Garlic

Garlic, a plant closely related to onions, shallots and leeks is commonly used in Asian cooking as a flavouring agent. Garlic is very well known as a medicinal plant and is used traditionally in Asian medicine.

Garlic has a very strong smell due to its high sulphur content, and it's the sulphur compounds within garlic that are responsible for its many health benefits. Some of the health benefits of garlic are as follow:

Immune Booster

Garlic supplements are known to boost the immune function. Studies have shown that taking garlic supplement may help reduce the risk of getting an infection, as well as the duration of infection. It may also reduce the severity of symptoms.

Garlic also helps to stimulate certain immune cells during an infection.

Reduce blood pressure

Garlic supplements have shown some very promising blood pressure reduction effect in recent studies. In one study, the blood pressure lowering effect of taking aged garlic extract was just as effective as the blood pressure medication Atenolol.

Reduce blood cholesterol

Taking garlic regularly is shown to help with LDL (bad cholesterol) reduction. Some studies showed that garlic supplementation can help reduce total and bad cholesterol by about 10-15%. This effect is even more prominent in people who already have high cholesterol. 

Antioxidant to prevent dementia and Alzheimers

Garlic is also a very rich source of antioxidants - chemical compounds that can help neutralize free radicals in our body. Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease are thought to be at least partly caused by increased free radicals in the brain, causing damage to our brain cells, and the antioxidants in garlic are shown to help neutralize these free radicals.