Garlic as a remedy

Although we have a fully stocked medicine cabinet at home and dip into it quite frequently, I am all for natural remedies that have worked throughout the world for centuries. Garlic is one of those. Research has found garlic to have anti-viral and antibiotic properties. The catch is it must be crushed and consumed raw and within a few minutes so that its allicin and sulfur compounds are preserved. So based on this information, I have recently started to dose up my kids with raw garlic at the first sign of a head cold or the flu of which we seem to have had plenty this year.

Raw garlic? And kids will eat it? Not exactly…but they have started even asking for it. Here’s the trick. Even I wouldn’t chomp down raw garlic. I am sure it would burn my tastebuds for a week, and I’d imagine as well leave a nasty taste in my mouth. At our local store’s nutrition center, I purchased a bag of clear gel pill capsules…the kind that separate so that they can be filled and closed again. I peel a clove of garlic and with a sharp paring knife, slice it vertically, turn it over 90 degrees and slice it again vertically making sure the cell walls are being crushed. I’m left with thin, match stick size pieces just about the length of the pill capsules. I begin to slide them down into the long half the capsule and layering them in until no more will fit. Usually a small length will be hanging out the top which will be enclosed once the cap is placed back on.



Voila! Enclosed raw garlic with no taste. Down the hatch it goes! One clove will usually fill about three of the capsules. I will tell you to not let them set long as the moisture from the garlic will begin to soften the gel capules and make them soggy. Not what you want to attempt to swallow. And as well, the garlic will coat your fingers as you handle it and impart a slight garlicky flavor to the capsules as you are working with them. No one has experienced much in the way of after taste or burping garlic afterwards, so we’re all happy.

I can’t scientifically prove that the garlic is making a difference. but it certainly can’t hurt. The more I read about natural health remedies, the more I’m convinced that as a parent I can give our family even a slight edge over the ills that face us in life. Once we have implemented garlic as a basic arsenal in our medicine cabinet, it will be time to move on a try another remedy. Have you had success with something in particular? Please share. We can all learn a little something new.