# Dehydrating Garlic - Medicine



## Rob Roy (Nov 6, 2013)

We just shared this article to our Facebook page and I thought there may be a few here who might enjoy it:

*Dehydrating Garlic For Garlic Powder & Its Benefits*

^^ link to article is right here ^^


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## Arklatex (May 24, 2014)

Great Read!


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## Arklatex (May 24, 2014)

Here is a good read on growing your own. Wish I would have thought of this last fall. I may plant some anyways.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/growing-garlic-zmaz09onzraw.aspx


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## Ralph Rotten (Jun 25, 2014)

If you use it in a vaporizer can't you avoid a lot of this process? You can still get the health benifits without cooking up stew or poultice can't you?


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## Arklatex (May 24, 2014)

Ralph Rotten said:


> If you use it in a vaporizer can't you avoid a lot of this process? You can still get the health benifits without cooking up stew or poultice can't you?


How does that work? Never heard of anyone vaping anything other than nicotine. Do you make the stuff or is it sold? Just curious.


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## Ralph Rotten (Jun 25, 2014)

I have an NO2 vaporizer where you can actually insert mediia like tobacco, pot, garlic, cloves, and other herbs in their raw form. The device heats the contents to the appropriate temps (each media has a different temp) and frees the essential medicine in a vapor state. Ideally you want your media to have a little moisture to it. 
It is much healthier than smoking, and quicker than making a soup. Even with tobacco, you are only dealing with one carcinogen, verses 3000+ when you smoke. 

side note: One of the reasons that smokers have trouble adapting to vaping is that they actually have a co-dependency on the other 2999 chemicals they get when they smoke. If switching from smoking to vaping, you cannot mix them or you will ultimately go back to smoking.


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## Arklatex (May 24, 2014)

Interesting. I'm guessing there is a huge learning curve to using them for medicinal herbs. Instead of tobacco and pot I mean. Would it work properly for things like echinacea? Instead of making decoctions and tinctures, etc. Or would it draw out the wrong things from the plant...

I googled N02 vaporizer and guess who popped up:


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## Ralph Rotten (Jun 25, 2014)

Willie be a head, that's for sure. But his place in Hawaii is totally off the grid. So is Woody's.

My vaporizer actually came with a manual that listed the proper vaping temps for over a dozen herbs. In fact the one temp they DON'T list is cannabis. 
I was surprised by some of the herbs listed, so that started me reading up on herbal remedies and homeopathic medicine. I found it so fascinating that I added an herbalist to Calizona (to counter the other 'herbalist' in the story.) 

After all, in a long term apocalypse the medicines on your shelf will eventually go bad. So it'd be good to know which of the useless weeds in your yard can be used medically.


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## Spice (Dec 21, 2014)

Well, if you try and vape it and it smells of rotten eggy type stuff, at least some of the sulfides are coming through. If it doesn't smell strongly, I doubt it's doing anything. The smelly stuff Is the allicin compounds in garlic.

Just don't try to slice garlic and dry the slices, thinking they'll crumble later. They won't. They won't ever dry to crispiness from thick slices (or at least not over 24 hrs). <-- learned hard way


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## Kauboy (May 12, 2014)

When articles like this state that the medicine "taps into" or "exerts" something, I stop reading.
Come on people, if you are going to have a discussion about medicine, use medical terminology to describe the actual process. (this chemical attaches to that receptor and blocks blah)
I'm not against natural medicines, in general, but there are snake oil salesmen everywhere, and they use that kind of language.
Aspirin is derived from a natural source, so natural medicines can and do have merit, but I need more "meat" in any research I read.

This isn't against he OP, unless they also wrote the linked article.
I know garlic shows good benefits, and if that was all that was stated, I'd be fine.
However, as soon as they identify a specific chemical or compound (Allicin, in this case) and then fail to specifically explain how it interacts, I lose interest and a bit of respect for their attempt.
Does anyone have a source that gives this kind of information?


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## PaulS (Mar 11, 2013)

Kauboy said:


> When articles like this state that the medicine "taps into" or "exerts" something, I stop reading.
> Come on people, if you are going to have a discussion about medicine, use medical terminology to describe the actual process. (this chemical attaches to that receptor and blocks blah)
> I'm not against natural medicines, in general, but there are snake oil salesmen everywhere, and they use that kind of language.
> Aspirin is derived from a natural source, so natural medicines can and do have merit, but I need more "meat" in any research I read.
> ...


So true!
Garlic, Echinecea and other herbal concoctions are not medicine. Medicine is taken when you have a disease. The herbal remedies are preventatives. You saturate your body with vitamin C, D, Zinc and the hebals and you don't get sick or not as sick as you might without them. Loading your body with them after the fact does little for you or to the illness cause.


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## Spice (Dec 21, 2014)

Last I read (which was about six months ago), Kauboy, the only well-characterized action was as a free radical trapper. However, it demonstrably Does inhibit microbial growth to a worthwhile extent, and works on a wide variety of organisms --- much better than its antioxidant power would suggest. I'm with ya on the lack of trust in the vague hand-waving language, but the research on allicin is actually looking pretty darned good. 

Given that they're hydrogen sulfide derivatives, it wouldn't be surprising if they were acting as reducing agents, likely of exposed carbonyls or alcohols....but that's just a guess.


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