Cloves

This article is part of a larger article titled "100+ Healthiest Foods On Planet Earth."  Read it here.

There are a number of old wive’s tales relating to the things that cloves can apparently cure, but here we have collected the scientific evidence that shows exactly what health benefits you can expect to derive from cloves.

Help Prevent Stomach Ulcers. Clove essential oil has the ability to prevent stomach ulcers from forming. It is believed that cloves contain something called eugenol which encourages mucus production. This is important in protecting the stomach and preventing issues like ulcers. The researchers did conclude that further research needs to be done in this area, but the initial findings are promising.

Improves Libido. Cloves have been used for some time in traditional folk medicine to treat a number of sexual problems and a study conducted in 2004 went some way to proving the truth of this claim. An extract was created from cloves and then given to male rats once a day, for seven days. Each group received different concentrations of the clove extract.

The researchers found that the extract did, indeed, increase sexual activity between the male rats and their female counterparts and that the stronger the concentration of clove extract, the more notable the increase. This study suggests that using clove as a natural aphrodisiac is scientifically sound, although human trials would need to be conducted to test the relevance of the findings on human sexual activity.

Anti-Inflammatory. Cytokines are the cells that send signals between different cells and macrophages are responsible for responding to infections or collections of dead cells and dealing with them. A certain amount of inflammation is needed to allow the damaged tissue or cells to be repaired, but too much inflammation can cause problems. This study looked at the effects cloves had on inflammation.

The researchers found that extracts of clove or pure eugenol, which is a compound found in cloves, acted to significantly inhibit communication between the macrophages and cytokine cells, which shows that cloves are able to exert anti-inflammatory effects.

Manage Diabetes. Cloves can affect complications associated with type 2 diabetes in diabetic rats. The rats were divided into groups and given varying quantities of clove powder, with one group being the control group and receiving no supplementation.

The results showed that blood glucose levels slowly decreased in the rats that were taking the clove powder and they also experienced lower levels of cholesterol; antioxidants levels had also increased in the rats taking the clove powder.