Have you found Broth Masters to have a garlicky taste?
Customers sometimes write in asking us why this is such a pronounced flavor in our broth.
Well, it’s no accident — garlic has some impressive clinically-studied benefits. And we are big believers in its power to promote healing.
So today we’re digging deeper into why the garlic in our broth does you so much good!
Garlic boosts your immunity and anti-inflammatory response
Garlic has been used medicinally for centuries because of its antioxidant, antibacterial, and antiviral properties.
The sulfuric compounds in garlic (including allicin, alliin, and ajoene) are responsible for these effects — which can really help boost your immune system.
A 2015 study in the Journal of Immunological Research found that compounds in garlic “modulate cytokine secretion” which “may provide a mechanism of action” for treatment and prevention of “obesity, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disorders, gastric ulcer, and even cancer.”
Cytokines, by the way, are small proteins that are released as part of the body’s inflammatory response. When the immune system is dysregulated, too many cytokines get released, and inflammation can spiral into the conditions above.
By controlling the number of cytokines that are released, garlic helps contain inflammatory damage and restore the immune system to its normal state.
However, further research suggests that there’s more to garlic’s anti-inflammatory power than keeping cytokines in check.
Garlic contains prebiotics that promote optimal gut health
Gut health has a big impact on immunity as well as joint health and the appearance of your skin.
If gut health is something you pay attention to, you’re probably familiar with probiotics, which are the “good bugs” that keep harmful gut bacteria to a minimum.
And one of the keys to making sure you have more good bugs than bad is to consume prebiotics, which the good bugs feed on.
According to a 2012 study in the journal Phytomedicine, garlic contains inulin — a type of fiber that serves as a prebiotic.
After stating that garlic is “considered one of the best disease-preventative foods”, the study’s authors observed that garlic extract killed three different forms of harmful gut bacteria while favoring the growth of beneficial kinds.
The authors concluded: “Garlic intake has the potential to temporarily modulate the gut microbiota.”
People who ate garlic twice a week for 7 years had a 44% lower risk of lung cancer.
That was the chief finding of a study published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research in 2013.
Researchers at the Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention in China interviewed 1,424 lung cancer patients and 4,543 people without lung cancer.
Each person was asked detailed questions about their lifestyles over a 7 year period, such as how often they smoked, as well as how often they ate garlic.
After crunching the responses, the researchers concluded: “Protective association between intake of raw garlic and lung cancer has been observed with a dose-response pattern, suggesting that garlic may potentially serve as a chemo--preventive agent for lung cancer.”
If you didn’t know, “dose-response pattern” means that the more of something you take (in this case, garlic) the more of a result you get.
And “chemo-preventive” means that it helps lower a person’s risk of cancer or stop it from coming back!
Garlic oil shows protective effects against diabetes-induced cardiomyopathy.
Cardiomyopathy is a disease that makes it more difficult for the heart to pump blood to the rest of the body.
It also, unfortunately, happens to be the leading cause of death among individuals with diabetes.
That’s why the results of a 2010 animal study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry were so promising.
For this study, researchers fed three different amounts of garlic oil to diabetic lab animals every day for 16 days.
The results? Every sign of cardiac dysfunction that the researchers measured in the animals “were almost dose-dependently ameliorated” by the garlic oil. Which means that the animals taking higher amounts of garlic oil saw more heart-protective benefits.
Summing up their findings, the researchers stated: “Garlic oil possesses significant potential for protecting hearts from diabetes-induced cardiomyopathy.”
Garlic significantly reduces both Systolic and Diastolic blood pressure.
Do you have high blood pressure — known clinically as hypertension?
If so, a clinical trial published in the Pakistan Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences is worth your attention.
Researchers gathered 210 patients with Stage 1 essential hypertension and split them into 7 groups (A, B, C, D, E, F, and G) of 30 patients each.
Patients in groups A, B, C, D, and E received garlic tablets of 300mg, 600mg, 900mg, 1200mg, and 1500mg per day, respectively, for 24 weeks. Patients in group F were given atenolol, and patients in group G were given a placebo.
All of the patients got their blood pressure readings recorded at the 0, 12, and 24 week marks.
The findings: “Present study showed significant decrease in both Systolic and Diastolic blood pressure in both dose and duration dependent manner” in each garlic treated group compared with atenolol.
In other words, the more garlic that was consumed — and the longer it was consumed — the greater the reductions in blood pressure.
There are many more clinically-studied effects of garlic than we can cover in one article.
- Such as a higher reduction in prostate cancer risk than any other allium vegetable, according to a 2013 study at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital.
- Or the 2006 study in the Journal of Nutrition that showed garlic having “a profound effect in reducing the glucose, cholesterol, and triglyceride levels” of diabetic lab animals over a 4 week period.
- Or even the 2017 study in Food & Nutrition Research where garlic supplements improved blood sugar control in 1-2 weeks for Type 2 diabetics.
The point is: garlic is a potent source of nutritional value, with the potential to relieve a wide range of conditions.
So the next time you sip on some Broth Masters (and you taste those garlicky notes) now you know why we use so much!
If you haven’t tried us before, why not treat yourself today?
Warmly,
-Dorothy & Laya