Garlic Slays Pesky Intestinal Bacteria
Kellye Copas | Aug 17, 2012 | Comments 4 |
Garlic, the pungent and tasty herb that adds a kick to many dishes and purportedly makes vampires keep their distance, now has more scientific evidence to back up its reputation as a powerful natural antimicrobial agent.
Recent research studied the antimicrobial effects of diallyle sulphide (one of the main medicinal ingredients in garlic) on Campylobacter, a bacterium that frequently causes intestinal infections and is especially hard to clean from food-preparation surfaces because of its slimy protective biofilm.
Researchers treated Campylobacter with two common antibiotics and then with the diallyl sulphide compound derived from garlic.
The antibiotics had some effect, but the garlic compound was by far the winner. Not only did the garlic compound work faster and infiltrate the biofilm, but it was 100 times as effective and killed the bacteria.
Practical applications may involve diallyl sulphide as an ingredient for products used to clean food-preparation sites and to stop bacterial colonization in packaged foods.
Filed Under: Alternative Medicine • Easy Health Options News • News and Views
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I’d think soap and water and/or isopropyl alcohol and/or some other strong chemical would b e better for cleaning surfaces.
More than fourty years ago, my mum used to give me to swallow every morning some raw garlic, in order to prevent bacteria forming in the intestines, diarrhea and germs. We used to live in a north African country for some time. I am surprised to read about your article of which every body then knew about and took for granted. not quite a breakthrough though…
In my nutrition plan garlic is daily and consumed in high rate almost more than 5 lbs per month and in fact have never had any kind of infection or disease or inflammation for the last 15 yearswhen I started arranging my food nature and type
Eating garlic, on a regular basis, was a large contributor of clearing up my Irritable Bowel Syndrome. My doctor was amazed, since we’d been dealing with IBS for nearly 18 yrs, with nothing getting rid of it. I tried the high fiber diet, etc. Finally, I stopped eating grocery store produce. Didn’t take a month, and it was gone. All that time & money wasted. Go to farmers markets, or local farm stands for produce/fruit. Is everyone aware that produce/fruits in grocery stores has been irradiated? Even the organic produce/fruits.