When Tina Craig, founder of U Beauty, texted our Chief Content Officer Sarah Howard about her favorite raw garlic hot beverage…let’s just say it was the piping hot tea of the Slack channel that week.
She explained that this simple, night-time elixir can help rid the body of toxins from fatty foods, promote weight loss, and even more. Plus, it’s super simple.
“It’s so easy.” Tina tells us. “I just smash a clove of garlic at night, put it in piping hot water with honey (Tina uses our fave) and apple cider vinegar, let it cool down to drinkable temperature, and sip. Make sure to eat the garlic at the end because it will be really soft and yummy.”
We already know garlic is a superfood because of its antiviral properties and immune-boosting benefits, but it’s also been shown to inhibit the different stages of cancer, including initiation, promotion, and progression.
But we’re not always preemptively worried about the big guns. We hear it helps with daily detox and can even aid in weight loss. We consulted Ervina Wu, a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Practitioner and founder of TCM beauty and health company Yina, to weigh in.
“According to TCM, Da Suan (aka garlic) is hot and spicy in nature and enters the spleen, stomach and lungs,” Ervina explains.
“In TCM, the organs aren’t just their individual entities, but part of a major whole, and deficiencies in any of them can explain a vast repertoire of symptoms—it’s super fascinating.
“Culturally, garlic is used more as food than medicine, but there are case studies where garlic is used for stomach ailments, food stagnation, diarrhea, chronic coughs, cold prevention, parasites, and fungal infections. It can be helpful for food stagnation or indigestion.”
Indigestion and weight gain are almost always linked, but other studies show something even more fascinating. While garlic supplementation hasn’t been shown to have a major effect on overall BMI, it has been proven to reduce waist circumference, which is one of the most stubborn places to slim down.
So, if you have been overindulging lately, are on a mission to get snatched, or just want to keep all systems firing at optimal levels, drink your garlic tea before bed each night. It’s surprisingly delightful and a great way to keep digestion flowing, to-boot.
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