There's no need to wear garlic around your neck, but eating it most definitely keeps the baddies away. Garlic has antioxidant, antibacterial, antiviral, anti-clotting, and anti-cancer properties BUT ONLY IF you let it sit for ten minutes after crushing or slicing it.*

Heating garlic immediately after pressing it adversely impacts its healing abilities by destroying the enzyme that triggers the all-important reaction when two substances in garlic come in contact with one another - the protein fragment alliin and the enzyme alliinase. The two won't commingle until crushed. When they join, they produce allicin - the mighty allium super hero. So chop, mince, slice, or mash your garlic but don't plunk it straight into that heated oil. Keep it away from heat for ten minutes so that the maximum amount of allicin can be produced, delivering a bounty of scientifically proven healing properties straight to your body. Garlic is known to:

reduce heart disease as it helps prevent blood clots by decreasing the stickiness of platelets;
lower LDL cholesterol without hurting beneficial HDL cholesterol levels;
boost our immune system;
lower blood pressure;
fight certain cancers, particularly those in the intestines;
reduce the size of cancerous tumors;
reduce pain and other symptoms associated with rheumatoid arthritis;
act as an antibiotic as it kills a range of microbes including viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites such as athlete's foot, thrush [a fungal infection of the mouth] and viral diarrhea.

* This healthy tip was provided by Jo Robinson, author of Eating on the Wild Side. For more wild tips from Ms Robinson, stay tuned as Good Girl learns "a radical new way to select and prepare foods to reclaim the nutrients and flavor we've lost."