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Healthy Home Economist / Archives / Natural Remedies / How to Harness the Power of Garlic Medicinally

How to Harness the Power of Garlic Medicinally

by Sarah Pope / Updated: Jan 17, 2023 / Affiliate Links ✔

Table of Contents[Hide][Show]
  • Garlic: Ancient Medicine Come Full Circle
  • Used Preventatively
  • Used Therapeutically
  • Common Mistakes
  • Types of Garlic to Use as Medicine
  • How to Prepare Garlic Cloves for Swallowing
  • Garlic Oil for Ear Infections
  • Garlic Tea for Use Internally or Externally
  • Colds, Sore Throats or Sinus Headaches

Primer on how to use garlic as a natural antibiotic for skin, ears, throat and body to resolve infections whether viral, bacterial, or fungal without the use of meds.

medicinal garlic heads on wood

As problems with antibiotic resistance and fear of superbugs like MRSA increase, interest in the use of natural antibiotics for routine infections continues to skyrocket. Of all the dozen or so natural antibiotics, raw garlic tends to be the most popular for several reasons.

First, garlic is easy to obtain and widely available. Whether you live in the middle of a thriving metropolis or out in the sticks, obtaining a head of garlic is not a complicated process. Health food stores and mega-supermarkets alike carry it all the time regardless of the season.

Garlic is also one of the most inexpensive herbs on the market. I buy an entire head of high-quality, organic garlic from my local health food store for about $1.

Thirdly, garlic is one of the simplest herbs to grow as well. Just plant a few cloves with papery covering remaining in rich soil.

Water about once a week (warning; do not overwater as garlic does not grow well in overly moist soil) and fertilize regularly and watch them grow like crazy. The bulbs are ready to harvest ideally after a hot dry summer when the long green stalks, called scapes, turn yellow or brown.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that one of nature’s most useful remedies for human health is not only easy to obtain and inexpensive to buy (even if organic) but also super simple to grow even for novice gardeners.

Garlic: Ancient Medicine Come Full Circle

Before the use of pharmaceutical antibiotics became all the rage post World War II, garlic was regularly used to treat infections and wounds.

This herb is one of the oldest recorded remedies used by many ancient civilizations. It is specifically named in ancient texts of the Greeks, Hebrews, Babylonians, Romans, and Egyptians.

Chances are, you already have a head of garlic in your pantry right now. So how to harness it as a powerful natural antibiotic when necessary?

Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride MD, author of Put Your Heart in Your Mouth and creator of The GAPS Diet gives the simplest and most effective how-to I’ve personally used over the years. Read on for all the garlic-y details!

Used Preventatively

The great thing about garlic is that it can be safely used as a preventative or to resolve an existing illness.

To use garlic preventatively, take one clove a day for as long as you like. While you can take the clove anytime during the day that suits you, I’ve found that just before bed seems to work the best.

Using a clove of garlic per day starting a few days before overseas travel and continuing until your return is a helpful tip for the prevention of food poisoning.

Incidentally, eating a clove of garlic every day is a great way to slowly improve intestinal health. Garlic very effectively kills off a wide variety of gut pathogens including candida while simultaneously serving as a prebiotic food to encourage the growth and survival of beneficial microbes.

Used Therapeutically

Note that pharmaceutical antibiotics only work for bacterial infections. Garlic, however, helps resolve an illness no matter what type of microbes are causing the problem.

Hence, it is not only anti-bacterial but also highly antiviral and works as a very strong antifungal.

When used therapeutically to heal a bacterial infection or viral illness, Dr. Campbell-McBride recommends consuming an entire head of garlic every day until healing has occurred.

The average head of garlic contains 10 cloves! You don’t consume the entire head at once, however.

Whew!

You consume one clove every couple of hours from waking until bedtime.

If the raw cloves are too hot for you to consume, I would suggest making this recipe for pickled garlic. Naturally fermenting garlic preserves all the therapeutic value while eliminating the heat and odor potential on breath and sweat from eating raw cloves.

Another option is to take garlic capsules that concentrate the active ingredient from multiple cloves.

Common Mistakes

The most common mistake people make when using garlic is consuming cloves that have been sitting around in the pantry for too long.

Stale garlic may not be potent enough to resolve an infection, so be sure you use a fresh head if at all possible.

Fresh softneck (white) garlic like the kind typically sold at the supermarket has a green shoot running through the middle of the cloves.

If the shoot in your garlic head has turned brown or dried out, discard and purchase a fresh head. Organic is best and typically more potent.

Types of Garlic to Use as Medicine

You have no doubt noticed that there are several types of garlic available at the market. All work wonderfully well for antibiotic purposes with the exception of elephant garlic (Allium ampeloprasum).

Elephant garlic heads are large, covering the entire palm of an adult’s hand in some cases. However, the garlic flavor is very bland tasting more like a leek.

Due to the less powerful flavor and aroma, elephant garlic has inferior healing properties to other types of garlic.

Hence, bypass the elephant garlic and go for the small white, red or purple garlic heads instead.

How to Prepare Garlic Cloves for Swallowing

When consuming a garlic clove for use either preventatively or therapeutically, you can swallow it whole just like a pill. Be sure to remove the papery covering on each clove first.

Follow this approach only if the thought of tasting pure garlic is too overwhelming. If taken this way, consume the clove with a glass of milk or with food to prevent the possibility of indigestion.

If the taste of garlic doesn’t bother you, the most potent method for taking a clove is to crush it with a fork or garlic press.

Then, let the crushed clove sit for about 15 minutes at room temperature on a small plate or cutting board. This allows the enzyme alliinase to interact with alliin to produce a maximum amount of allicin – the active ingredient in garlic.

Then, scoop up the garlic bits on a spoon and swallow it down chased with water, juice or fresh milk.

The book Healing With Whole Foods suggests other ways to utilize garlic as a natural antibiotic both internally and externally.

Garlic Oil for Ear Infections

If an ear infection is a problem, garlic ear oil can really help. Simply prepare the garlic clove in a slightly different manner.

Crush the clove and mix with 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil. Let the crushed garlic sit in the oil for 30 minutes. Strain out the garlic pieces and discard.

Warm the garlic oil in a cup placed in a small pan of warm water. Take care not to overheat the oil else the beneficial properties of the garlic-infused oil will be destroyed!

Drizzle a few drops of the garlic oil every hour into the ear that is infected.

This is an extremely safe remedy for children.

It also serves the dual purpose of soothing the pain and softening ear wax buildup for easy removal.

Garlic Tea for Use Internally or Externally

Garlic tea is easily made by simmering 4 cloves of chopped garlic in one cup of water for 20 minutes.

This garlic tea can be used topically on the skin for relieving poison ivy and poison oak.  It can also be used to heal boils on the skin.

Garlic tea can also be sipped to help resolve internal infections. Please note that garlic tea will not be as strong or effective as eating whole raw, crushed garlic cloves. Cooking garlic reduces its medicinal properties.

Colds, Sore Throats or Sinus Headaches

For colds, sore throat, or sinus headaches, hold a clove of raw garlic with the peel removed in the mouth for at least 15 minutes.

If this is too hot, use a clove of fermented garlic instead. You can suck on it a bit during that time if you like. Then, chew the clove up and swallow.

Another fast-acting sore throat remedy combines garlic with raw manuka honey and cayenne pepper (or turmeric) as a one-two-three punch.

Do you use garlic as medicine in your home? If so, what is your favorite way to harness its medicinal power?

purple and white garlic heads for natural remedies on wooden boards
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Category: Natural Remedies, Skin Health
Sarah Pope

Sarah Pope MGA has been a Health and Nutrition Educator since 2002. She is a summa cum laude graduate in Economics from Furman University and holds a Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

She is the author of three books: the bestseller Get Your Fats Straight, Traditional Remedies for Modern Families, and Living Green in an Artificial World.

Her four eBooks Good Diet…Bad Diet, Real Food Fermentation, Ketonomics, and Ancestrally Inspired Dairy-Free Recipes are available for complimentary download via Healthy Home Plus.

Her mission is dedicated to helping families effectively incorporate the principles of ancestral diets within the modern household. She is a sought after lecturer around the world for conferences, summits, and podcasts.

Sarah was awarded Activist of the Year in 2010 at the International Wise Traditions Conference, subsequently serving on the Board of Directors of the nutrition nonprofit the Weston A. Price Foundation for seven years.

Her work has been covered by numerous independent and major media including USA Today, ABC, and NBC among many others.

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Reader Interactions

Comments (59)

  1. Sandi Russ

    Jan 18, 2023 at 8:04 am

    I tried raw garlic in the past but the smell remained in my body, literally coming out of the pores. It was not pleasant. Is there a way to negate that?

    Reply
    • Sarah Pope

      Jan 18, 2023 at 12:11 pm

      You can try the garlic pills mentioned in the post …. they greatly minimize this issue. https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/go/allimax/

      Fermented garlic cloves also reduce this issue considerably. https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/pickled-garlic/

  2. drenda lawton

    Aug 29, 2019 at 2:14 pm

    I have been suffering for years with blepharitis and conjunctivitis which causes discharge and irritation of my eyelids….will eating raw garlic help this problem? I have seen 7 eye specialists and none have helped me….

    Reply
    • sandi russ

      Jan 18, 2023 at 8:02 am

      I found reversal of blepharitis through research. A doctor from Japan had posted an article about using coconut oil mixed with tea tree oil. You MUST treat your entire face, which is where the demodex mites continue to live. They get in the hair follicles in your eye area (eyelashes) which the causes eventually the inflammation of blepharitis. There ARE eyelid wipes that you can buy but they are extremely expensive and they don’t tell you to treat your face. Both my husband and I have used this method and gotten rid of the problem. We now do maintenance every couple of weeks, right before going to bed. I put a dab in the lower eyelid before treating my face. No more problems. Do a search on demodex mite and blepharitis. Also searches on japanese solution for blepharitis. Good luck

  3. Stephanie

    Jul 2, 2019 at 1:49 pm

    I have had periodontal bone infection, had a tooth out and the dentist said I did not need antibiotics as it would clear. Three months later, pain is still up my face and in my ear and eye so I started garlic. 4 days later pain is subsided and I’m still continuing with the garlic. Do you think this will cure it or keep it at bay?

    Reply
    • Sarah Pope MGA

      Jul 3, 2019 at 9:57 am

      A periodontal bone infection is VERY serious. I would consider antibiotics for something like that. Garlic is for infections that are not life threatening or not particularly dangerous.

  4. Maryanne Malberg

    May 23, 2019 at 10:50 am

    My best friend Bonny Cardenas uses your book and remedies, especially the garlic one for most infections. I have pneumonia, and she brought me a jar of pickled garlic to try. Sure seems safer than those Rx drugs with the serious side effects. So I’m giving it a try.

    Reply
  5. m.kay

    Mar 25, 2019 at 4:25 am

    wow, this article is helpful to me, I have been trying to treat chronic bacterial infection, so what do you suggest is the dose of garlic I should take and how long?

    Reply
    • Sarah Pope MGA

      Mar 25, 2019 at 7:36 am

      Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride MD recommends consuming an entire head of garlic every day until healing has occurred. This is in the article above 🙂

  6. Charity Machiela

    Mar 24, 2019 at 1:10 pm

    But how many days?

    Reply
    • Sarah Pope MGA

      Mar 24, 2019 at 3:50 pm

      When our family uses it … we use it for 3 days after symptoms clear.

  7. Isabella

    Mar 4, 2019 at 3:52 am

    Can you take garlic oil capsules for a bacterial sinus infection and how many capsules and for how long?

    Reply
  8. Kristin

    Jan 24, 2019 at 3:30 pm

    Yes! I’ve eaten raw garlic to heal myself of an infected blocked breast duct/mastitus, a flu like illness, and even strep throat( using the garlic, honey, cayenne mixture mentioned above)! Currently using it to fight off something in my chest. I found this article in am attempt to get my children to take garlic..I hope they drink the garlic tea I’m making. Thank you for the idea!

    Reply
  9. Desmond Leven

    Dec 30, 2018 at 1:22 pm

    I want to try garlic as a daily health regiment,
    Would suggest raw garlic or pills
    Cheers

    Reply
  10. Hope Welch

    Sep 15, 2018 at 11:42 pm

    I chopped my garlic last night, put it in olive oil and let it sit. I took half of it after about 15 minutes and then it sat overnight where I took the rest today, 24 hour later. Is it going to retain the good stuff?

    Reply
    • Sarah

      Sep 16, 2018 at 4:50 pm

      Probably not after sitting that long.

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