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Using Garlic Medicinally

By Victoria Dolby Toews, MPH

Garlic in all of its many forms—raw or cooked in the diet, dried and powdered in capsules, or prepared in tinctures, syrups, or even topical—provides benefits.

You can use the form that suits your tastes and lifestyle and know that your body will appreciate it.

Forms of Garlic for Medicinal Use

What’s the best way to incorporate garlic medicinally into your life?

Kirsten Carle, ND, a naturopath at The Stram Center for Integrative Medicine in Delmar, NY, shares a few tips.

  • Fight Infections

    If you’re looking to fight infections, then garlic is at its best in raw form, meaning the crushed, fresh cloves.

  • Boost Immunity

    As a general immune booster, add garlic liberally to foods every day.

    Additionally, take as a supplement in tincture, capsule, or syrup form at first sign of cold or flu.

  • Disease Prevention

    For heart protection and anticancer benefits, daily intake in capsule or tincture form is recommended; although raw or cooked garlic will still provide some benefit.

Personal communication: Kirsten Carle, 5/17

Contributor

Victoria Dolby Toews, MPH

Victoria Dolby Toews, MPH, is an evidence-based, integrative medicine journalist with more than 20 years of research and writing expertise, She received her Master of Public Health from OHSU-PSU School of Public Health.

She is the author or co-author of numerous books, including Life After Baby (2012), The Green Tea Book, 2nd edition (Penguin, 2008). User’s Guide to Healthy Digestion (Basic Health Publications, 2004), The Soy Sensation (McGraw-Hill, 2002), User’s Guide to Glucosamine and Chondroitin (Basic Health Publications, 2002), The Common Cold Cure (Avery, 1999), and The Green Tea Book (Avery, 1998).

Her work was recognized for excellence as a 2001 finalist for the Maggie Awards (Western Publications Association award honoring editorial excellence in magazines west of the Mississippi River).

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