Getting to the bottom of garlic breath

Q: I'm curious about why garlic leaves such a strong lingering odor on the breath?

Dr. Wright: Believe it or not, this reaction is the result of an important, natural detoxification process. It's one of the ways your body excretes some of the volatile compounds found in garlic. And "garlic breath" is just one way that your body is designed to protect itself from the many toxins it's exposed to, whether they're natural or unnatural.

Simply put, detoxification is the efficient removal of chemicals from the body that are likely to cause tissue injury. The body deals with toxins in three ways:

1. Some toxins are stored in fat tissue to later be slowly re-released and broken down by the body over a long period of time.

2. Toxins that are fairly water-soluble can undergo direct elimination via the kidneys, lungs (as is the case with garlic), etc. without further processing by the liver.

3. The primary way that the body deals with outside toxins is to eliminate them via urine, bile, etc. after processing by the liver. Detoxification processing by the liver is called biotransformation. The aim of biotransformation is basically to make a toxin more water- soluble so that it can be more easily excreted/eliminated in the bile or the urine.

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