What is allicin
and what are its medicinal benefits?

Allicin comes from garlic and garlic is remarkable for the number of compounds it contains, including seventeen amino acids, at least 33 sulfur compounds, eight minerals (germanium, calcium, copper, iron, potassium, magnesium, selenium and zinc) and the vitamins A, B1 and C. It also comprises fiber and water but not a single trace of alli-cin, the wonder compound that this report is about.

How can this be? It’s a story of how a plant has evolved to protect itself from attack by microbes in the soil, and here’s how it goes:

ALLIIN AND ALLINASE – THE DYNAMIC DUO

In 1944 an Italian chemist, C. J. Cavallito, first isolated an unstable, odorous sulfur-containing compound with antibacterial properties from extracts of fresh garlic. He called the substance alli-cin (al-e-sin), after the generic name for the plant Allium Sativum.

Four years later researchers Stoll and Seebeck, also working with garlic, discovered an odourless sulfur-containing compound called alliin (al-e-een). This they found to be converted by a second garlic constituent, an enzyme called allinase (al-i-naze), to form alli-cin.

The researchers made an additional, remarkable discovery: When they studied the cloves in cross-section they found that alliin and allinase were stored in different compartments. In an undamaged clove they remained completely separate, but once its structure was ruptured –typically by cutting – the two substances came into contact and formed alli-cin.

ALLICIN AND ITS MEDICINAL BENEFITS

This transformation is extremely rapid, taking mere seconds. Even more intriguing is the instability of alli-cin. It remains active only for a short period before degrading.

There must be a reason for this. Nothing in nature exists without a reason. All the clues suggest that garlic possesses a defense mechanism against attack from the soil-borne organisms.

It has been found that invasion of growing garlic cloves by fungi and other soil pathogens causes the alliin and allinase to react, rapidly producing localized bursts of alli-cin which deactivates the invaders. This ability underlies the exceptional capacity of alli-cin to kill unwanted organisms, about which you will read more later.

There is a good reason why the highly reactive alli-cin molecules have such a short working life. If they didn’t they would continue to react with surrounding proteins, including the allinase enzyme itself, and this would use-up the garlic’s protection, which it might need later.

This extremely efficient binary chemical mechanism ensures that the clove’s defense is highly localized and short-lived – just sufficient to repel an attack. The remaining alliin and allinase are held in reserve to fight off any subsequent attacks.

While this is good for the well being of a garlic crop, it poses distinct problems for anyone trying to extract and isolate the key active ingredient in a way that is beneficial. It was five decades after its initial discovery that alli-cin would be isolated in a stabilized form for the first time.

MOTHER AND OFFSPRING

When alli-cin degrades, as many as 200 other sulfur compounds are formed. Many of these, like alli-cin, are transitory in nature while others endure. One is a compound named ajoene (ah-ho-ene) after ”ajo”, the Spanish for garlic, which has been shown to possess antithrombotic, antimycotic (it kills fungal infections) and anti-fat depositing actions.

Others that have attracted scientific interest across a wide spectrum of disease conditions have only been used in experiments on animals or on human cell models in the laboratory. These include diallyldisulphide (DADS) and diallltrisulphide (DATS).

Thus allicin can be regarded as the ”mother substance” from which all others flow. Raw garlic degrades into allicin to a greater or lesser extent and then many ”sons and daughters” of allicin form, some of which have beneficial effects on the body and some which do not.

SO WHAT IS ALLICIN?

In the opaque terminology of the biochemist, alli-cin is described as diallyl thiosulphinate, allyl sulfide or even S-(2-Propenyl) 2-propene- 1-sulphinothioate. What is more important to recognize is the most crucial and reactive part of the alli-cin molecule – the sulfur-sulfur bond coupled to an atom of oxygen.

Chemists know that this configuration is highly reactive, giving alli-cin its remarkable antibiotic properties and, in particular, the potential to assist the immune system in a number of important ways, including stimulating immune cells, killing pathogens and detoxifying carcinogens.

Before the advent of pharmaceutical antibiotics, crushed aqueous garlic extracts were used to treat a wide range of infectious disease, including dysentery, typhoid, cholera, smallpox and tuberculosis.

Then, in the 1930s, the first class of antibiotic drugs was invented – the sulphonamides. The reason they were so successful was the presence of the reactive sulfur group – exactly the same group that alli-cin contains.

HOW DOES ALLICIN WORK?

Because alli-cin is “so keen”, in biochemical terms, to react with micro-organisms, it is able to penetrate their cell walls. In doing so it is then able to upset their biochemical balance and impede their activity.

At low concentrations of alli-cin, the degree of interference may not be lethal, but sufficient to block the microbe’s virulence. At slightly higher concentrations, the effect can prove lethal for the micro-organism (see later for more details).

Allicin Facts

Do conventional garlic supplements work? A quite bewildering array of garlic supplements are on offer when visiting a health-food shop or drug store, all apparently offering you alli-cin. However, in a review of garlic supplement brands carried out in March 2003, the independent consumer body ConsumerLabs.com found that the strength of these products, judged on each product’s ability to generate alli-cin in a laboratory test, varies by as much as 1500 per cent.

ConsumerLabs.com found that almost a quarter of non-aged products (aged garlic never produces any alli-cin) yielded less alli-cin than was generally considered therapeutic and then only in a laboratory and not in your body, which is an altogether different setting.

The global consumption of garlic per year is approximately 1 clove for every living person! In the UK alone more than two million packs of garlic supplements were purchased in 2005/2006 from chemists, supermarkets and mass-merchandisers to treat elevated cholesterol, hypertension and other common disorders.

This makes garlic the most popular herbal product according to many sources. Yet NONE of those consumers are getting what they actually need from a garlic product – that all-important heal-all, allicin. Why? As we’ve seen, allicin is created when a garlic clove is ruptured, by the action of two constituents in a defence against attacking soil organisms. But just as allicin is produced in a matter of seconds, its potency dies away with equal rapidity.

In its natural, unstabilised form, it rapidly degrades and is simply not available as an active substance for the benefit of humans. In short, without allicin in its stabilised form, these supplements have little, and mostly no allicin potential. This is confirmed by the total lack of any clinical evidence for any activity as an antimicrobial agent.

Consider the ConsumerLabs.com study in a little more detail. Thirteen non-aged garlic products and one aged product were purchased and tested. The amount of allicin produced by the non-aged garlic products ranged by a factor of 15-fold in the laboratory dish, which bears no relation to the environment of the human body.

There’s clearly no consistency of quality. Ironically, a product with one of the lowest allicin yields per gram of garlic claimed to be ”allicin rich.” Several products produced nowhere near the amount of allicin the manufacturer claimed.

Few products clearly state their allicin yield and, when they do, they are not always accurate. The important word in these statements is ”yield”. This is purely a theoretical amount and in the human body this just does not happen.

The reason why is that our gastric acids deactivate allinase, the allicin-producing enzyme. It is estimated by garlic experts such as Dr Larry Lawson and Professor Eric Block, as well as my own research group, that every time you swallow a typical garlic powder product, 95 per cent of it will never become active and you will get virtually nothing from it.

Check exactly how much garlic is contained in your supplement, as some are virtually ‘garlic-free’. Ask if the product has any published clinical evidence.

A recent paper in the Journal of Agricultural Food Science by Lawson and Wang showed that most garlic supplements are standardized on allicin potential and are enteric-coated to prevent the action of gastric acid.

To determine whether these products release the claimed amount of allicin under simulated gastrointestinal conditions (found in your gut), a standard method for drug release was applied to all 24 known brands of enteric-coated tablets.

While all brands employed effective coatings and met their claims for allicin potential when crushed and suspended in water, 83 per cent of them released less than 15 per cent of their potential dissolution allicin release.

Only when tablets had high allinase activity and disintegrated rapidly did they show high allicin release.

Crucially the researchers concluded that garlic powder supplements should no longer be standardized on allicin potential, but rather on dissolution allicin release.

Further evidence was published in the same journal by two researchers from The Department of Chemistry at the University of California. They analyzed a large number of commercially available garlic products and concluded that the amount of allicin available from these products, when analyzed in gastric or intestinal fluid, was less than one part per million (ppm).

This compares with the guaranteed 100 per cent yield of at least 250ppm allicin from the true “allicin-containing” products that are now coming to market.

Independent research confirms that many garlic supplements cannot provide ANY of the garlic’s active principal, allicin.

What all this boils down to is that there really is no comparison between the general body of allicin-claiming products and the allicin containing products that are now being introduced to consumers worldwide.

Some garlic powder tablet preparations do have the ability to generate tiny quantities of allicin, and therefore all the beneficial sulphur compounds that come from allicin will also be present. But, as we have seen, the actual amount of allicin your body receives from these products is minute.

This is why there is absolutely NO DATA published on these products to show any anti-microbial activity, and even recent studies on cardiovascular activity have failed to confirm the promise that early studies showed.

What about raw garlic?

Eating raw garlic, which itself varies quite widely in its relative yield of alli-cin, is hardly an option, given the social consequences and more technically, the deactivating effect of stomach acid on the allinase.

In any case scientists have found that the amount of alli-cin released from different garlic around the world can vary by as much as 10 times, and given that the best yield is about a 4% alli-cin yield, you’d have to munch an awful lot of garlic!

Or garlic oil?

Results of independent analysis from the Camden Food and Drink Research Association and the prestigious Warren Springs Laboratory show that garlic oil does not provide alli-cin. This is because it is destroyed by the boiling process used in the oil’s manufacture.

However, it is fair to say that some oil-based products do contain potentially beneficial sulfur compounds due to high levels of concentration and they may help various circulatory disorders.

THE MICROBIOLOGY OF STABILISED ALLICIN

There are four main characteristics that determine how effective an antibiotic will be. Alli-cin is known as ‘Nature’s antibiotic’ and recent work has shown that stabilized alli-cin has all the required characteristics to make a modern antibiotic capable of killing even the most drug-resistant species of bacteria, including MRSA, MDRTB and PRSP.

The four key characteristics are:

Selectivity - Clinically effective antimicrobial agents all exhibit selective toxicity toward the bacterium rather than the host. It is this characteristic that distinguishes antibiotics from disinfectants. The basis for selectivity will vary depending on the particular antibiotic.

When selectivity is high the antibiotics are normally not toxic. However, even highly selective antibiotics can have side-effects.

Therapeutic Index - The therapeutic index is defined as the ratio of the dose toxic to the host to the effective therapeutic dose. The higher the therapeutic index the better the antibiotic.

Categories of Antibiotics - Antibiotics are categorized as bactericidal if they kill the susceptible bacteria or bacteriostatic if they reversibly inhibit the growth of bacteria. In general the use of bactericidal antibiotics is preferred but many factors may dictate the use of a bacteriostatic antibiotic.

When a bacteriostatic antibiotic is used, the duration of therapy must be sufficient to allow cellular and humeral defense mechanisms to eradicate the bacteria. If, possible bactericidal antibiotics should be used to treat infections of the endocardium or the meninges.

Host defenses are relatively ineffective in these sites and the dangers imposed by such infections require prompt eradication of the organisms.

Antibiotic Susceptibility Testing - The basic quantitative measures of the in vitro activity of antibiotics are the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and the minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC). The MIC is the lowest concentration of the antibiotic that results in inhibition of visible growth (i.e. colonies on a plate or turbidity in broth culture) under standard conditions.

The MBC is the lowest concentration of the antibiotic that kills 99.9% of the original inoculum in a given time.For an antibiotic to be effective, the MIC or MBC must be able to be achieved at the site of the infection. The pharmacological absorption and distribution of the antibiotic will influence the dose, route and frequency of administration of the antibiotic in order to achieve an effective dose at the site of infection.

In clinical laboratories a more common test for antibiotic susceptibility is a disk diffusion test. In this test, the bacterial isolate is inoculated uniformly onto the surface of an agar plate. A filter disk impregnated with a standard amount of an antibiotic is applied to the surface of the plate and the antibiotic is allowed to diffuse into the adjacent medium. The result is a gradient of antibiotic surrounding the disk.

Following incubation, a bacterial lawn appears on the plate. Zones of inhibition of bacterial growth may be present around the antibiotic disk. The size of the zone of inhibition is dependent on the diffusion rate of the antibiotic, the degree of sensitivity of the microorganism, and the growth rate of the bacterium.

The zone of inhibition in the disk diffusion test is inversely related to the MIC. The test is performed under standardized conditions and standard zones of inhibition have been established for each antibiotic. If the zone of inhibition is equal to or greater than the standard, the organism is considered to be sensitive to the antibiotic. If the zone of inhibition is less than the standard, the organism is considered to be resistant.

Combination Therapy - Combination therapy with two or more antibiotics is used in special cases: (1) to prevent the emergence of resistant strains, (2) to treat emergency cases during the period when an etiological diagnosis is still in progress, and (3) to take advantage of antibiotic synergism.

Antibiotic synergism occurs when the effects of a combination of antibiotics is greater than the sum of the effects of the individual antibiotics. Antibiotic antagonism occurs when one antibiotic, usually the one with the least effect, interferes with the effects of another antibiotic.

Pharmaceutical antibiotic creme Mupirocin placed on a plate of MRSAbacteria shows no killing capability because the bacteria are resistant

A sample of alli-cin placed on a similar plate shows significant killing activity represented by a large zone of inhibition

A similar plate of MRSA bacteria but with alli-cin liquid as the test substance, which again shows a highly significant zone of inhibition. Every batch of liquid and powdered alli-cin produced is routinely assayed against this drug-resistant bacteria to prove the formulations are biologically active and can remove infection

This is an allicin formulation measured against a pharmaceutical drug called Vancomycin. This shows that the allicin formula actually kills these MRSA bacteria much more effectively than the drug, as indicated by the comparative zone sizes. Allicin on the left and vancomycin on the right.

Price per bottle

1-2 bottles $40.00 3-11 bottles $30.00 12 or more $25.00

Order Three And save $10 per bottle.

You can also mix alliderm/alli-c buy two alli-c and one alliderm, just be sure to leave a note in paypal so I know what to send.
I highly recommend using alliderm in the nostrils along with alli-c internally.

Alli-C and Alliderm are
Natural Healers

Allicin is the most potent antibacterial and anti-fungal substance in garlic, but under normal circumstances is extremely unstable.

Only recently, decades after it was first identified in the laboratory, has it been possible to produce a stabilized form on a commercial scale.

Price per oz.

1-2 bottles $40.00 3-11 bottles $30.00 12 or more $25.00

Peter Josling, director of the the Garlic Information Centre in East Sussex, together with a team of chemists and chemical process engineers have pioneered and patented the unique process of water-based extraction and freeze-drying that has made this possible.

This process is finally allowing researchers to explore allicin’s potential more fully, to confirm its spectrum of activity, not only in helping to maintain a healthy cholesterol level, but also against today’s most pressing problems – resistant bacteria, virus and fungal infections.

However, the addition of vitamin c has only recently been made available and is unique to Garlic Rx Inc. This combination is a powerful cleanser and healer that can kill off a wide variety of pathogens and parasites when ingested.

Now with the addition of a gel formula these products can really help many people.

Alli-c is a natural antibiotic that promotes healing of MRSA infections

And is claimed to kill over 300 strains of MRSA bacteria

Daily Dose

For people with whose immune system functions normally only 1-2 capsules per day is recommended.

People with poor immunity or existing diseases may need more 3-6 capsules should be taken daily 3 twice a day or 1 dose in the morning.

Alli-C may be taken in large doses especially if a resistant infection is present. It is perfectly safe to take up to 12 capsules or more in a day if necessary.

Alliderm is used topically and can be used to treat drug resistant infections where antibiotics fail. Wounds start to heal immediately and skin problems begin to go. Use as often as required.

How I have stopped the common cold using a natural treatment for fighting MRSA

It started at the end of October 2009, I was on a commercial fishing trip close to Mobile Alabama, We were fishing for scamp and be-liners. During this trip I became infected by A staph bacteria that turned out to be MRSA. In the course of fighting this infection I came across a most wonderful natural treatment to help my body fight this bacterial foe that had invaded my body and my life! But it turned out that this treatment had a side effect as so many treatments do, but this side effect was a good one and now after a year plus I can honestly say, that for me it is the cure for the common cold. .....Read more here

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