How Garlic Can Prevent Brain Aging
The choices you make daily and the foods you eat influence the evolution of your brain and gut. The foods you eat play a significant role in brain health, minimizing the impact of aging on the brain, and preventing neurodegeneration. A small herb you use every day can support a healthy brain and body. Garlic, the handy all-purpose herb, can prevent brain-aging, support your gut health, and balance your overall health.
Your Second Brain
Your brain isn’t the only place in your body with nerve cells. Have you heard that the gut is your second brain? Have you ever had a gut feeling? That feeling when you knew something without really knowing or having any evidence. Have you ever made a gut decision or made a decision because deep down it just felt right? Or have you ever thought about why you get butterflies in your stomach for that special someone or when you feel nervous about something?
All of this happens because your gastrointestinal system (GI tract) is kind of like a brain. It has its own nervous system, called the enteric nervous system. Within your gut, there are 100 million nerve cells. Those nerve cells have their own ways of influencing the health of your body and brain in ways scientists and doctors are only beginning to understand.
The brain and gastrointestinal tract are connected in several ways. Their cells come from the same embryonic tissue, they’re both overflowing with nerve cells, and they use some of the same hormones.
Blood Flow and the Brain
Garlic is considered one of the best disease-preventing herbs. It doesn’t just help prevent diseases of the body, garlic can also prevent brain disease and anti-aging. In order to maintain your brain’s health, it’s important to prevent damage to your nervous system. A lot of the damage that neurologists see in the brain is due to preventable chronic diseases like high cholesterol and hypertension. High cholesterol is a major factor in the development of atherosclerosis in blood vessels. The build-up of atherosclerotic plaques causes blood vessels to narrow, decreasing the amount of blood flow to the brain.
Hypertension can have a devastating impact on the brain. The increased pressure on the walls of arteries damages them, causing the buildup of plaques inside blood vessels. As a result, areas of the brain don’t get the amount of blood that they need. Someone with high blood pressure and high cholesterol can develop strokes, brain fog, seizures, and neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia.
Garlic for Anti-Aging
Garlic is well known for lowering total cholesterol, as well as LDL cholesterol. Lowering cholesterol allows garlic to protect against the formation of atherosclerotic disease. Garlic has also been shown to increase the body’s production of nitric oxide, which relaxes blood vessels and decreases blood pressure.
The benefits of garlic aren’t limited to its protective effects. It also aids in the creation of new neurons. Some studies have shown that garlic is important in neuroplasticity. This ability seems to be most prominent in the memory centers of the brain. As a result, not only is garlic good for brain health and function, but also in the prevention of neurodegeneration.
It’s recommended that you enjoy 1-2 gloves a day. If you cook daily, that shouldn’t be an issue. However, you can also:
brew garlic in tea
make hummus with garlic
grill or roast garlic with a meal
or use it on a toast or bruschetta
Garlic can be an instrumental tool in preventing the brain from aging. Because of the various ways in which garlic impacts the body and brain, it prevents and treats chronic diseases such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure as well as promotes the formation of new neurons.