The use of garlic as a healing and preventative medicine dates back at least as far as the Egyptians, Babylonians and Hebrews. The workers who built the great pyramid of Giza are known to have been given large quantities of garlic to eat raw to prevent disease.

In modern times health food shops all stock a wide range of garlic products but none of them seem to work particularly well when compared to the effects of eating large quantities of raw garlic. The problem is that none of us want to walk around reeking of raw garlic as did the Egyptian labour force - so what is the answer?

Almost sixty years ago scientists discovered that the secret of garlic lay in a chemical that they named Allicin. This chemical has very potent effects that stop the growth of bacteria, and fungi and may also have anti-viral activity. Have you ever wondered why a clove of garlic (or indeed a daffodil bulb) buried in the wet soil in the autumn does not rot away during the cold winter months before it has a chance to spring to life in the warmth of the following year? The answer is that through the process of evolution such plants came to use an elegant mechanism that automatically produces the anti-microbial chemical if anything damages the surface of the dormant bulb in any way, thus protecting the life within from attack.

Until recent times most methods used to prepare garlic powders or capsules destroyed this mechanism so that the important ingredient Allicin was not present in anything but tiny quantities. Now that scientists have discovered how to isolate and preserve the Allicin from Garlic the true power of the herb may have been harnessed. Allicin has now been proven to have potent antibacterial and antifungal activity in the laboratory and recent clinical trials have also shown that Allicin may help to prevent and shorten the effects of viruses and flu. Arguments still continue as to whether it is the Allicin compound itself that does the job when humans chew raw garlic or whether it is a combination of hundreds of other compounds present in the herb. I have always advocated the use of crushed garlic adding it to my own winter remedy of hot honey and lemon juice, but this winter I will be taking Allicin as well!