Greetings, it's Eric Bakker, naturopath from New Zealand. Thanks for coming back. Let's
talk about cloves, the spice cloves, one of my favorites. Cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves. Beautiful.
So this spice goes way back. I was just reading some interesting history on it. If you look back
even way back, the Chinese used this in the Han Dynasty, which is where, I don't know,
1000 years ago, a long time ago. And before you spoke to the emperor, you had to chew cloves,
the spice cloves, before you spoke to this guy. So, it might be good for the new president coming
in that everyone's got to chew cloves before they talk to the new guy coming in. It might
freshen things up a bit. What do you reckon? Syzygium aromaticum, Syzygium. That's cloves.
So the Dutch know a lot about cloves because they control the trade of cloves to a high degree. And
then this French guy pinched some seeds. French people are sneaky sometimes. You've got to watch
them. So he grabbed some seeds, this would have been probably way back in the 15th century,
and flogged them and then took them to different islands, I think it was Zanzibar,
and then planted them and then formed them, and then all of a sudden these trees are everywhere.
The smell of cloves is amazing. It's about 10, I think, between about 10 to 15% essential oil. So
if you get a good cloves and you squeeze them hard, you can actually feel that oily...
Man, did I get into trouble with cloves. When I was an aromatherapy student, I had a whole
bottle of this stuff. Then I put a cap full in an oil burner because I love the smell of it,
I was burning clove oil. But then the bottle spilled over and it went all
over the hardwood floor and it stayed. It was a big black patch and then the house
smelled of clove for the next 10 years right. So it's pretty well in my brain that smell now.
But anyway, antioxidant. It's really good as an antioxidant.
So it definitely helps up regulate various antioxidant pathways in the body like glutathione
and superoxide dismutase, which helps to take free radicals down. So this actually is quite
good to have in your diet to keep you young and to help prevent chronic diseases and stuff. We'll
talk about that later. So that's the first one. It is an antioxidant. It's a good one at that.
The second interesting thing is for toothache. Now, according to research, 76% of adults
said they have benefit from taking clove oil with a toothache.
I've had toothache in the past real bad. When you just feel like getting a pair of pliers and
doing something because it hurts. And a drop of clove oil, get a little Q-tip and rub that around
the gum. It's probably more effective than benzocaine that the doctor can give you. So
clove oil, try it out. Tooth ache, tiny bit there. Really helps. And the other tip if you've got gum,
if you've bitten the inside of the cheek, you get a ulcer, you got painful ulcers
in your mouth. You may want to take some zinc because you've probably got a zinc deficiency.
Rhubarb, okay. Cut
that red stem of rhubarb and rub that on there. I found that to super effective. Works quite
well. Rhubarb extract works even better. It's very stringent and just helps with that pain.
Acne is a surprising third one. Acne okay. So you probably heard that tea tree oil is
quite effective for acne, but one tiny little drop of clove when put on the tip of a pimple
is very effective. So that could be something you could try out. All right. But you don't
smear it all over your face and smell like a spicy muffin. You don't do that either.
The fourth one is definitely antibacterial. So clove has very powerful antibacterial, antifungal
and antiparasitic qualities. And that's why you find it in my [inaudible 00:03:43]. All right.
More and more natural therapists are starting to discover the benefits, the antiparasitic benefits
particularly, of clove. All right? Clove has been used for a long, long time. Way back.
300, I think, 107 years BC or after Christ. I mean, this is a long, long history of use
for diseases and germs and things like that. Many different people have used it for this purpose.
And of course it were used in the plague. The black plague. You might see pictures of those
guys for those long, weird kind of beaks walking around London. These were medics or people walking
around. Guess what they had stuffed in that thing? Cloves and spices, like nutmeg to stop diseases.
So we know that they were antibacterial. So this actually works better than some antibiotics
against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. So it works on all types of bacteria. Okay?
So the staphylococci and the streptococci are the gram-positive. And the pseudomonas and the
E. coli, salmonella, these are gram negative. So it works in a broad range of bacteria. That's why
I've got it in the [inaudible 00:04:51], but even better it's antifungal. Not many drugs
have got such a wide range of action as clove. It works on a wide range of bacteria,
a wide range of fungus and parasites. It's unheard of.
It's crazy almost. But it's a natural thing and nature is crazy. And that's why we don't like it.
That's why we're so busy destroying it, because it's crazy. We think we're better than nature.
We're ruining it when you think of all these drugs. Candida. I mean, if you look up the
research like I have, it works on multiple strains of yeast in the body, and Candida.
So as I've mentioned, I've known some patients who made a tea out of clove, a clove tea and used
it for [inaudible 00:05:34]. Okay. They used it for fungal parts on their body and highly
effective at that. But try it out. Clove is very nice to have. You can even put it in salads so you
can do crazy things with clove, but it's got a beautiful taste about it and it's something
you appreciate over time. You don't need a lot. Small amount does a lot. Thanks for tuning in.