Nature's best medicines (II)

　　Garlic

　　The potent, redolent clove we know as garlic wards off many a bad guy, and you needn't wear it around your neck. Eat it. Any way you can. There may be foods more medicinally potent than garlic, but few are as loved as this.

　　One of garlic's most proven benefits is its ability to cut cholesterol. It also acts like aspirin, keeping blood from clumping and sticking to artery walls.

　　Garlic has an antibacterial effect similar to penic illin. In fact, one source we found suggests that garli c was the antibacterial drug of choice until penicillin was discovered in 1928. Eating this pungent herb may he lp you fight a strep throat—as long as you don't use it instead of antibiotics for serious infections. Garlic i s an antioxidant and, in test-tube and animal studies, shows promise in preventing colon and breast cancers.

　　Allicin, which is quickly broken down into various active compounds, seems to be the main medicine at work here. Despite the fact that it's been loved for centuri es, there's still a lot we don't know about it.

　　For heart-protective effects, eat one clove daily. Aged, cooked, raw, powdered? The jury is still weighing the evidence. But overall, studies seem to indicate any and all garlic intake is probably good for us in some w ay.

　　Kidney beans

　　These staples of hearty winter chili boast the high est, healthiest fiber mix of any member of the legume f amily—and are especially high in heart-protecting folat e, too.

　　Part of their healing power comes from their 7g of filling fiber per half-cup serving. Of that, 2.8g is ch olesterol-lowering soluble fiber. That adds up to dips in the risks of heart disease, stroke, and colon cancer .

　　If that's not enough, beans—kidney and otherwise—ar e such good medicines that doctors prescribe them to di abetics (along with other high-fiber, complex carbohydr ates) because they're digested slowly (helping maintain low blood sugar and normalizing troublesome insulin lev els).

　　Kidney beans are high in folate, the new superstar nutrient that may help keep blood levels of homocystein e low. (High levels are now considered a risk factor fo r heart disease.) Folate is also important in preventin g birth defects. A half-cup serving provides 114 microg rams of folate, more than a quarter of our required DV.

　　Beans are heart protective in one more way: They co ntain potent antioxidants known as polyphenolics. In te st-tube studies, polyphenolics worked better than vitam in C in keeping fat in the blood from oxidizing—the fir st step in the formation of artery-clogging sludge.

　　Aim for a cup and a half of cooked beans daily.