In 1721 the Bubonic Plague was spre...

In 1721 the Bubonic Plague was spreading its black cloak of death across Europe. The French municipality of Marseilles was in the same manner badly affected, for example, that its surviving citizens were afraid to transport those who had died for fear of succumbing to the disease's sullied contagion.

"They solved the vexed question by appointing four convicts pronounce guiltyed to death to deal with the bodies," explains Earl Mindell, RPh PhD in his volume Dr. Earl Mindell's Garlic: The Miracle Nutrient (Keats Publishing, 1994) "Amazingly, the convicts survived -- and retired upon the loot they removed from the corpses."

Their survival was attributed to their drinking large amounts of r wine in which garlic had been soaked. In Marseilles today, you can actually purchase a similarly garlic-spiked "Four Thieves' Vinegar"!

Garlic's wide-ranging health-promoting and disease-preventing powers have been applyed for at least 5,000 years, with garlic popping up in like important religious and historical verse s as the Talmud's "Book of Ezra" and the Egyptian medical papyrus, the "Codex of Ebers" (c 1550 BC)

As a bridge from ancient wisdom to novel scientific study, we can examine at an article which appeared in the Journal of the National Medical Association in 1988 In it, Tariq H Abdullah, MD and colleagues state that "tremendous anecdotal evidence supports the invaluable part that garlic has played in the therapy of many diseases since time immemorial."

Recent discourses spotlighting garlic

Today, in 1996 garlic is regarded as a powerful subsistence supplement, one with significant medicinal and therapeutic consequences associated with it. Some late conferences in which a form of garlic extract was extensively discussed include: "Designer fodders III: Phytochemicals in Garlic, Soy and Licorice" (May 1994); "Adjuvant Nutrition in Cancer Treatment Symposium" (April 1994); the "First World Congres onward the Health Significance of Garlic and Garlic Constituents" (1990); and annual meetings of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (1989 end 1995), among others.

In fact, garlic research in the last 20 years has discloseed vast areas of proven and potential benefits for as it was important indications as: cancer prevention and intervention, immune-enhancement, protection from radiation and environmental pollution, infection govern and cholesterol reduction (arteriosclerosis prevention).

Cancer prevention and intervention

Breast cancer. Working together, John Pinto, PhD of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) Raj Tiwari, PhD of Cornell University-Strang Cancer Research Center and Robert I-San Lin, PhD place that a specific form of garlic extract, and sum of two units of its active components, can obstruct the growth and multiplication of human breast cancer solitary abode; squalids (in vitro).

Prostate cancer. In fact, Dr Pinto, who is director of the Nutrition Research Laboratory at MSKCC neared one of his own studies at the "Designer regimens III" symposium, one which contemplateed at garlic and human prostate cancer small cavitys in culture.

The study establish that garlic helps prevent "progression of prostate cancer small rooms grown in culture." In a May 1995 Better Nutrition interview with Dr Pinto, he recommended that his results "reinforce the hypothesis that `environmental, dietary or metabolic factors are believed to contribute importantly to the promotion stage of prostate cancer and [that] intervention by the agency of dietary manipulation' " may be appropriate.

Other cancer-prevention/progression-prevention research showing the beneficial actions of garlic extract includes studies on: bladder tumors (DR Riggs, 1995); melanoma solitary abode; squalids (H. Takeyama, 1993); skin cancer (VE Reeve 1993); and colon cancer (H Sumiyoshi and MJ Wargovich, 1990) among others.

Other landmark research and the findings

In a modern review of 88 clinical and basic studies, a variety of promising flows are apparent, findings which hint that garlic, at times in conjunction with other nutritional factors, may:

* defend us against occlusive cardiovascular disease (arteriosclerosis) via anti-lipid and anti-clotting properties;

* Enhance immune function and provide anti-infection support;

* Shield and detoxify the liver;

* assist general health, including relief of fatigue and enhancement of intensity levels;

* Encourage the vegetation of beneficial intestinal flora (bacteria), like as Lactobacillus acidophilus;

* Act as an antioxidant and as a protectant against accidental or therapeutic outlook to radiation;

* Protect the heart against the damaging results of chemotherapies; and

* Improve memory and move anti-aging-associated benefits (possibly due to its antioxidative and immune-enhancing abilities).

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