Experimenting with Garlic While Being Sick With A Cold

This season was the first time that I can remember getting a cold and not developing a cough. I took garlic for the duration which was a cold remedy that I had read about a while back and have since been experimenting with. On a whole the severity of the cold was fairly weak though I still had a runny nose for about a week.

My dad and stepmom were visiting for a few days before and my stepmom was a bit sick. She was coughing and had a runny nose, but given that they were only going to be in town for a few days we did our best to spend some time together. A couple of days after their visit, I found myself waking up with a stuffed up and runny nose. As is common in families, it seemed that I had gotten the same cold that she had.

In the past, I had taken garlic a bit later in the duration of a cold, but this was the first time that I took it from the start. I chewed up a clove in the morning and swallowed it with some water. I also did this at night before bed on the nights that I remembered. For the duration of the cold, I never developed a cough. This was amazing to me because it was the first time that I can ever remember in my life not getting a cough with a cold. Additionally, when I blew my nose the mucous was clear for the entire duration of the cold as well which was also a first. As someone who used to always get severe colds and a cough that would last for weeks after, I felt much better for the entire length of the cold.

Initially when I first started experimenting with taking garlic, I would chop a clove or two up and mix it with it with a little olive oil. Then I would eat it with warm bread. It made for a great snack and always cleared up my sinuses right away for a few hours. Ingesting a clove of garlic at the beginning was rough on my stomach so taking it with food seemed to keep my stomach from getting upset. Now that I have been taking garlic more often, I can chew up a clove and chase it with some water to deal with the spiciness and it doesn’t really bother my stomach anymore.

Of course, there is still the smell to deal with. You can smell the garlic on yourself for hours. Nobody has ever told me that I smell, but I just kind of assume that I do.Personally, I think it is probably better for people to deal with you smelling a little like garlic for a week then with you blowing your nose every five minutes for a week, but I am sure there are those that would disagree.

Still if you are worried about it, there are a lot of recommendations out there on the internet to deal with the smell. These include eating a bit of parsley after eating the garlic or just switching to garlic tablets. Personally, I have taken garlic tablets and haven’t found them to be quite as effective which presumably is from the garlic not being as fresh.Still, they can be a good alternative.

There are some other side effects besides the smell too. When I first started experimenting, I mistakenly assumed more is better. I would take approximately four cloves over the course of the day and by the end of the day, I would have a fairly severe headache. It is definitely something to watch out for. I have also experienced nausea even just from taking two cloves a day, but it has never been that bad.

Note that I am not a doctor or an herbalist so I can’t do anything more than offer my own experience. I noticed in my mid-twenties that I got colds more often and that seemed more severe than most people I knew. Because of that, I started to try and figure out why and learn more about remedies that might be able to help. In full disclosure, the biggest change in the severity of my colds has been from being in better shape and taking better care of myself on a whole (losing weight and exercising). Though I still feel like the garlic has a huge benefit otherwise I would not be writing this.

Obviously, there are many other cold remedies out there that people swear by: vitamin C, Echinacea, and zinc to name a few. The first time I tried Echinacea, I had great results, but after that with other colds it didn’t seem to have any effect. Similarly with vitamin C and zinc, I have had a hard time noticing any kind of pronounced effects. This is not to say they aren’t good for you, but only that the benefits are less pronounced. With garlic, I can feel relief almost immediately. I feel like it gets overlooked because of its smell, but I believe it to be very effective. I now take it whenever I have a cold or if I feel like a cold is coming on.