Supports Normal Blood Pressure Balance

The common, domesticated garlic created by millennia of selective breeding, sold in supermarket chains, is not the garlic that’s found wild in Nature. And it’s this common, domesticated garlic (Allium sativum) which is used to make the most readily-available garlic supplements – from the so-called “aged garlics,” to the reputedly high-allicin German garlic extracts, and all the way down to the indistinguishable masses of lower-cost but untested garlic pills which crowd health food store shelves. But the true, original garlic of traditional medicine and modern science is Allium ursinum.

Nutrients and Phytochemicals
• Significantly more of many essential nutrients than common kitchen garlic, including such minerals as magnesium, manganese, and zinc.

• Twice the amount of ajoenes, the components of garlic believed to be responsible for garlic’s ability to prevent the formation of dangerous blood clots.

• High content of gamma-glutamyl peptides, the phytochemicals responsible for garlic’s ability to inhibit angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) – the target of the so-called “ACE inhibitor” drugs. Therefore, Allium ursinum is a more powerful natural “ACE inhibitor” than kitchen garlic extracts.

• Twenty-fold higher levels of adenosine. Adenosine works by opening up the ATP-dependent potassium (KATP) channel in the smooth muscles of blood vessels, leading them to relax and present less resistance to the force of the blood flowing through them.

• Various phytochemicals present in Allium ursinum protect adenosine from destruction, allowing a significant amount of it to be absorbed intact.

Bearing the Pressure
Kitchen garlic, and extracts made from it, does appear to have some ability to lower blood pressure, but the effect is weak and inconsistent – hardly surprising, granted that supermarket garlic contains so little of the key phytonutrients which support lower blood pressure. Several studies show that Allium ursinum consistently supports healthy blood pressure, and does a better job than kitchen-garlic supplements.

In one study, the effects of Allium ursinum were tested in animals fed a hypertension-accelerating diet. The diet caused a dangerous 29% increase in the activity of the blood pressure elevating ACE enzyme. Along with it, their blood pressure climbed upward by 8%. Both the increase in ACE activity, and the rise in BP, suffered by the animals receiving the diet but no supplements, were not only stopped, but reversed, by Allium ursinum.

Next, three different garlic extracts (Kyolic®, Kwai®, or wild Allium ursinum) were tested for their effects on BP, with all animals receiving a blood-pressure promoting diet. The animals who got Allium ursinum showed the greatest reductions in blood pressure and ACE activity, followed by those receiving Kwai, while those receiving Kyolic® experienced the least effect on BP and ACE. Of the three garlics, the natural “ACE-inhibitor” power of Allium ursinum was the strongest.

Hope for Hearts In Crisis
Ventricular fibrillation – the fatal loss of the heart’s rhythm, reducing a regular drumbeat to a spastic, ineffectual quiver with no power to pump blood – can be the most dangerous part of a heart attack. Ventricular fibrillation begins the process that ends in cardiac arrest. And it’s fibrillation that is attacked by defibrillators.

• In one study, rodents were subjected to a simulated heart attack after being fed either regular lab chow, or a diet supplemented with Allium ursinum for eight weeks. After twenty minutes of heart attack conditions, 88% of the untreated animals’ hearts had entered into ventricular fibrillation, versus only 20% of the hearts of animals that had received Allium ursinum.

• After the regular flow of blood was restored to the animals’ hearts, every single one of the untreated animals’ hearts entered into ventricular tachycardia, a condition of wildly racing heartbeat which can lead the heart back into fibrillation; by contrast, 30% fewer animals whose diets had been supplemented with Allium ursinum became tachycardic.

• Significantly fewer of the Allium ursinum-supplemented animals’ heart weight actually became ischemic (starved for oxygen) (33.6% vs 40.9% of heart weight).