Garlic and Acne: Is This Common Herb the Healthiest Skin Food Of All Time?

Today’s post will be about whether adding garlic to your diet is a sound acne strategy. In short – this bulbous root is absolutely amazing.

Garlic’s history of medicinal power is almost as strong as its pungent, vampire-scaring aroma. It was revered for its health properties in Ancient Egypt 4500 years ago, and first appeared in cooking around 4000BC.

During Medieval times, raw garlic was taken to vanquish drunkenness and greed. Later, the English would eat a whole clove to ward off the Black Death. By 1858, the famous Louis Pasteur was preaching garlic’s antifungal and antibacterial powers to anyone that would listen.

In the 21st century, Sub-Saharan Africans are now eating garlic to ward off mosquitoes. Merely consuming garlic will kill them, as the scent oozes out of your skin pores.

In America, there’s even a chewable dog food called Bug Off Garlic, designed to give your dog a mosquito forcefield. Its potency against these blood sucking insects might be how people realised that vampires hate it… 

…and there’s one other pest that garlic can vanquish – our old friend acne.

 

Garlic slashes inflammation!

By far the most famous medicinal compound in garlic is the sulphur based allicin. Garlic is a highly sulphurous food in general thanks to its many thiosulphanates, dithiins, and sulfoxides, but allicin forms roughly 70-80% of garlic’s total thiosulphanates. It also provides much of garlic’s pungent aroma.

Why is allicin so fantastic for acne? As your stomach digests allicin, it rapidly breaks down into sulfenic acid. That’s an antioxidant, and a particularly potent one; this study found that sulfenic acid reacts with free radicals faster than any other substance known to mankind.

Read Annihilate Your Acne – get the ultimate diet and clear your acne permanently!

The happy result for your skin is more antioxidants available to defend against it. It also boosts glutathione, the body’s master antioxidant, which you manufacture yourself, but acne patients commonly lack. Sulphur is also a base ingredient of glutathione (alongside zinc and selenium), and garlic is packed with it.

Allicin isn’t the only special molecule either, as another sulphurous compound in garlic is thiacremonone. This study found that thiacremonone inhibited both NF-kappaB and cyclogenase-2 (COX-2), two master molecules which control a vast swathe of pro-inflammatory chemicals. Thus, thiacremonone “could be a useful agent for the treatment of inflammatory and arthritic diseases”.

The advantage – arthritis is classic disease of chronic inflammation, and so is acne. There are arthritis sufferers on the internet right now taking highly concentrated garlic pills.

Yet another sulphurous compound is 1,2-vinyldithiin (1,2-DT). Compared to thiacremonone, the exact mechanism is less clear, but this study found that 1,2-DT inhibited numerous pro-inflammatory chemicals in human cells. Interleukin-6, which acne prone skin has much higher amounts of than average, was reduced by 26%.

How does this translate to the real world? Less inflammation means that your acne will be far less red, swollen and painful, and much of your acne won’t be born at all.

The signs are good elsewhere, as garlic can treat airway inflammation nicely in those with breathing problems. This study on aged garlic protected the brain from inflammation by blunting the increase in COX-2 (by 73.6%) and the inflammatory chemical TNF-a (76.6%). Interestingly, garlic slashed brain “infarction”, when brain cells get starved of oxygen and die, by a staggering 54.8%.

Garlic is a top ten anti-inflammatory food, and hence, it’s at least a top fifteen acne-clearing food. 

 

Garlic contains tons of antioxidants!

An even bigger power still is garlic’s astonishing antioxidant profile. It’s partly the sulfenic acid created by allicin digestion, which researchers say kills free radicals instantly upon contact. However, most of the sulphurous molecules have some antioxidant functioning: 

Ajoene – allicin is a by-product of alliin and allinase, and ajoene is in turn a by-product of allicin. A 2010 study tested two types of ajoenes, e-ajoene and z-ajoene, and found that both strongly inhibited free radicals. Ajoene is also the saviour behind garlic’s anti blood clot powers, as it prevents your blood cells from becoming too sticky.

Allixin – a member of the wide phenolic family of antioxidants. In one study, allixin (different to allicin) inhibited the oxidisation of LDL cholesterol quite potently, as did several other garlic-derived antioxidants. That’s promising for acne as cholesterol molecules are normally protected by vitamin E; garlic could therefore free up more vitamin E to protect the skin.

Garlic is an antioxidant powerhouse. Furthermore, they have high bioavailability in the body. Two other sulphurous antioxidants called S-allyl mercaptocysteine (SAMC) and S-allyl cysteine (SAC) have a bloodstream absorption rate of 98 percent.

As for studies on garlic itself, this human study noticed significantly lower bloodstream lipid peroxides. These are essentially fat-based free radicals, which require fat-soluble antioxidants to deactivate, such as vitamin E and vitamin A. Again, garlic’s antioxidants could relive the pressure on these important acne nutrients. It could also prevent more minor fat-soluble antioxidants from being depleted, like lutein in eggs, which boosts your skin’s sun shields.

 

Garlic improves your digestion!

One of garlic’s more unique qualities is boosting your acne-friendly gut bacteria, or essentially, its prebiotic powers.

Both garlic and onions, part of the same Allium family, are rich in an insoluble fiber called inulin (different to the hormone insulin!). Because you can’t digest inulin normally, your gut bacteria break it down instead. They ferment it for their own fuel, but also create more easily digestible fragments for you…

…and the benefit is helping your friendly bacterial strains to expand. This review commented that inulin was excellent at boosting the Bifidobacterium family, which manufactures b-vitamins, and possibly even the happiness hormone serotonin. Just 5-8 grams a day boosts bifidobacterium excellently and garlic is 9-16% inulin by weight; three cloves can thus provide 3 grams.

However, this leads us onto garlic’s only real downside. On acne forums, there are uncommon but not rare stories of sudden breakouts from garlic. Why? Because some people lack the diversity of gut flora to ferment insoluble fibers properly.

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Inulin is normally acne-friendly, but a small minority may experience bloating, intestinal distress, and abdominal pain. Reportedly, 1% of children have garlic allergies. A classic side effect of food allergies is acne, so if that’s what you’re noticing from garlic, inulin is why.

Generally though, garlic is excellent for gut health. Allicin is famous for killing infectious fungi, bacteria, and viruses; that’s why Louis Pasteur recommended it back in the 1850s.

This translates to your gut, and kills the harmful bacteria which can 1) churn out stress hormones, 2) impair vitamin absorption, and 3) churn out inflammatory molecules. Allicin is known to kill…

• E coli.
• Staphylococcus aureus.
• Clostridium perfringens.
• Salmonella spp.

In fact, allicin preferentially kills harmful bacteria for acne. It is neutral to friendly ones like the Lactobacillus and enterococci families.

 

Should an acne patient be eating garlic?

There are no studies directly on garlic and acne, but I believe that it’s easily a top 15 food for treating the root causes.

Garlic’s main powers of lowering inflammation and boosting antioxidants are common in plant foods, but here, they’re massively amplified.

Then there’s garlic’s long anecdotal history of treating skin problems. Mandarin oil painter Choo Keng Kwang reversed his psoriasis completely after just 4 days of eating half a bulb of black garlic daily. He did this after trying countless medically prescribed skin creams, which all failed.

One clove will provide acne-clearing antioxidants, but two or three cloves will be even better. If you choose garlic, I’d advise at least one clove a day, consistently, to feed your gut bacteria a constant stream of fuel.

 

Fresh garlic is optimal for acne

Allicin is clearly the strongest acne-clearing compound in garlic, but with the wrong preparation it can be obliterated.

You see, a whole fresh garlic bulb contains relatively little allicin. Instead, when you slice into garlic with a knife, two other sulphurous compounds called alliin and allinase come into contact, triggering an enzymatic reaction. This reaction creates allicin, and the same happens when garlic cloves are bruised or broken in any method.

Unfortunately, allicin’s half-life is very low, only 24 hours by some estimates. Furthermore, it’s a very delicate compound and cannot withstand cooking or microwaving at high temperatures. You may have noticed that intense cooking transforms garlic’s flavour completely; that’s because allicin provides a big chunk of it.

Therefore, if you’re like me and want to push any acne-clearing food to the limits of science, your garlic has to be raw. The medieval guys hoping to cure drunkenness, greed, stupidity or Black Death ate it raw too. That was specifically mentioned in the history books. Likewise, the Egyptian slaves who built the pyramids survived on a diet of water, bread and raw garlic. By raw, I mean unheated; sliced or cut is perfectly fine.

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Ideally, you should also eat garlic the day you cut it. If you slice up garlic, then brew it into a homemade soup, but leave a large proportion in the cupboard for next week, that batch will be totally depleted of allicin. There’ll still be other sulphurous compounds remaining, which don’t deplete anywhere near as fast, but eating on the same day is ideal.

Likewise, minced garlic, pre-packed garlic powders, and dried flakes are pointless. They’ll have been cut for days, or even weeks if they’re imported from China or South Korea.

Speaking of which, say no to any garlic derived products grown in China! Firstly, they’re commonly contaminated with acne-causing heavy metals, especially the pore clogging arsenic. Secondly, I’ve heard rumours that garlic fields in China are actually fertilised with human waste.

60% of world garlic supplies come from China, but avoiding this shouldn’t be hard; just check the country of origin. Also, because non-organic garlic is completely safe, you’re not suffocated by crippling strictness. California is a real safe haven, since 90% of US production occurs there.

Finally, whole, uncut garlic cloves will last for a good month in a cool cupboard. Garlic is unique – cutting is the key, not freshness.

 

The verdict – and best supplement

There’s little to say, other than garlic is a powerhouse of skin-friendly nutrition. Who can clear their skin by eating garlic? Any acne patient who needs some extra antioxidants and anti-inflammatory nutrition… oh wait, that’s every acne patient!

The only real danger is if your digestive system is weak. Luckily, once your gut flora diversifies after weeks of eating plant prebiotics from the fruits and vegetables I recommend, you’ll digest inulin much more easily, with acne nowhere in sight.

You can add garlic to any acne friendly recipe that needs spicing up with flavour, whether it be homemade soup, stew, meat sauce or chilli powder. If you know anyone with acne, then feed them garlic!

 

Organic garlic is not necessary!

The final benefit of garlic is its extreme cheapness. Even a hobo could buy a dozen fresh cloves and shield his face from the horrors of air pollution on the street. This is then doubled by the fact that organic garlic is totally unnecessary. The swarms of insects which devastate strawberry fields have no interesting in raw garlic cloves.

We already mentioned how mosquitos die after eating garlic, and apparently many other insects are intolerant. For example, garlic is a popular natural pesticide against aphids; you simply douse your plants in a mixture of garlic powder and water, and they’ll stay well away. Looper caterpillars and whiteflies also fear garlic.

Hence, conventional garlic is rarely sprayed with inflammatory pesticides. There’s just no need. Garlic ranks far lower in agrochemical tests than apples, strawberries, or blueberries. The strong sulphurous smell of garlic (and onions) deters most, and the insects which do eat garlic focus on other areas of the plant rather than the bulbous root.

 

Bonus – how to kill garlic breath

If you do decide to nuke your pimples from orbit with several cloves of garlic, then great news: several foods can deactivate the notorious garlic-flavoured breath…

Eat parsley – a herb with a very grassy, earthy taste. This comes from its high amounts of chlorophyll, a powerful compound for freshening up the breath. In a recent study, chewing on parsley neutralised garlic breath through a process known as “enzymatic deodorisation”. Another parsley study, however, found no benefits for bad breath. The truth then? Only experimentation will show you the way, but parsley also has strong acne-clearing powers, such as increasing glutathione production.

Drink milk – in this study, milk deactivated allyl methyl sulphide much more effectively than water or 10% sodium casseinate. That’s the classic garlic compound behind garlic breath. The scientists concluded that milk “may help reduce the malodorous odour in breath after garlic ingestion and mask the garlic flavour during eating”. Presumably, yoghurt will be equally as effective.

Raw apples and spinach – in the milk study above, both foods reduced foul breath, particularly raw apples. They also tested whey protein, which had no effect. Clearly, it’s another compound in milk which does the trick.

Green tea – the same study found that the polyphenols in green tea (which are plentiful) can break down the sulphurous compounds behind bad breath. Theoretically then, any fruit or vegetable or even dark chocolate bar that’s packed with polyphenols could do so.

There’s probably an unknown food somewhere with a perfect antioxidant profile for freshening your breath. Through experimentation, it’s possible that you’ll find it.

Follow those tips, and you can eat all the garlic you want without becoming an outcast of civilised society.

NEXT: get the full skin-clearing diet and wave acne goodbye forever

 

 

Thanks for reading!