Garlic - a bad reaction means ???

Garlic is sometimes mentioned as a natural antibiotic, a cleanser, and general health thing.

So I few months ago I started doing the thing where you chop up a clove of garlic and leave it for 10 minutes, and then eat it to get all the allicin and stuff. I was doing that 2x a day - in the morning with a spoonful of raw honey (really raw, my FIL is a beekeeper and spins it out himself), and in the evening with some herbal cough syrup concoction (norwegian pine bark something something), just to assist getting it down. I sometimes threw a bit of fresh ginger and some leaves from my strangely-still-alive windowsill cilantro plant onto the spoon as well. I always did this immediately after eating.

I did this for a few weeks with no real effect except just getting tired of the smell of garlic. Then I started getting a really bad reaction. about one minute after swallowing the clove I began to get really lightheaded, then dizzy, then naseous, then terrible stomach pain. I would sit down and curl into a ball and after about 10 minutes I would start feeling better.

The closest thing that has made me feel similar was the time my Doctor tried putting me on Tramadol. Yeah, that's not a drug that agrees with me. At all.

I stopped doing the garlic regimen. Feeling so bad after taking it made me feel averse to doing it. But I'm stuck on wondering why it happened, and if the reason can give me an idea of what my body is doing.

A. When the garlic started making me feel really bad maybe it was because I had happened to get some extra-fresh cloves from my supermarket, and before that I had got some months-old garlic that didn't have much chemical oomph anymore.

B. Maybe it was sulfur overload. Sulfur is important, but maybe it was too much all at once. I've added in MSM recently, a few teaspoonfuls a day, and that seems to be okay.

C. Maybe my stomach finally just went on strike from having to deal with garlic constantly. Enough woman!

D. Maybe the garlic did start doing something - something good, and I maxed out my body's ability to process it. I don't want to call every little thing I feel a herx, but I'm wondering if my reaction could have been a sign that it was really having a positive(?) effect.

I still sometimes add raw garlic to food - like a little bit ago I cut up a clove and sprinkled it over my bowl of soup. That was delicious, and it also made me feel a bit...odd. Like the feeling when you take a dose of Nyquil and get medicine head.

So weird.

Just wondering if anyone has had a similar experience, or any ideas about what was going on with me.

That reminds me of when I made fire cider last spring. It was very garlicy, and hard to get down due to taste. I had a cold or something and was trying to take the fire cider to make it go away quick. The first day I was fine taking it, but the second day I started having strange symptoms. As soon as it was in my stomach my heart would start racing, I would get very sweaty, and feel faint. It lasted maybe 10 minutes and then I was back to normal.

I have no idea what that was all about. I stopped taking it.

just wanted to add to this something i learned a few days ago, a 2014 small in vitro study by E. Sapi & co shows allicin in garlic having NO EFFECT on borrelia biofilms

/www.newhaven.edu/_resources/documents/academics/surf/past-projects/2014/dylan-haenel-poster.pdf

but lactoferrin does...

anyway garlic is not as fantastic people like to think it is, at least not against borrelia. maybe it works on coinfections, or again... maybe not.

Pirouette said...
mpost -

I'm not sure anyone is talking about using garlic against borrelia.

-p

i assure you the net is full of it. it is no coincidence E Sapi decided to give allicin a try...

anyway, just sharing info, i know garlic is also used in zhangs products (not zhang the researcher, the bartonella/lyme protocol doctor).

i also had allicin added in my german suppmements i used ti take during my natural lyme treatment attempt

maybe it is good for bart. or again, maybe not...

WalkingbyFaith said...
It could also be an allergic reaction. Just because you ate it without adverse effects for a while doesn't mean you couldn't be allergic now. I know a lady who's had anaphylaxis just from smelling garlic.

or... it is a coincidence and nothing more. i hate lyme mostly becauee of this "what caused it" game. if u have 3 months between flares it is impossible not to eat or do somehing out of the ordinary during that time. then we will say it's a herx caused by it.....

Pirouette said...
Garlic is a very strong antifungal, antimicrobial and some believe it's a good anti-parasite. And I'm pretty sure eating the fresh garlic was the catalyst. That's pretty straightforward. You always gotta go fresh.

I chewed up garlic cloves for awhile before I started Lyme & Co tx a few yrs ago. I loved it - love garlic. The fresher the garlic, the more it would sting my tongue and lips and gums.

The sx you mention are classic yeast/fungal die off sx: "lightheaded, then dizzy, then naseous, then terrible stomach pain" But could also be from bacterial die off - I would get the same sx when I took HCL w/ pepsin that mimics digestive acids. I was also experiencing deblitating headaches. I'd just bought an expensive jar of HCL so I called the mfr asking if it could have been tainted.

The very nice woman I talked with helped me understand that I was likely killing bacterial/yeast/fungus and likely other pathogens like normal stomach acid is supposed to do with every meal. But since I was not producing acids, which is why I was on the HCL, the HCL was doing it but the die off was significant from buildup over a couple years of suffering low acid.

The garlic can act in the same way to create die off.

I would continue with the garlic but also incorporate a lot of water afterwards to help your GI flush and if the herxing continues, I'd also incorporate a GI binder to help flush out the toxins and debris from what you're killing off to get them out of your system faster.

-p

Yeah, when the garlic started making me feel bad was when I noticed the garlic was more "stingy" in my mouth and throat. So I think freshness was a part of it.

When I first considered doing this, I read a few places on the web the warning that large amounts of raw garlic could be tough on the digestive tract. So that's why I always took the garlic after eating - thinking the food could be a buffer of sorts. But maybe the meal was diluting my stomach acid, and the garlic spiked it back up?

I usually took a couple drinks of water after the garlic, just to help it all get swallowed and wash out my mouth. But by GI binder are you meaning a green like chlorella, or something like DE? I recently started taking a greens tablet 2x a day. Maybe that would help me deal with taking the garlic again.

So, if I may ask, did you just come to accept that you would have 10 minutes of suffering after you took the HCl? I mean, sure, we suffer all the time, don't we. But I try to avoid the curled into a ball on the couch suffering. But if it means all the regular suffering might go away eventually....at least then it could seem worth it.


And I'm also curious about the anti-parasite activity of garlic. I started taking Cat's Claw recently, and have begun noticing some odd....things ...when I have a BM. Did some reading on the web and noticed that Cat's Claw often pops up on the lists of herbal anti-parasiticals. Oh. So gross. Now I'm wondering if doing the garlic thing again will help the Cat's Claw in getting rid of the....things.

It could be SIBO since garlic is considered high fodmap and feeds bacteria (allicin in garlic is the antimicrobial element).