Onion and Garlic: Toxic and Brain Desynchronisers
Raw Garlic: Health Food Or Toxin?
Raw Garlic, or even cooked garlic, has long been placed among the miracle-working foods everyone should include in their diet. As a plant food, it's been embraced by vegetarians, vegans, and raw foodists, but it remains popular among the general population as well.
What's so special about about garlic, and is it actually beneficial?
It's a hard, bulbous plant that's a member of the lily family, which includes chives, shallots, onions, and leeks, each of which shares similar properties. Raw garlic, being uncooked and therefore theoretically undamaged, is often lauded for possessing disease-fighting properties, although these are not well established. For instance, a number of small animal-based studies initially seemed to indicate that garlic could fight the build up of the arterial plaque that's the source of atherosclerosis (1), but larger-scale human studies have shown no improvement (2). One area where garlic is proving quite effective is in its ability to kill bacteria. Long concerned about the growing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics, researchers have sought out other options, and garlic shows significant ability to kill living cells of many types (3).
The source of garlic's antibacterial properties is allicin, which is also responsible for its pungent taste and odor. When someone complains about your garlic breath, or the the nasty aroma exuded from your pores following a garlic-rich meal, you can blame the allicin. Allicin is produced by garlic to defend against pests and predators interested in a quick meal (4), IE, hungry humans. Much like thorn-protected flowers, the idea is to cause as much damage as possible to any possible predator in the hopes that the animal will think twice before chowing down. The substance is very effective in what it does. I've used garlic extract to kill ticks that are attached to a dog. After about 30 minutes of being washed with 10 drops of pure garlic extract, the tick is dead. Organic gardeners have long known that many pests will think twice before crossing a garlic plant, and I've effectively used rows of them to protect my tomato plants, which are often the target of hungry bugs. Humans are significantly larger than insects and it would take very large quantities of allicin to kill us, if it's possible at all. None the less, there's significant reason to believe that raw garlic can harm us.
Raw Garlic: Drug-Like Side Effects
You've probably seen the ridiculous drug commercials on television that promise to get rid of the side effects of your disease, but then note the laundry list of more side effects which people taking the medication may suffer from. Often the medication sounds worse than the initial disease.Raw garlic intake is notable because it has a similarly-long list of side effects, and almost seems like it's a drug. Although it's harder to say what's happening out of sight in the body's interior, it's very obvious that garlic irritates the skin. As a rubefacient, garlic oil quickly causes the skin to redden when applied directly. Redness indicates that inflammation is occurring, the body's attempt to isolate a harmful substance so that it does not enter the blood stream and cause more problems. In some cases, when people try to regularly apply garlic to the skin as a acne treatment or for other purposes, serious burnshave occurred (5). If garlic can damage our comparatively strong skin, what will it do to our delicate insides?Several studies have pointed out intestinal cell damage possibly resulting from garlic ingestion (6). It's also been known to cause indigestion, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea (7).
Raw Garlic and The Blood
Garlic is a blood thinner (8), much like two popular poisons (all drugs are technically poisons), alchohol and aspirin. Blood thinners are promoted by medical professionals as way of cutting your chance of a heart attacks and strokes if you have heart disease. Unfortunatly, subseqently stopping this medication often causes strokes (9), especially in the case of aspirin. A far safer way to prevent heart attack and strokes is to get rid of the underlying cause- the powerful blood-clotting substances that people eat every day -meat, dairy, eggs, and processed oils and fats (10, 11). When you avoid meat and other fatty foods your blood is "thinned" naturally, which prevents hearts attacks and strokes with no side effects or rebound effects. The big difference is that blood thinning medication is a slap-dash fix that leaves you at risk when you stop, but a low-fat diet heals the underlying disease, athersclerosis, by removing the cause. Garlic's blood-thinning properties causes other problems. Because garlic inpairs the body's ability to clot blood and stop bleeding, it's reccomended that patients take no garlic for seven days prior to surgery to reduce the risk of heavy bleeding, and that women should not take it prior to giving birth (12).
Think about that for a second - garlic actually impairs the body's ability to heal.
Raw Garlic and Pregnant Women
You know a food is bad when it's believed to play a roll in accidental abortions, but garlic has been placed in that category (13), and its reccomended that pregant women stop taking it.
Allicin, which, you'll recall, is strong enough to drive off or kill small bugs, enters the breast milk of pregnant women, altering the smell of the milk and the suckling behavior of the infant (13).
It's a bit like topping off a baby's bottle with an insecticide. You wouldn't want to drink it either.
Raw Garlic: Irritation You Can't Afford.
Sure, raw garlic works like an antibiotic, killing bacteria. But is that a good thing?
Think about what we've learned above. Raw garlic causes irritation to the skin, stops the coagulation of blood, induces nausea and other side effects, and can even cause abortion in some cases. Maybe a food that destroys life on the small scale is too strong for us, even on a limited scale. Antibacterial agents kill bacteria, but why would we wish to do that? Bacteria is an essential component of life, and bereft of them life could not continue on this planet. Bacteria plays a very important function in the body: decomposing dead cells and eliminating them from the body. To destroy them indiscriminately would be foolish.
http://www.raw-food-health.net/Raw-Garlic.html
Onion Toxicity: What Are Onions, What Do They Contain?
Onions, like the very similar shallots, leeks, chives, scallions, and garlic, are part of the Allium family (lilies). Allium is a genus of perennially-growing bulbous plants that produce a series of chemical compounds such as cysteine sulfoxide, isoalliin, syn-Propanethial S-oxide, allicin, and mustard oil, which are responsible for their distinctive taste, smell, and the irritation they cause to your body.
Different members of Allium have varying levels of these chemicals, and their pungency generally depends on how much they carry.
Onion Toxicity: What Is Allicin?
Allicin is a sulfur compound found in onions responsible for a lot of the irritation the plant causes.
Why is it there? According to chemist Eric Block of the University of Missouri at St. Louis, who has been studying onions since 1971:
"Since allicin is anti fungal as well as antibiotic, it could offer the garlic plant protection against the bulb decay induced by fungi. And since the lacrimatory factor is irritating and repugnant to certain animals, it too has survival value."
-Eric Block, Ph.D., "The Chemistry of Garlic and Onions."
Essentially what we have is an element - just one of several sulfur compounds present - that is intended to repel and injure things that would devour the plant and bulb, be they fungi, bugs, of mammals. When onion extract is applied to bacteria and fungi it literally destroys them.
Many a canny gardener has realized this and strategically planted onions, garlic, leeks, and other members of the Allium family to ward off pests. Many creatures will not cross a phalanx of allium, and so can't get to the juicy tomatoes waiting beyond. Their senses warn them that this is a food to avoid.
Although we like to think of ourselves as a species apart, at the end of the day we are just big, smarter-than-average animals with vulnerable physical bodies, and if a food is damaging enough that it destroys fungi and other bacteria and drives hungry animals away, it probably isn't wise for us to ignore the fact.
Onion Toxicity: Onions Sicken And Kill
While working as a newspaper reporter several years ago I ran across a man in a retirement home in Meriden, Connecticut that grew up on a onion farm in California. Always interested in agricultural life, I struck up a conversation and he told me something interesting: onion toxicity had almost killed him.
His mother died when he was 13 and since his father wasn't much of a cook, the boy was frequently hungry. To supplement his unappetizing meals, he would take breaks during his farm chores to eat onions.
"I didn't like them raw at first, but after awhile they started tasting great," he told me when I informed him that I found the taste of onions to be sickening.
Although he didn't connect it to the onions, he became increasingly pale and weak over the course of a few months until one day he collapsed while doing his chores.
He awoke in the hospital getting a blood transfusion, and was told that he'd come down with severe case of onion-induced anemia and had been dangerously close to death. After treatment he went on to a full recovery, but, he said, "I haven't eaten an onion since. When they try to put them in my food here I throw a fit."
Onion Toxicity: Humans Are Not Exempt
Although no full-scale tests have been done on onion toxicity in humans, for obvious reasons, there are plenty of instances of all types of animals, large and small, being sickened and killed by onions when their senses don't do a good enough job warning them away.
For instance, a group of water buffalo that ate some onions dumped in their field all died (4). A study on geese found that onions killed them too, with an autopsy revealed swelling of the liver and spleen (5). In a herd of cows that had 20 onions a day per cow added to their feed for six weeks, five cows died and two pregnant cows lost their calves. Anemia is the initial result of onion toxicity, the researchers found, but it eventually lead to organ damage and death (6).
Onion Toxicity: Thinning Out The Blood
It's is certainly one of the bizarre peculiarities of our mind that we can look at something in animals and see the cause of sickness and look at the same thing in ourselves and see a potential benefit.
Despite the well-documented ability of onion intake to bring on anemia in sheep (7), Cats (with just onion powder added to their food) (8), horses (eating wild onions) (9), and dogs (10), researchers have cooed over new studies showing this effect in humans and praised the onion's ability to thin the blood in the hopes that it might help us fight blood clots and prevent heart attracts, which folk lore says it does.
A 1979 study in India compared three groups of vegetarian Jains who ate an average of 600 grams of onions per week, 200 grams per week, or never in their lives. The study found that the onion abstainers had the shortest blood clotting time and that those who ate more onions had the longest time till clotting (11).
"The (positive health) folklore concerning garlic and onions seemed to be gaining some credence," said chemist Eric Block of the finding, noting the food's potential as an antithrombotic (11).
The mature way to deal with atherosclerosis is to eat a low fat plant-based diet that prevents and reverses it (12), and given that blood clots almost always affect sedentary, overweight individuals eating poor diets, the way to prevent them is to get regular exercise and eat a healthy diet.
Poisoning ourselves in the perverse hope of escaping the consequences of a bad lifestyle won't work.
Onion Toxicity: Weeping Over Onions
When you slice into an onion and start to get teary eyed, doesn't it strike you as a bit odd? You haven't even put the thing in your mouth yet your body is already irritated.
When an onion is sliced and the cell walls are broken, enzymes called alliinases begin a complex chemical reaction that results in the release of volatile gas known as the onion lachrymatory factor. This gets released into the air and eventually enters your eyes if you're hovering over the onion. The gas stings and irritates your eyes, and the tears that well up are your body's attempt to wash the toxic gas out (3).
I've sliced into a lot of peaches and hacked apart more than my fair share of lettuce, but none of these foods have been so irritating that my eyes had to wash the resulting chemicals away with bodily fluids.
You have to wonder about exactly how toxic an onion is when the gas of it alone makes your eyes tear up. What's it doing to you when you put it into your stomach?
Onion Toxicity: But What About All Those Benefits?
The cures attributed to onions are essentially drug reactions and the resulting stimulation of your body attempting to rid itself of harmful substances. Treating yourself with an onion is like taking a drug in the hopes that your body will stop producing that symptom. And just like drugs, when you rely on such a treatment you never remove the underlying cause and merely hope any side effects brought about by the drug reaction will be bearable.
If the entire Allium family were a drug, there would have to be a warning attached to the commercials, undoubtedly spoken by an agreeable-sounding women reading the list as if she were chatting about the pleasant weather:
The Allium Family Warning Label
Onions and other members of the Allium family may cause bad breath, indigestion and acid reflux (15), anemia, reduced blood clotting, or even death. Pregnant women should avoid the Alliuin family because its members have been known to cause accidental abortions in humans (13). Nursing women should not eat them because the chemical Allicin enters into their breast milk and disturbs a baby's ability to breast feed (13).
Those at risk for major bleeding, such as those soon to undergo surgery or enter into labor are urged not to eat members of the Allium family because they have been shown to prevent the clotting of open wounds (14).
Onion Toxicity: But What If I just Eat A Little?
Although dogs have shown the beginning stages of anemia after only a single dose of onions (10), it's probably true that it takes sustained intake to bring about any noticeable negative impact. The average westerner only uses onions as a condiment, so irregular use may be fine.
But don't fool yourself, a little bit of poison is still a poison. Even the Jains eating fairly modest portions of onions showed reduced blood clotting ability.
You could gorge all day on watermelons or bananas and show no ill effects beyond a bloated stomach. Take the same dose of onions, though, and you'd probably be very sick.
Although like all foods, onions have some up sides, the overwhelming force of them is negative.
I don't eat onions or garlic, but I have periodically tried the weaker variates of the Allium family, such as the leaves of the chive plant. After so long without these foods I find them unpleasantly strong and that my breath reeks of them for days, but overall I don't run into any significant problems.
If you want to include these foods in your diet periodically, I don't think it's going to be a deal breaker, but it's probably safe to say that onions and the Allium family should not be a regular part of your meals.
www.raw-food-health.net/Onion-Toxicity.html
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Why I Don’t Eat Toxic Garlic Or Onions
Onion and Garlic are actually toxic, believe it or not. By: Polyman
We all know vampires don’t like garlic… but maybe there’s something behind this immortal creatures disdain for garlic that we’re over-looking. Think about it: most of us mortals fear the dreaded “garlic breath” after eating Italian food before getting close and cozy for some face time with a mate. For a good reason too, because most people find onion and garlic breath to be pretty repulsing. So we know that if anything, having garlic and onions before the big date is a major faux pas… but is there more to it?The answer is, yes. Before we get into the science, let’s just think common sense. How many people get bad breath after eating apples, pineapple, berries, celery, carrots, orange juice, or even simple bread? You don’t hear any girls running away in terror back to their friends saying “OH NO, BREAD BREATH!”I think it’s a safe bet that most people with good hygiene don’t.In fact, you even see couples feeding each other strawberries and kissing each other with fruit… but not onions. There’s nothing sexy or sensual about running an onion peel over a women’s breast and lips …unless I suppose you have a alliums fetish (good luck having that up on your online dating profile).Why is that? Well first let’s tackle what bad breath is first. According to Wikipedia:Halitosis (bad breath) is a term used to describe noticeably unpleasant odors exhaled in breathing. […] In most cases (85–90%), bad breath originates in the mouth itself. The intensity of bad breath differs during the day, due to eating certain foods (such as garlic, onions, meat, fish, and cheese), obesity, smoking, and alcohol consumption. Since the mouth is exposed to less oxygen and is inactive during the night, the odor is usually worse upon awakening (“morning breath“).Tongue bacteria produce malodorous compounds and fatty acids, and account for 80 to 90% of all cases of mouth-related bad breath. Tongue bacteria produce malodorous compounds and fatty acids, and account for 80 to 90% of all cases of mouth-related bad breath.See, even the definition mentions garlic and onions increase bad breath! Now everyone knows that certain foods just aren’t good for you. Also, I’m sure people know of certain foods that cause people in a 10 ft radius to run away, plugging their nose in fear. So to me, it only seems logical that if you’re eating a food that causes such an unpleasant response to you and those around you, it might not be so good for you.If somebody doesn’t bathe and they smell like ass, chances are you don’t want to be around them. Why is that? Why do we find THAT smell to be so offensive? It’s simply because evolution says those smells tend to correlate with people that are often:
Dr Beck explained that as far back as the 1950s it was known that garlic reduced reaction time by two to three times when consumed by pilots taking flight tests. This is because the toxic effects of garlic desynchronize brain waves. “The flight surgeon would come around every month and remind all of us: “Don’t you dare touch any garlic 72 hours before you fly one of our airplanes, because it’ll double or triple your reaction time. You’re three times slower than you would be if you’d not had a few drops of garlic.”
thepolyman.com/2011/12/why-i-dont-eat-toxic-garlic-or-onions/
- Onion and Garlic - Toxic And Brain Synchronization Destroyers (Bhakti Empowerment Seminars)
- They are a neuro poison I have been telling people this for years, all you need is a EEG of the brain to see the truth .. they totally desynchronize the brain and cause us to loose our spiritual intelligence... yes our spiritual intelligence.
- Awful smell • when you eat it ... what happens to you ! ... you smell awful and are totally repulsed by others . most are generally being nice not to tell you ... YOU STINK .. stay your distance !
- Organic pesticide • It is also the best organic insect killer, too, is there a reason why no bug will eat garlic or any of the onion family...because it kills them.
- Brain is clinically dead after eating garlic • We discovered this much to our horror, when I was the world's largest manufacturer of ethical EEG biofeedback equipment. We'd have people come back from lunch that looked clinically dead on the encephalograph, which we used to calibrate their progress. "Well, what happened?" " Well, I went to an Italian restaurant and there was some garlic in my salad dressing!"
- No onion and garlic for pilots • I was in flight test engineering in Doc Hallan's group in the 1950's. The flight surgeon would come around every month and remind all of us: "Don't you dare touch any garlic 72 hours before you fly one of our airplanes, because it'll double or triple your reaction time. You're three times slower than you would be if you'd [not] had a few drops of garlic."
- Garlic gives headaches. Garlic extract also does the same. • If you have any patients who have low-grade headaches or attention deficit [disorder], they can't quite focus on the computer in the afternoon, just do an experiment - you owe it to yourselves. Take those people off garlic and see how much better they get, very, very shortly. And then let them eat a little garlic after about three weeks. They'll say: "My God, I had no idea that this was the cause of our problems." And this includes the de-skunked garlic's, Kyolic, some of the other products. Very unpopular, but I've got to tell you the truth.
- • According to Ayurveda, India’s classic medical science, foods are grouped into three categories - sattvic, rajasic and tamasic - foods in the modes of goodness, passion and ignorance. Onions and garlic, and the other alliaceous plants are classified as rajasic and tamasic, which means that they increase passion and ignorance. Rajasic and tamasic foods are also not used because they are detrimental to meditation and devotions. “Garlic and onions are both rajasic and tamasic, and are forbidden to yogis because they root the consciousness more firmly in the body”, says well-known authority on Ayurveda, Dr.Robert E.Svoboda.
- • It should be pointed out that Garlic and onion are avoided by spiritual adherents because they stimulate the central nervous system, and can disturb vows of celibacy.
- • The Taoists realized thousands of years ago that plants of the alliaceous family were detrimental to humans in their healthy state. In his writings, one sage Tsang-Tsze described the Alliums as the "five fragrant or spicy scented vegetables" - that each have a detrimental effect on one of the following five organs - liver, spleen, lungs, kidneys, and heart. Specifically, onions are harmful to the lungs, garlic to the heart, leeks to the spleen, chives to the liver and spring onions to the kidneys.
- • Dr Beck explained that as far back as the 1950s it was known that garlic reduced reaction time by two to three times when consumed by pilots taking flight tests. This is because the toxic effects of garlic desynchronize brain waves. "The flight surgeon would come around every month and remind all of us: "Don't you dare touch any garlic 72 hours before you fly one of our airplanes, because it'll double or triple your reaction time. You're three times slower than you would be if you'd [not] had a few drops of garlic." • For precisely the same reason the garlic family of plants has been widely recognized as being harmful to dogs. • Even when garlic is used as food in Chinese culture it is considered harmful to the stomach, liver and eyes, and a cause of dizziness and scattered energy when consumed in immoderate amounts. • Nor is garlic always seen as having entirely beneficial properties in Western cooking and medicine. It is widely accepted among health care professionals that, as well as killing harmful bacteria, garlic also destroys beneficial bacteria, which are essential to the proper functioning of the digestive system.
- • Reiki practitioners explain that garlic and onions are among the first substances to be expelled from a person’s system – along with tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceutical medications. This makes it apparent that alliaceous plants have a negative effect on the human body and should be avoided for health reasons. • Homeopathic medicine comes to the same conclusion when it recognizes that red onion produces a dry cough, watery eyes, sneezing, runny nose and other familiar cold-related symptoms when consumed. • These are just some of the reasons I avoid leeks, chives, shallots, garlic and onions.
- • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xft0CLkgLpE
- • "It is not vegetarian to eat onions and garlic. They have discovered 21 different types of slow poison in both. So they are not so innocent."
Raw Garlic: Health Food Or Toxin?
Raw Garlic, or even cooked garlic, has long been placed among the miracle-working foods everyone should include in their diet. As a plant food, it's been embraced by vegetarians, vegans, and raw foodists, but it remains popular among the general population as well.
What's so special about about garlic, and is it actually beneficial?
It's a hard, bulbous plant that's a member of the lily family, which includes chives, shallots, onions, and leeks, each of which shares similar properties. Raw garlic, being uncooked and therefore theoretically undamaged, is often lauded for possessing disease-fighting properties, although these are not well established. For instance, a number of small animal-based studies initially seemed to indicate that garlic could fight the build up of the arterial plaque that's the source of atherosclerosis (1), but larger-scale human studies have shown no improvement (2). One area where garlic is proving quite effective is in its ability to kill bacteria. Long concerned about the growing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics, researchers have sought out other options, and garlic shows significant ability to kill living cells of many types (3).
The source of garlic's antibacterial properties is allicin, which is also responsible for its pungent taste and odor. When someone complains about your garlic breath, or the the nasty aroma exuded from your pores following a garlic-rich meal, you can blame the allicin. Allicin is produced by garlic to defend against pests and predators interested in a quick meal (4), IE, hungry humans. Much like thorn-protected flowers, the idea is to cause as much damage as possible to any possible predator in the hopes that the animal will think twice before chowing down. The substance is very effective in what it does. I've used garlic extract to kill ticks that are attached to a dog. After about 30 minutes of being washed with 10 drops of pure garlic extract, the tick is dead. Organic gardeners have long known that many pests will think twice before crossing a garlic plant, and I've effectively used rows of them to protect my tomato plants, which are often the target of hungry bugs. Humans are significantly larger than insects and it would take very large quantities of allicin to kill us, if it's possible at all. None the less, there's significant reason to believe that raw garlic can harm us.
Raw Garlic: Drug-Like Side Effects
You've probably seen the ridiculous drug commercials on television that promise to get rid of the side effects of your disease, but then note the laundry list of more side effects which people taking the medication may suffer from. Often the medication sounds worse than the initial disease.Raw garlic intake is notable because it has a similarly-long list of side effects, and almost seems like it's a drug. Although it's harder to say what's happening out of sight in the body's interior, it's very obvious that garlic irritates the skin. As a rubefacient, garlic oil quickly causes the skin to redden when applied directly. Redness indicates that inflammation is occurring, the body's attempt to isolate a harmful substance so that it does not enter the blood stream and cause more problems. In some cases, when people try to regularly apply garlic to the skin as a acne treatment or for other purposes, serious burnshave occurred (5). If garlic can damage our comparatively strong skin, what will it do to our delicate insides?Several studies have pointed out intestinal cell damage possibly resulting from garlic ingestion (6). It's also been known to cause indigestion, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea (7).
Raw Garlic and The Blood
Garlic is a blood thinner (8), much like two popular poisons (all drugs are technically poisons), alchohol and aspirin. Blood thinners are promoted by medical professionals as way of cutting your chance of a heart attacks and strokes if you have heart disease. Unfortunatly, subseqently stopping this medication often causes strokes (9), especially in the case of aspirin. A far safer way to prevent heart attack and strokes is to get rid of the underlying cause- the powerful blood-clotting substances that people eat every day -meat, dairy, eggs, and processed oils and fats (10, 11). When you avoid meat and other fatty foods your blood is "thinned" naturally, which prevents hearts attacks and strokes with no side effects or rebound effects. The big difference is that blood thinning medication is a slap-dash fix that leaves you at risk when you stop, but a low-fat diet heals the underlying disease, athersclerosis, by removing the cause. Garlic's blood-thinning properties causes other problems. Because garlic inpairs the body's ability to clot blood and stop bleeding, it's reccomended that patients take no garlic for seven days prior to surgery to reduce the risk of heavy bleeding, and that women should not take it prior to giving birth (12).
Think about that for a second - garlic actually impairs the body's ability to heal.
Raw Garlic and Pregnant Women
You know a food is bad when it's believed to play a roll in accidental abortions, but garlic has been placed in that category (13), and its reccomended that pregant women stop taking it.
Allicin, which, you'll recall, is strong enough to drive off or kill small bugs, enters the breast milk of pregnant women, altering the smell of the milk and the suckling behavior of the infant (13).
It's a bit like topping off a baby's bottle with an insecticide. You wouldn't want to drink it either.
Raw Garlic: Irritation You Can't Afford.
Sure, raw garlic works like an antibiotic, killing bacteria. But is that a good thing?
Think about what we've learned above. Raw garlic causes irritation to the skin, stops the coagulation of blood, induces nausea and other side effects, and can even cause abortion in some cases. Maybe a food that destroys life on the small scale is too strong for us, even on a limited scale. Antibacterial agents kill bacteria, but why would we wish to do that? Bacteria is an essential component of life, and bereft of them life could not continue on this planet. Bacteria plays a very important function in the body: decomposing dead cells and eliminating them from the body. To destroy them indiscriminately would be foolish.
http://www.raw-food-health.net/Raw-Garlic.html
Onion Toxicity: What Are Onions, What Do They Contain?
Onions, like the very similar shallots, leeks, chives, scallions, and garlic, are part of the Allium family (lilies). Allium is a genus of perennially-growing bulbous plants that produce a series of chemical compounds such as cysteine sulfoxide, isoalliin, syn-Propanethial S-oxide, allicin, and mustard oil, which are responsible for their distinctive taste, smell, and the irritation they cause to your body.
Different members of Allium have varying levels of these chemicals, and their pungency generally depends on how much they carry.
Onion Toxicity: What Is Allicin?
Allicin is a sulfur compound found in onions responsible for a lot of the irritation the plant causes.
Why is it there? According to chemist Eric Block of the University of Missouri at St. Louis, who has been studying onions since 1971:
"Since allicin is anti fungal as well as antibiotic, it could offer the garlic plant protection against the bulb decay induced by fungi. And since the lacrimatory factor is irritating and repugnant to certain animals, it too has survival value."
-Eric Block, Ph.D., "The Chemistry of Garlic and Onions."
Essentially what we have is an element - just one of several sulfur compounds present - that is intended to repel and injure things that would devour the plant and bulb, be they fungi, bugs, of mammals. When onion extract is applied to bacteria and fungi it literally destroys them.
Many a canny gardener has realized this and strategically planted onions, garlic, leeks, and other members of the Allium family to ward off pests. Many creatures will not cross a phalanx of allium, and so can't get to the juicy tomatoes waiting beyond. Their senses warn them that this is a food to avoid.
Although we like to think of ourselves as a species apart, at the end of the day we are just big, smarter-than-average animals with vulnerable physical bodies, and if a food is damaging enough that it destroys fungi and other bacteria and drives hungry animals away, it probably isn't wise for us to ignore the fact.
Onion Toxicity: Onions Sicken And Kill
While working as a newspaper reporter several years ago I ran across a man in a retirement home in Meriden, Connecticut that grew up on a onion farm in California. Always interested in agricultural life, I struck up a conversation and he told me something interesting: onion toxicity had almost killed him.
His mother died when he was 13 and since his father wasn't much of a cook, the boy was frequently hungry. To supplement his unappetizing meals, he would take breaks during his farm chores to eat onions.
"I didn't like them raw at first, but after awhile they started tasting great," he told me when I informed him that I found the taste of onions to be sickening.
Although he didn't connect it to the onions, he became increasingly pale and weak over the course of a few months until one day he collapsed while doing his chores.
He awoke in the hospital getting a blood transfusion, and was told that he'd come down with severe case of onion-induced anemia and had been dangerously close to death. After treatment he went on to a full recovery, but, he said, "I haven't eaten an onion since. When they try to put them in my food here I throw a fit."
Onion Toxicity: Humans Are Not Exempt
Although no full-scale tests have been done on onion toxicity in humans, for obvious reasons, there are plenty of instances of all types of animals, large and small, being sickened and killed by onions when their senses don't do a good enough job warning them away.
For instance, a group of water buffalo that ate some onions dumped in their field all died (4). A study on geese found that onions killed them too, with an autopsy revealed swelling of the liver and spleen (5). In a herd of cows that had 20 onions a day per cow added to their feed for six weeks, five cows died and two pregnant cows lost their calves. Anemia is the initial result of onion toxicity, the researchers found, but it eventually lead to organ damage and death (6).
Onion Toxicity: Thinning Out The Blood
It's is certainly one of the bizarre peculiarities of our mind that we can look at something in animals and see the cause of sickness and look at the same thing in ourselves and see a potential benefit.
Despite the well-documented ability of onion intake to bring on anemia in sheep (7), Cats (with just onion powder added to their food) (8), horses (eating wild onions) (9), and dogs (10), researchers have cooed over new studies showing this effect in humans and praised the onion's ability to thin the blood in the hopes that it might help us fight blood clots and prevent heart attracts, which folk lore says it does.
A 1979 study in India compared three groups of vegetarian Jains who ate an average of 600 grams of onions per week, 200 grams per week, or never in their lives. The study found that the onion abstainers had the shortest blood clotting time and that those who ate more onions had the longest time till clotting (11).
"The (positive health) folklore concerning garlic and onions seemed to be gaining some credence," said chemist Eric Block of the finding, noting the food's potential as an antithrombotic (11).
The mature way to deal with atherosclerosis is to eat a low fat plant-based diet that prevents and reverses it (12), and given that blood clots almost always affect sedentary, overweight individuals eating poor diets, the way to prevent them is to get regular exercise and eat a healthy diet.
Poisoning ourselves in the perverse hope of escaping the consequences of a bad lifestyle won't work.
Onion Toxicity: Weeping Over Onions
When you slice into an onion and start to get teary eyed, doesn't it strike you as a bit odd? You haven't even put the thing in your mouth yet your body is already irritated.
When an onion is sliced and the cell walls are broken, enzymes called alliinases begin a complex chemical reaction that results in the release of volatile gas known as the onion lachrymatory factor. This gets released into the air and eventually enters your eyes if you're hovering over the onion. The gas stings and irritates your eyes, and the tears that well up are your body's attempt to wash the toxic gas out (3).
I've sliced into a lot of peaches and hacked apart more than my fair share of lettuce, but none of these foods have been so irritating that my eyes had to wash the resulting chemicals away with bodily fluids.
You have to wonder about exactly how toxic an onion is when the gas of it alone makes your eyes tear up. What's it doing to you when you put it into your stomach?
Onion Toxicity: But What About All Those Benefits?
The cures attributed to onions are essentially drug reactions and the resulting stimulation of your body attempting to rid itself of harmful substances. Treating yourself with an onion is like taking a drug in the hopes that your body will stop producing that symptom. And just like drugs, when you rely on such a treatment you never remove the underlying cause and merely hope any side effects brought about by the drug reaction will be bearable.
If the entire Allium family were a drug, there would have to be a warning attached to the commercials, undoubtedly spoken by an agreeable-sounding women reading the list as if she were chatting about the pleasant weather:
The Allium Family Warning Label
Onions and other members of the Allium family may cause bad breath, indigestion and acid reflux (15), anemia, reduced blood clotting, or even death. Pregnant women should avoid the Alliuin family because its members have been known to cause accidental abortions in humans (13). Nursing women should not eat them because the chemical Allicin enters into their breast milk and disturbs a baby's ability to breast feed (13).
Those at risk for major bleeding, such as those soon to undergo surgery or enter into labor are urged not to eat members of the Allium family because they have been shown to prevent the clotting of open wounds (14).
Onion Toxicity: But What If I just Eat A Little?
Although dogs have shown the beginning stages of anemia after only a single dose of onions (10), it's probably true that it takes sustained intake to bring about any noticeable negative impact. The average westerner only uses onions as a condiment, so irregular use may be fine.
But don't fool yourself, a little bit of poison is still a poison. Even the Jains eating fairly modest portions of onions showed reduced blood clotting ability.
You could gorge all day on watermelons or bananas and show no ill effects beyond a bloated stomach. Take the same dose of onions, though, and you'd probably be very sick.
Although like all foods, onions have some up sides, the overwhelming force of them is negative.
I don't eat onions or garlic, but I have periodically tried the weaker variates of the Allium family, such as the leaves of the chive plant. After so long without these foods I find them unpleasantly strong and that my breath reeks of them for days, but overall I don't run into any significant problems.
If you want to include these foods in your diet periodically, I don't think it's going to be a deal breaker, but it's probably safe to say that onions and the Allium family should not be a regular part of your meals.
www.raw-food-health.net/Onion-Toxicity.html
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Why I Don’t Eat Toxic Garlic Or Onions
Onion and Garlic are actually toxic, believe it or not. By: Polyman
We all know vampires don’t like garlic… but maybe there’s something behind this immortal creatures disdain for garlic that we’re over-looking. Think about it: most of us mortals fear the dreaded “garlic breath” after eating Italian food before getting close and cozy for some face time with a mate. For a good reason too, because most people find onion and garlic breath to be pretty repulsing. So we know that if anything, having garlic and onions before the big date is a major faux pas… but is there more to it?The answer is, yes. Before we get into the science, let’s just think common sense. How many people get bad breath after eating apples, pineapple, berries, celery, carrots, orange juice, or even simple bread? You don’t hear any girls running away in terror back to their friends saying “OH NO, BREAD BREATH!”I think it’s a safe bet that most people with good hygiene don’t.In fact, you even see couples feeding each other strawberries and kissing each other with fruit… but not onions. There’s nothing sexy or sensual about running an onion peel over a women’s breast and lips …unless I suppose you have a alliums fetish (good luck having that up on your online dating profile).Why is that? Well first let’s tackle what bad breath is first. According to Wikipedia:Halitosis (bad breath) is a term used to describe noticeably unpleasant odors exhaled in breathing. […] In most cases (85–90%), bad breath originates in the mouth itself. The intensity of bad breath differs during the day, due to eating certain foods (such as garlic, onions, meat, fish, and cheese), obesity, smoking, and alcohol consumption. Since the mouth is exposed to less oxygen and is inactive during the night, the odor is usually worse upon awakening (“morning breath“).Tongue bacteria produce malodorous compounds and fatty acids, and account for 80 to 90% of all cases of mouth-related bad breath. Tongue bacteria produce malodorous compounds and fatty acids, and account for 80 to 90% of all cases of mouth-related bad breath.See, even the definition mentions garlic and onions increase bad breath! Now everyone knows that certain foods just aren’t good for you. Also, I’m sure people know of certain foods that cause people in a 10 ft radius to run away, plugging their nose in fear. So to me, it only seems logical that if you’re eating a food that causes such an unpleasant response to you and those around you, it might not be so good for you.If somebody doesn’t bathe and they smell like ass, chances are you don’t want to be around them. Why is that? Why do we find THAT smell to be so offensive? It’s simply because evolution says those smells tend to correlate with people that are often:
- unhealthy (not living a clean lifestyle)
- diseased (again, not clean, sickly)
- toxic (smells indicate the body trying to detox)
- low-status (can’t afford basic hygiene maintenance)
- low-selfesteem (doesn’t bother to keep themselves up)
- unfavorable mating material (not the best chances of survival)
- They contain allicin. It is anti fungal as well as antibiotic, that is most likely used to prevent the plant from being eaten by fungus, bacterias, and other animals. Farmers can strategically place them in their gardens to prevent animals from getting at other crops. If animals instincts tell them to avoid them… how are we so much smarter?
- Onions can induce anemia in animals (Pierce, KR. Et al. “Acute hemolytic anemia caused by wild onion poisoning in horses.” J Am Vet Med Assoc. 1972 Feb 1;160(3):323-7.)
- Reiki practitioners explain that garlic and onions are among the first substances to be expelled from a person’s system – along with tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceutical medications.
- Back in the 1980’s, in his research on human brain function, Dr Robert [Bob] C. Beck, DSc. found that garlic has a detrimental effect on the brain. He found that in fact garlic is toxic to humans because its sulphone hydroxyl ions penetrate the blood-brain barrier and are poisonous to brain cells.
Dr Beck explained that as far back as the 1950s it was known that garlic reduced reaction time by two to three times when consumed by pilots taking flight tests. This is because the toxic effects of garlic desynchronize brain waves. “The flight surgeon would come around every month and remind all of us: “Don’t you dare touch any garlic 72 hours before you fly one of our airplanes, because it’ll double or triple your reaction time. You’re three times slower than you would be if you’d not had a few drops of garlic.”
- The Taoists realized thousands of years ago that plants of the alliaceous family were detrimental to humans in their healthy state. In his writings, one sage Tsang-Tsze described the Alliums as the “five fragrant or spicy scented vegetables” – that each have a detrimental effect on one of the following five organs – liver, spleen, lungs, kidneys, and heart. Specifically, onions are harmful to the lungs, garlic to the heart, leeks to the spleen, chives to the liver and spring onions to the kidneys. Tsang-Tsze said that these pungent vegetables contain five different kinds of enzymes which cause “reactions of repulsive breath, extra-foul odour from perspiration and bowel movements, and lead to lewd indulgences, enhance agitations, anxieties and aggressiveness,” especially when eaten raw.
thepolyman.com/2011/12/why-i-dont-eat-toxic-garlic-or-onions/