Herbs of Utnapisjtim: Allium Sativum

Allium Sativum, to most known as garlic, is an onion of the genus Allium. This is one that everyone should know about already, as it is common in any kitchen and available in most stores. With it's long-lasting reputation of warding off disease and majick it's a gem of sorts, and one we should include in everyday cooking and enjoy for all it's great cullinary and medical properties. Native to Eurasia and Africa, it has been cultivated for more than 7000 years.

First off, a little personal revelation I had about a dozen years ago. Suffering from years of excessive intrusive thoughts and not being able to stop talking in my head or ward off the thoughts of everyone around me-- my lovely sister, seeing I was suffering and was practically withering away, more or less forced me into working for her in the pub kitchen she was running. She gave me a knife and a bucket of garlics and told me to rinse and extract the cloves of all of them, a few hundred, and carry on with eggs and olive oil &c making a special garlic saturated mayonaise/dressing they used for their popular burgers and for chippies and so on. While standing there, working again for the first time in years, my mind was still sparkling at about 200+ words a minute. But the funny thing was, after about ten minutes, having rinsed quite a few cloves, the relentless thinking and intrusive thoughts suddenly stopped. For the first time in five years I could suddenly control my thoughts. I was like paralysed, just standing there like a question mark, completely startled, just enjoying the silence of my mind, until my sister asked if I was done with the garlic and ready to make some mayonaise. I didn't know what to say so I just embraced her and gave her a long hug and nearly started crying. She had lit. saved my life with a knife and a bucket of garlics. Needless to say, garlic to me is a blessing and a gift from the gods.

According to it's wikipedia article linked below, it has been well documented that garlic has cardiovascular benefits in humans and animals alike, reducing accumulation of cholesterol on the vascular walls. Known for eons for it's ability to fight common cold, hoarseness and coughs it's invaluable to any household. It was widely used during WW1 and WW2 as a natural antisceptic to fight gangrene in wounded soldiers, as it has great disinfectant properties. It doesn't contain any thiamin, but helps to enhance thiamin absorption. Garlic is also rich in vitamin-C thus a good companion against scurvy. It carries good reputation among AIDS patients for fighting Cryptosporidium and other protozoal diseases. Garlic is also known to boost testosterone levels. It lowers blood pressure and is a friend of anyone suffering from hypertension.

Garlic is rich in sulphur an important factor explaining many of it's healing properties. In ancient China garlic was used to treat leprosy and the plant has held that use longer than any other herb. It has also successfully been used to treat tuberculosis and other wasting diseases, and many people suffering from rheumatism (a clove or two, pounded with honey) and arthritis praise it's positive effects.

From herballegacy.com (link below):

Garlic an natural penicillin has only 1% of the impact of sinthitic penicillin but it is more effective with gram negative bacteria than penicillin. [...] In addition to keeping the heart and blood vessels healthy research has proved that garlic lowers you blood pressure, lowers your cholesterol, fends off respiratory infections, infections of the urinary tract and digestive tract. Bacteria shown to be susceptible to garlic in the test tube include species from Staphylococcus, Escherichia, Proteus, Salmonella, Providencia, Citrobacter, Klebsiella, Hafnia, Aeromonas, Vibrio and Bacillus genera. Fungi demonstrated also to be susceptible to garlic in lab tests include the genera Microsporum, Epidermophyton, Trichophyton, Rhodotorula, Torulopsis, Trichosporon, Cryptococcus neoformans, and Candida, including Candida albicans. It is reported that garlic is more effective against pathogenic yeasts than nystatin, especially Candida albicans.

From botanical.com (link below):

There is a Mohammedan legend that:
'when Satan stepped out from the Garden of Eden after the fall of man, Garlick sprang up from the spot where he placed his left foot, and Onion from that where his right foot touched.'

And further from the same page:

It formed the principal ingredient in the 'Four Thieves' Vinegar,' which was adapted so successfully at Marseilles for protection against the plague when it prevailed there in 1722. This originated, it is said, with four thieves who confessed, that whilst protected by the liberal use of aromatic vinegar during the plague, they plundered the dead bodies of its victims with complete security.

And again:

Syrup of Garlic is an invaluable medicine for asthma, hoarseness, coughs, difficulty of breathing, and most other disorders of the lungs, being of particular virtue in chronic bronchitis, on account of its powers of promoting expectoration. It is made by pouring a quart of water, boiled hot, upon a pound of the fresh root, cut into slices, and allowed to stand in a closed vessel for twelve hours, sugar then being added to make it of the consistency of syrup. Vinegar and honey greatly improve this syrup as a medicine. A little caraway and sweet fennel seed bruised and boiled for a short time in the vinegar before it is added to the Garlic, will cover the pungent smell of the latter.

From Witchipedia (link below): In more magical circles, Garlic is believed to have aphrodisiac powers, and by hanging garlic over your bedroom door, it is believed to draw lovers into it. Garlic is used for exorcism, spell-breaking, invoking passion, protection and strength. Also used to protect against psychic and physical vampirism.

Use caution if you are taking blood thinners or use aspirin regularly. And don't give it to your pets, they can get sick from it as it can destroy red blood cells causing possibly fatal anemia. [...] Breastfeeding mothers who eat lots of garlic have occasionally found that their babies became more colicky, or refused to nurse until they stop eating garlic! [and] Large amounts of garlic may cause stomach upset.

So, needless to say, Garlic is truely amazing and a herb that should be native to any herbalist or culinary inventory.

Sources:
www.amazon.com...
en.wikipedia.org...
www.botanical.com...
www.herballegacy.com...
Garlic at Witchipedia

Roman legions were known to have gone on strike for not receiving their ration of garlic.
Understand that each soldier carried around 80 lbs of gear along with a pole to create a palisade fort and needed extraordinary strength and endurance simply on the march.
Not only did garlic help them maintain their health it made their camp food more palatable.
On a personal note I wouldn't know how to cook without it and always include lots of garlic and onions especially during flu season.

Asktheanimals
Roman legions were known to have gone on strike for not receiving their ration of garlic.
Understand that each soldier carried around 80 lbs of gear along with a pole to create a palisade fort and needed extraordinary strength and endurance simply on the march.
Not only did garlic help them maintain their health it made their camp food more palatable.
On a personal note I wouldn't know how to cook without it and always include lots of garlic and onions especially during flu season.

Absolutely. Also, "the pyramid builders" of ancient Egypt were given garlic as part of their payment according to some sources

Such a useful wonderful food.

Hubby and I love it pickled, to the point where I now have to have as many cloves of it in a pickle jar, as there are pickles!

I love this series of threads your doing, by the way. Thank you.

chiefsmom
Such a useful wonderful food.

Hubby and I love it pickled, to the point where I now have to have as many cloves of it in a pickle jar, as there are pickles!

Indeed, pickled garlic cloves is delicious, I love all kinds of onion, eating it like candy sometimes, and I can eat an entire yellow onion like others would eat an apple. I believe I can thank onions for never catching the cold, and appart from once in my youngest years, I have never caught the flu.

I love this series of threads your doing, by the way. Thank you.

And thank YOU! Thanks for the rewarding nice words. I love making these threads, it feels like a calling somehow

Another excellent thread. It is important to note that the onion and garlic have pretty much the same chemicals but the percentages are way off in their concentration. This means they have different applications in health.

I use different sulfur foods to help control my TLE. The only problem I have had is that eating more sulfur foods causes me to pee a lot as the sulfur purifies things. Think of sulfur as soap, cleaning out the body. I take a multimineral and consume foods containing more potassium and also have to consume more salt because I pee these things out. These sulfur foods do work well for controlling my stray voltage, probably by chealating out excess metals out of the body, especially in the brain where they become problematic. I need to control a condition I got from an accident so consume sulfur in many different forms as a medicine. There are some side effects that I am trying to moderate. I am hypovolemic, have been all of my life because of Wilson's disease or AIP. Now this problem in the third step of metabolism of blood is not something most people have so most people will not have a problem with garlic like I do.

I noticed some beneficial things from boosting the sulfur foods. Clarity of thinking, my eyes feel better also. Tears contain sulfur and this helps with cleansing the eyes. Boosting magnesium is also a good thing when boosting sulfur, the two seem to be companions. Also, for many people boosting molybdenum in the diet is beneficial as an enzyme that works to process the sulfurs properly in metabolism is a molybdenum enzyme, this keeps the sulfite levels down in the body and helps with breathing.

Sulfur can also be processed by the skin, that is why you probably noticed something quickly from working with the garlic. It was not a coincidence. I'm thinking that if you have adequate sulfur in your body, you will cry if you peel or cut onions. Also, I am a person who can smell sulfur in the urine so I can keep an eye on the levels in my body to help control my TLE. That actually has a gene associated with it. Kind of comes in handy when I am controlling my epilepsy.

reply to post by rickymouse


Great info! What other foods contain sulphur? I tend not to cry when handling onions, I would always boast to my sister or my mom when we were kids and they cried while cutting onions. I would cut them like a champ, proudly thinking "boys don't cry". Yet another dimention to my garlic moment, thanks

A neat trick to avoid tears cutting onions is to place a sugarcube between your lips, or simply breathe through your mouth

Utnapisjtim
reply to post by rickymouse

 

Great info! What other foods contain sulphur? I tend not to cry when handling onions, I would always boast to my sister or my mom when we were kids and they cried while cutting onions. I would cut them like a champ, proudly thinking "boys don't cry". Yet another dimention to my garlic moment, thanks

A neat trick to avoid tears cutting onions is to place a sugarcube between your lips, or simply breathe through your mouth

The cruciferous veggies do. So does grapefruit...Thio Sulfate is in onions and grapefruit in generous amounts.. It can neutralize cyanides that are in the body. The cyanides are harmless in small amounts in veggies and fruit, but people can break them off and have problems with them. I can break them off of cranberries, they give me a horrible thirst when I eat them. Garlic works for that but not as strong, it is good for chealating out metals out of the body, especially arsenic, lead, and mercury. Eggs also bind to these troublesome metals, the whites, and will stop them from being absorbed. It is also a sulfur food.

When you get a thirst that won't go away, take a bite of an onion. Strange that the base of some diabetic drugs are sulfonimides, these chemicals utilize sulfur. Lasix also contains both sulfur and chloride. Some diuretics utilized fluorides. Garlic seems to be a better tolerated chemical complex than sulfa drugs, so far I don't think that microbes have not gotten resistant to it.

Seems like a lot of drugs out there address either sulfur or nitrogen balance in the body.

rickymouse

Utnapisjtim
reply to post by rickymouse

 

Great info! What other foods contain sulphur? I tend not to cry when handling onions, I would always boast to my sister or my mom when we were kids and they cried while cutting onions. I would cut them like a champ, proudly thinking "boys don't cry". Yet another dimention to my garlic moment, thanks

A neat trick to avoid tears cutting onions is to place a sugarcube between your lips, or simply breathe through your mouth

The cruciferous veggies do. So does grapefruit...Thio Sulfate is in onions and grapefruit in generous amounts.. It can neutralize cyanides that are in the body. The cyanides are harmless in small amounts in veggies and fruit, but people can break them off and have problems with them. I can break them off of cranberries, they give me a horrible thirst when I eat them. Garlic works for that but not as strong, it is good for chealating out metals out of the body, especially arsenic, lead, and mercury. Eggs also bind to these troublesome metals, the whites, and will stop them from being absorbed. It is also a sulfur food.

Knew about cabbage and eggs, thanks for the additional info, and thanks for the bit about cyanide. I think there is also a tad bit of cyanides in Sambucus Nigra or elderberry. Didn't find much info on it though. Tobacco also holds cyanide as far as I remember, together with about 2000 other potent toxins, like benzen and nitrosamines. Tobacco is a vast depot of toxins.

When you get a thirst that won't go away, take a bite of an onion.

I'll remember that. Thanks.

reply to post by Utnapisjtim


Tobacco....some people get cancer from the nitrosamines while others don't. Why.....companion food chemistry is the clue. Molybdenum in the diet helps to counteract the nitrosamines. So depending on their companion diet, they can still be cancer free. This is why they can't prove that cigarettes cause cancer, it only increases the risk.

Having a piece of onion on that hamburger can stop the effects of the cyanide....then again molybdenum is needed to regulate the sulfur in the onion, but the onion is a seed so it has some of that. Now taking the molybdenum can cause a copper deficiency, so then since copper is needed to break down tyromines, it can lead to an intolerance to glutamines. What a viscious cycle it is, it almost seems that we should avoid things that hijack our sense of craving so we can stay on top of it and properly crave what we need to keep us from getting deficient in things or overloaded in things. The problem is that we have a mind and they constantly condition us to believe they know what is going on and tell us to avoid things that are the companion food or antidote for a condition that we are experiencing.

I have only studied these things for about six or so years, I would love to confer with someone who has done it for fifty years. The problem is that what they have been teaching us as right, has been found to be wrong for reasons that were overlooked in the past. A lot of practices were made based on Ideas that were not properly tested because we did not have the ability to test them before. No long term testing was done or is still being done. I try to find long term consumption patterns from the older healthy people I know.

I have studied the good and bad about tobacco. five cigarettes a day is possibly better than no cigarettes for some people, based on my research. After that the tide turns. Another thing to consider is the food chemistry consumed with the tobacco use. It has to be properly neutralized. I am far from completing my research on this substance. I would like to talk to a person who researched tobacco for the tobacco industry. Seems strange that I look at the good contained in the bad. Tobacco is a medicine that has been severely abused for profit over the years.

reply to post by rickymouse


Made a thread for the series on minerals ==> www.abovetopsecret.com...

Thought it could be useful for posts like the one above about tobacco and companions etc.

From now on I will post the daily updates to the "Herbs of Utnapisjtim" series into it's Master thread. This was a wish from the admin, and I have to adhere. The OP will be continually updated to include the new additions of herbal species as I will continue to try posting about once a day, only from now on I will stick to the Master Thread. The first herb following this pattern that has been added is Nettles (the link will send you to the Master Thread:

[9] Nettles [Urtica Dioica] ==> www.abovetopsecret.com...

Thanks to all of you for all the stars and flags, encouraging and rewarding words and nods, and most importantly for having added generously to the quality of these threads! Hope you remain through the transition into the one-thread world.