Garlic, the wonder drug, takes on gut bugs

I’m back on my gut pills, only this time, they’re all natural — garlic that is. My mouth and body odor may suffer as a result, but I’m willing to try nature’s remedies. To my way of thinking, garlic’s special powers are a gift from God, useful to his creatures.

“Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men! For He satisfies the longing soul, and fills the hungry soul with goodness,” Psalm 107:8,9.

Raw garlic, it turns out, is a natural antibiotic, killing bad bacteria, parasites and other things while letting one’s helpful, food-processing bacteria live to not see another day. Elena, my Ukranian sister-in-law, has praised garlic’s powers, but until recently I never paid her counsel any attention.

After taking powerful antibiotics a month ago, however, and wiping out the “good guys” inside, I felt ready to try something else. Desperation requires desperate measures, even if it means listening to one’s sister-in-law! Besides, those pills which done me wrong cost about $20, while a bulb of garlic costs just 13 cents. So I searched around on the Internet, and viola! I found numerous articles lauding garlic’s virtues.

One article claims, “Garlic has antibiotic, antiparasitic, antimicrobial, anticarcinogenic, antispasmodic and anticoagulant properties.” Another adds, “This versatile herb helps reduce cholesterol, triglycerides and blood pressure, thins the blood to prevent heart attacks and strokes, acts as an expectorant and decongestant to help prevent chronic bronchitis, fights infections and strengthens the immune system.” A recent scientific study even found garlic effective against “superbugs” which are resistant to man-made antibiotics. One outlandish claim sounds a bit vampish to me: supposedly blood from a garlic eater can kill bacteria.

The evidence seemed overwhelming, and I decided to put my mouth where my thinking was. My first attempt nearly ended disastrously, however. I popped a big clove in my mouth and started chewing. Aaaaaaah! Fire! Fire! My tongue and the inside of my mouth burned like hell. Perhaps it was a warning, a foretaste to scare me from God’s wrath. I quickly swallowed it, only to find it burned all the way down and nearly incinerated my stomach.

Nausea overtook me and I quickly laid down on my bed. When several minutes of that didn’t cool the flames, I sat on the floor and put my head between my knees. Even then the urge was nearly irresistible to send that garlic back from whence it came.

Nowadays, I take it slower. I’ll nibble off bits of a clove as I eat my meal. For breakfast, I chop a clove into small pieces and put them in my oatmeal. During the day, I take a couple of garlic cloves with me in my pocket to eat with lunch or dinner.

Wouldn’t you know, the other evening when I decided to try out the churrascos in the evening market they weren’t there. So, I decided to try the tacos. It had been a while since I’d eaten Guatemalan tacos. What could it hurt? Well, I got my answer. Tacos spell trouble around here, unfortunately.

I usually eat lunch with good results inside the town’s market. The market has many little cafe stalls, where each one has two long, narrow tables, and locals crowd around them in close proximity. Passing between the two benches in the middle to pay or leave often requires one to excuse oneself many times, saying, “con permiso” to get through.

I enjoy eating there. A lunch and a drink costs about $1.50, and there’s usually lots of people there, plus four or five friendly cooks and waitresses in a kitchen with floor space of about six feet by four feet. The $1.50 price may seem cheap, but there are guys at Viña Studios where I’m volunteering who bring their own lunch because the $1.50 is “too expensive.”

Anyway, I’m back eating my garlic in earnest. If you see me sometime, you’ll have to excuse my pungent garlic odor.

* For more information, try this well-written overview of garlic’s benefits, or this from a “Healing Herbs” website.

**I could not find anything written in the Bible for or against garlic. The only mention comes in Numbers 11:5 when the Jews, whom God has miraculously delivered from Egypt, recall their former diet of fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic — coveting them and complaining about manna in the desert.

Dr. Mao, it turns out, has some good things to say about garlic: