arteries, which is the first step to getting clogged arteries. Garlic supplements also specifically fight aging and clogging in the peripheral and heart arteries as well. This prevents the narrowing and clogging of arteries in the legs, which can make walking extremely painful. Researchers recommend at least five weeks of daily garlic intake before expecting noticeable results.
Garlic supplements can even act as a mild antidepressant. Researchers have learned that taking garlic supplements releases the substance serotonin into the body. Serotonin is a chemical in the brain that regulates a wide variety of mental states, including depression. Some studies have shown that garlic supplements, taken on a regular basis can be almost as 60% effective as Valium. Garlic supplements have also been proven to slow down aging by suppressing attacks from free radicals found in the body.
In order to see positive health benefits, medical researchers recommend either eating three garlic cloves a day or taking garlic supplements according to the directions on the package. Taking more than this can cause diarrhea, gastric bleeding, and other minor health problems.
Taking garlic supplements is not something that you need to over-indulge in, but rather something to take in normal quantities on a regular basis. When it comes to taking vitamins and supplements, garlic pills are definitely beneficial to overall health and also easier to swallow than raw garlic cloves.
And according to folklore, it also keeps the blood-sucking vampires away. 🙂