AngloSwiss's Wild Garlic / Bear's Garlic

The Better Garlic Is Still a Well-Kept Secret

Eat leeks in Lide [March] and ramsons [wild garlic] in May       And all the year after the physicians may play.    (Old English Proverb)

BEARLIC™ manages to bring something absolutely new to the crowded field of garlic products. Named the medicinal "Plant of the Year" of the Association for the Protection and Research on European Medicinal Plants, it is an old and once famous healing plant which is now the subject of renewed interest in scientific and medical circles.  Wild garlic, also called "bear's garlic" after its Latin name, Allium ursinum, was rediscovered in 1988 after centuries of neglect. Since 1989 its benefits have been described with great enthusiasm by health journals such as Therapiewoche (Richter, H.-J., "Wilder Knoblauch: Non olet!" Editorial in Therapiewoche 45, 6 (November 1989) 3269.) [Therapy Week].  Response has been so positive that in an issue of the same journal, the research chemist Ursula Deppe dubbed wild garlic the "new star" of garlic because it is odorless, yet it contains all of garlic's active principles.  Since then, article after article has appeared in major scientific publications regarding the special properties of wild garlic.

So why is wild garlic such a well-kept secret?

The primary reasons for the continued invisibility of wild garlic in the United States are two: First, wild garlic is, well, wild.  Regular garlic, A. sativum, originated in Central Asia and has been cultivated since ancient Sumer (3,000 B.C.) and Egypt of the time of the building of the pyramids.  In other words, regular garlic ceased to be "wild" perhaps 5,000 years ago.  Moreover, in regular garlic the healing properties, the flavor and the odor all are derived from the same compounds.  Regular garlic has thus been bred mostly for its flavor elements, that is, its odor.  In contrast, wild garlic has never been successfully cultivated.  In the late 8th century A.D., the Frankish ruler Charlemagne apparently attempted to encourage the spread of wild garlic because of its medicinal properties, but there is no record of his success.  For all practical intents and purposes, A. ursinum remains undomesticated to this day.  Whereas everyone is familiar with regular garlic, very few outside of scientific circles know about wild garlic.

The second reason that wild garlic is largely unfamiliar to the public is that the plant has not been a party to the "garlic wars."  Wild garlic has only recently been rediscovered and even more recently been made available commercially in Europe.  (BEARLIC™ from AngloSwiss, Ltd. is the only commercial source of European wild garlic.) Among all garlic products, only wild garlic is unique in its plant source.  The differences in the common garlic species employed to produce the many garlic supplements currently on the market are relatively minor.  Variations among these products, and the key to their marketing, is almost entirely a matter of the processing of the powders and other preparations.  Market segmentation (brand name presence) is achieved not by using different garlic strains, but by processing the raw materials derived from much the same garlic sources differently.  Wild garlic, in contrast, is a unique garlic species which is naturally odorless when taken by mouth.  Moreover, wild garlic is a strain which in its natural form is for many conditions superior pharmacologically to all cultivated garlic materials, whether or not these have been processed.

Bear's Garlic achieves effects which either cannot be achieved with regular garlic or which would require unacceptable levels of intake.

• Bear's Garlic is odorless when ingested.
  
  
• Bear's Garlic contains the full range of garlic actives,unlike other “odorless” garlic products; in the case of many actives, Bear's Garlic contains between 2 and 4 times the content of cultivated garlic. 
  
  
• Bear's Garlic contains twice the content of ACE inhibitors and other hypotensives found in cultivated garlic products and works via at least 3 distinct mechanisms.
  
  
• Bear's Garlic has a greater efficacy in improving microcirculation (akin to that found with Ginkgo biloba)than is true of cultivated garlic.
  
  
• Bear's Garlic improves hypoglycemic/insulin-regulation without relying upon allicin.
  
  
• Bear's Garlic protects against free radicals.
  
  
• Bear's Garlic shows twice the effectiveness against heart arrhythmias found with cultivated garlic.
  
  
• Bear's Garlic is rich in the water-soluble compounds which lower LDL and raise HDL; Bear's Garlic contains 20 times the adenosine found in cultivated garlic.  Adenosine is necessary to fully activate the lipids-lowering potential of allicin.

The usual amount of Bear's Garlic taken is 900 mg. per day.  Maximal effects can be expected within 5 hours of ingestion, and hypotensive effects last for greater than 24 hours.  Delivery in divided doses is to be prefered.

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