Garlic

[Guest guest]

Bruce,

 

I like your raw food philosophy of testing things yourself.

 

On garlic it is various praised as a kind of natural antibiotic and I

have already said that garlic has a medicinal value which I do not deny.

 

However, Professor Paul E Ewald in Plague Time writes a brilliant

chapter entitled " The Magnificent defence " . In it he touches on various

strains of the biological intelligence that are mobilized by our immune

systems to defeat the pathogens in our own bodies. He then goes on to

discuss some aspects of vaccines and antibiotics. He does not

specifically mention garlic but he does mention antibiotics and garlic

which is often held to be a " natural " anti biotic.

 

Here is a page of his chapter which contributes to my scepticism of the

value of garlic as a regular dietary item. It touches on our tampering

with vaccines and antibiotics. Of course it helps to have the rest of

the book as this page on its own will not withstand all the criticism

that may be poured upon a text which is out of its full context.

 

*******************************************************

USING OUR OTHER BRAIN

 

Vaccines are simply a tweak that shifts the immune system response from

the longer delay to the shorter delay. The tweaking of the immune system

with vaccines has so strongly aided the immune system in this conflict

that it has eradicated one scourge smallpox and virtually eradicated

several others, such as polio, measles, and diphtheria, from large

regions of the planet. We take pride in our vaccines, but really the

vaccines are the simplest part of the defense. A vaccine is a mug shot

of a criminal sent to a police station before the criminal is

encountered. Sending the mug shot can be terribly important because it

allows the police force to recognize and respond quickly to the real

criminal. Merely sending the mug shot, though, is far less complex and

difficult than tracking down, apprehending, and incarcerating the

criminal.

Put bluntly, medicine's successes at vaccination and antibiotic

treatment are trivial accomplishments relative to natural selection's

success at generating the immune system. Recognizing this fact has

important repercussions for the long-term control of infectious

diseases. We will probably obtain much better disease control by

figuring out how to further tweak the immune system and capitalize on

its vastly superior abilities than by relying on some human invention

such as new antimicrobials (antibiotics, antivirals, or antiprotozoal

agents). Antimicrobials are useful, but the problems they are good at

solving differ from the problems vaccines are good at solving.

Antimicrobials are not particularly suited to controlling or eradicating

disease at the population level. Rather they are good at helping a

patient who needs to control an infection now. Vaccines are effective at

protecting individuals from becoming infected, at controlling the spread

of disease through populations, and sometimes at eradicating a disease

from a population. The blurring of this distinction between the roles of

antimicrobials and vaccines has hampered the control of disease and

exacerbated the dilemma of antibiotic resistance.

I am confident that we have only begun to capitalize on the immune

system, though I doubt that we will soon be able to administer safely

and effectively the chemical messengers used by the immune system to

turn a particular response up or down. Some scientists hope that a more

effective immune response could be generated by increasing or decreasing

some of these chemical messengers, like turning the volume control on a

radio up or down. I expect that the immune system is much too weblike to

do that. Radios were engineered to be controlled by a listener. They

therefore have controls for particular properties, such as volume)

treble, and bass, controls that are well suited for adjustment by the

fingers of the listener. The immune system, like the brain, was

engineered by natural selection to be a self-controlling unit. It

therefore does not have controls that allow an outside user to turn one

attribute at a time up or down. If we increased a chemical messenger to

try to improve immune function, we would probably cause many unforeseen

effects as the immediate response affected other parts of the

immunological web.

 

**********************************

 

I think the learned professor has a point which is echoed in the

unwritten and a sometimes over simplistic ethos of raw foodism. Raw

foodism favours letting the body get on and do its own work rather than

tampering with potentially dangerous " substances " about which we still

know very little and may eventually weaken our species.

 

It is not my business to steal his thunder.

 

 

Peter

 

 

 

Bruce Reid [bwreid67]

20 October 2003 19:15

rawfood

RE: [Raw Food] I would Love to talk RAW Food (Bitter Greens)

 

 

 

 

I eat a very specialized diet. It does include occasional raw garlic in

some dishes. First off I do not take something as fact unit I have

explored it thoroughly (i.e. Tried it Myself). Granted lately the last

two years I have not had bunch of spare time. I am in excellent health

so I have not had reason to change what I’m doing. I do push my body to

extreme limits (Run, Bike, Swim, Paddle, Climb) I eat as my body tells

me to. Garlic has a very warming effect in the body as stated in the

article that I posted. As far as flora is concerned I have not felt any

effects or seen for that matter in my stool. My digestion works like

clockwork eat and move every time and complete digestion.

 

 

 

I do like what you said about eating a plate of something. I try not to

eat anymore than seven ingredients at any one meal, as I believe it

makes assimilation to complicated. The problem is, I need to get

everything in one dish and don’t have all day to get complete nutrition.

My morning meal is the simplest meal of the day and usually consists of

one type of fruit. (i.e. 1-1 ½ lbs of grapes or 6- Oranges). My noon

meal is the biggest meal of the day and it is close to Ann Wigmores

complete salad. Dinner is a lighter meal and usually consists of a big

glass of fresh Vegetable and Greens juice.

 

 

 

Bruce

 

 

 

 

 

The New with improved product search