Today I'm going to share with you how these are related and the two most powerful things that you can eat to prevent a lot of problems with both the liver and the inside of your arteries. Now take a look at this. We have some type of stressor, whether it's smoking, alcohol, drugs, toxins, viruses, bacteria, junk food, sugar, seed oils, refined carbohydrates.
These are all triggers. These are stressors that can affect the liver or the blood vessels. Whether you're inhaling some smoke or a toxin, it goes right into the blood supply.
Now, if you ingest something, it gets absorbed into the gut, it goes into the bloodstream, and the first thing that's hit is the liver. So the liver gets exposed to a lot of the junk that's in the blood. And one of the things the liver is supposed to do is clean out the toxicity that's in the blood.
It has various enzymes to turn these poisons into harmless particles. And so both of these tissues are working together very, very hard to keep you healthy. However, since you live on planet earth, you're exposed to a lot of bad foods, toxicity.
Okay. This is how it works. You first have one of these triggers right here, and that's called oxidation or oxidative stress.
Not enough antioxidants, you get this damage situation, this rusting out. Okay. And so we start with the stressor and then the body is going to try to heal itself.
and it uses the immune system to do that. So the way that the body heals itself is through the immune system by triggering inflammation, and then you have scar tissue. That is a scab, okay? If this goes on too long, it develops into an advanced fibrosis called cirrhosis.
The same thing happens in the artery. We have inflammation and then fibrosis, which is scar tissue. If it continues more, you get more plaquing, and it can actually go deep into... the artery and create more inflammation as a never-ending cycle. But you have to realize that cholesterol is not just there to plug up an artery, okay?
That cholesterol, most of it, is made by your liver because we need cholesterol to build all the membranes of the cells and hormones as well. Testosterone, progesterone, estrogen, and even a hormone called cortisol, which is a stress hormone, but it also makes cell membranes. This is a cell membrane.
inside of a cell looks like this. 25% of the cell membranes, you have cholesterol and we need the cholesterol to allow this membrane to really work, which line the nervous system, your brain, and cholesterol is not just floating through there. It's transported with a certain shuttle.
It's a protein. But if we just step back and look at this whole process, what's really happening is our immune cells are trying to heal or create a scar or a bandaid and in the arteries. The problem is when the band is too big.
it creates a blockage and then you get a heart attack or you might get something broken off that goes into a stroke. And also you get damage within the organ itself. So you get damage in the blood vessel.
So now we don't get the right, it's called nitric oxide to allow it to vasodilate or relax. So now we just get constriction. That's called high blood pressure.
We get abnormal lipids. That's the cholesterol thing. And then we get a high risk of cardiovascular disease.
With the liver, we get... a diminished ability to get rid of poisons. So now we can't detoxify. The liver can't make antioxidants to protect against this anymore.
One of the ways that the body gets rid of excess cholesterol is through the bile ducts. So if you're not able to make enough bile, then the cholesterol kind of backs up through the blood. Also, you get a lack of digestion.
You might get gallstones. And then we get to another common problem, which is insulin resistance. Okay.
Insulin resistance starts in your liver. And insulin resistance comes before prediabetes, and then you get diabetes. So the problem with insulin resistance is now you can't really regulate blood sugars that well anymore. And also the lining of that artery also has insulin resistance as well. And then something else happens.
Your liver starts to make sugar itself. So it's really a situation where your blood sugars are high because the liver is creating that situation. Not good.
So I just wanted to give you the foundation of these two problems right here. Now let's get into what garlic and onion can do for both of these. Well, the two foods that can counter that and prevent that whole process are these two right here that can help decrease oxidative stress through dealing with free radical damage. And so by consuming these antioxidants from these two foods, you're basically borrowing electrons from something else to help get rid of these free radicals.
That's the oxidation. inflammation, fibrosis, calcification. Now, these two foods are very high in sulfur.
Now, what's so significant about sulfur? Well, sulfur is involved in this amazing phase one, phase two detoxification enzyme system. Each enzyme has the capacity to break down and eliminate safely chemicals. That's quite magical. So whether you're being exposed to nicotine, caffeine, a drug, this system allows you to deal with all this exposure, whether it's coming in from your lungs or coming in through the digestion, it's going to end up in the liver, and then you need this system to deal with it.
The problem is if you have a bad liver and it's damaged, then this doesn't work. But these two foods can give you these enzymes to allow this detoxification to happen. Also, sulfur is needed to get rid of inflammation. In fact, if you look at a lot of the other remedies that you can buy at the store for inflammation, they usually have sulfur in there. I wonder why.
Also, garlic and onion are natural antimicrobial. So if you were to get sick, for example, with a virus or bacterial infection, you'd want to take garlic and onion because it's going to help you. It's like... They're both natural antibiotics, but without the side effects. They don't harm the good bacteria.
They only harm the pathogens. There are actually different defense mechanisms and medicines to heal the plant and protect the plant. And we can piggyback off that by consuming the actual plant itself.
Now, also, if you consume both of these, you're going to find another benefit of blood thinning. I'm not talking about making your blood abnormally thin, where you're going to have excess bleeding. But if you do happen to have this problem where you're clotting more than usual, which is not a good thing, it can bring you back to that normal.
But it's a mild version of that without the side effects. So that's really cool. Also, the ability for both of these foods to help you make insulin more sensitive is also another benefit since so many people have insulin resistance.
So even though when you cook an onion and it becomes sweet and there's carbohydrates, you do not have to worry about that onion messing with your blood sugars or creating any type of diabetes. It's not going to do that because it's actually low on the glycemic index. And also it has so many different things that can protect against this insulin problem and the diabetes issue. So by getting rid of the oxidative damage and the inflammation, you can then decrease the fibrosis that's going on. You're also going to get a nice balance of all your lipids.
You're going to optimize your lipids. Garlic has the ability to help your liver make more bile for excess cholesterol coming through there, and also to prevent sludge in this area that sometimes can back up and cause pain in your right shoulder through here. And onion has the ability to increase something called nitric oxide and decrease your blood pressure.
So this is what both of these foods will do for the liver and the artery. Now let's give you some ideas on how you can include this in your diet. What I want to give you right now is just a creative...
list of all the different ways that you can consume garlic and onion. You can actually mix it with a stir fry, okay, with vegetables and some meat, whether it's chicken or beef. You can put it in hummus, okay?
Hummus normally comes with garlic, but just add some onion in there. Also, anytime you make soup, add the garlic and onion to the soup. Now, one point about garlic and onion, you're going to have the most potent effect if it's fresh, crushing the garlic or chopping the onions.
I like to always cook my omelets, my egg omelets, with onions and then I sprinkle garlic on top. Now, another idea that I use with making omelets is I'll put olives on the omelets. I'll put fermented garlic cloves and I will slice up and saute onions.
I'm probably making you hungry right now. I also like to put garlic and onion on my mashed cauliflower with a little sea salt and pepper. It's awesome.
You can also infuse garlic and onion in your dressings with the olive oil if you're making beef stew. Always put plenty of garlic and onions in that. Anytime I fry a steak, I will also saute garlic and onion and put that on there.
Garlic and onion with steak will act as a natural antibacterial. You can also use rosemary, oregano. All of those will help.
When I make salsa or guacamole, I always put onion and garlic in there. And of course, if you haven't seen my pizza recipe, you could put plenty of onions and garlic on that because you're using the cauliflower crust. It's totally amazing. And since we're on the topic of pizza, if you haven't seen this recipe and how I make this pizza, you should check it out.
I put it up right here.