From: http://altmedicine.about.com/cs/conditionsitoq/a/Parasites.htm
Add raw garlic (1 average sized clove has about 1/5 the antibiotic power of the normal dosage of penicillin) and goldenseal to the list of herbal remedies.
-jhereg
I love this quote from 1681 describing giardia:
“I have sometimes also seen tiny creatures mov-
ing very prettily; some of them a bit bigger, others a
bit less, than a blood-globule but all of one and the
same make. Their bodies were somewhat longer than
broad, and their belly, which was flattish, furnished
with sundry little paws, wherewith they made such a
stir in the clear medium and among the globules, that
you might even fancy you saw a woodlouse running
up against a wall; and albeit they made a quick motion
with their paws, yet for all that they made but slow
progress.â€Â
goldenseal is some serious stuff. i recently had a cold and my homeopathic doctor gave me a few doses of golden seal… it’s certainly vile, but it knocked the virus right out of my system.
goldenseal is endangered/over harvested. best to use relatives that also contain berberine. oregon grape root for this region.
you are going to have to cite a source for a statement like that. I see it everywhere in the midwest… I don’t even have to see it, when I start sneezing in high summer, I know it’s out there, ready to be dried…
http://www.unitedplantsavers.org/UpS_At_Risk_List.html
goldenseal and am. ginseng are the two best known at risk medicinals.
this is a quote that i found of michael moore on the subject (for those who are not familiar with michael moore, he has published many books on western herbalism, both on gthering herbs bioregionally and preparing them, and textbooks on clinical practice, and has taught many students over the years)
While on the subject of goldenseal, does anyone know of a source for the plant. I have been looking for it for some time.
Good idea…the condition of Golden Seal is DISASTROUS these days. Most of what is on the market is being illegally poached from the grimly diminished wild populations, since the floods and heavy precipitation of the last couple of years has ruined a large part of the Golden Seal that was in cultivation.
Golden Seal and Echinacea preparations are the BEST selling herb formulas over the last several years, with every product line brainlessly adding to the problem by HAVING to include another one in THEIR product line…meanwhile the plants are disappearing from the wild at an ever-quickening pace to feed our nitwit lemming marketing fads.
Sorry…I am NOT down on wildcrafting…I have done it for almost 30 years, and taught it for over 20 years…but EVERY GODDAMN STAND of Golden Seal that I coppiced for years in the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks (I use primarily the secondary leaf for fresh plant tincturing, and rarely gather roots unless to transplant) has been wiped out in the last four years…three years ago I found perhaps a dozen plants that still survived in SEVEN localities in SIX counties in TWO states…there had been thousands the year before.
I think you can become immune to Giardia. I grew up on the Yukon River, and when I was a baby every day my dad put a little tiny bit of river water in my mouth. I’ve never gotten Giardia, even when everyone else gets it.
My dog friend get’s it a lot, though, and I give him wormwood for it.
You can get immune to giardia in the sense that it never causes symptoms, not in the sense that your body gets rid of it. It is very common for people who live in giardia-infected areas to get immune to symptoms. However, they can carry it (so don’t poop in water that other people have to drink! 
)
As far as Garlic and giardia – I had a friend who developed a very serious case of Giardia in Peru. He treated himself with Garlic and the active infection would go away and then come back in a few weeks. This is because the Garlic would kill the active organisms, but not the cysts, which are like their eggs and have hard protective shells. But he had a serious case, and civilized antibiotics didn’t kill the giardia either. In fact, I think he still has it, two years later. But the body gradually adapts to it and symptoms go away.
Hmm, interesting.
Do you know how long it took before the symptoms went away?
I got it real bad at the Oregon rainbow gathering in about '78 I think. It stayed with me, coming back once or twice a year, for around ten years.
Then my appendix burst on me and I had to get emergency surgery and I never felt the giardia symptoms again.