Today, we’re going to talk about a common spice, clove, and how some mistakes can turn this helpful plant into something risky. Clove has been around for ages, known for easing pain, helping your heart, and fighting swelling. But if you don’t use it right, it can cause real problems, especially for your liver. Knowing the correct ways to use it is super important to get all its good stuff without any bad surprises.
⚠️The First Mistake: Thinking Numbness is an Allergy
Lots of people think of cloves for toothaches. But the first big mistake happens when someone tries it for the first time. They might chew a whole clove, like someone told them to. A few seconds later, their tongue feels numb. They think, “Oh no, I’m having an allergic reaction!” So, they spit it out, rinse their mouth, and decide never to touch it again.
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But here’s the thing: cloves have something called eugenol, which is their main active part. This natural oil has a numbing effect. When it touches your mouth, it temporarily blocks pain signals. It’s kind of like what dentists use in some numbing medicines. So, that numb feeling is totally normal. It usually lasts about 15 to 30 minutes and only affects where the clove touched. A real allergy to clove is very different; it would cause things like swollen lips or tongue, or hives.
The problem with this mistake is that many people throw away a spice that costs very little and miss out on one of nature’s best anti-swelling helpers. They might spend a lot of money on other things when they could get similar benefits from something already in their kitchen.
⚠️The Second Mistake: Bad Storage
Before we get into more mistakes, let’s talk about how you store cloves. You could have the best cloves in the world, but if you store them wrong, it’s like having a car without wheels. A clove left out in the open air can lose half its eugenol in just three months. The main enemies of eugenol are light, heat, and moisture. Light breaks down the active parts, heat makes them disappear, and moisture dilutes them and can cause mold.
So, how do you keep this treasure safe? Store it in a dark glass jar or a ceramic container, and make sure it’s sealed tight. Keep it in a cool, dry cupboard, away from the stove or sink. A pantry is perfect. If you buy ground cloves, try to use them within six months. Whole cloves can last up to two years if you take care of them.
Our silent enemy is ongoing swelling, the kind that slowly harms our joints, arteries, and organs without us even knowing. The eugenol in cloves is a great fighter against this enemy. But a clove without eugenol is like a soldier without weapons. It can’t fight swelling or protect your cells from damage. It just becomes a spice for flavor, without any healing power.
People in the 15th century knew this. They carried cloves in sealed boxes, wrapped in cloth. They treated them like gold because they understood that their healing power depended on how well they were kept. We’ve lost that knowledge because cloves are so easy to get now, and we just see them as a simple seasoning. A good way to tell if your cloves are still powerful is to smell them. Strong cloves have a sharp, intense smell. If they smell weak or like old wood, they’ve lost their good stuff.
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⚠️The Third Mistake: Too Much of a Good Thing
Now, here’s the mistake that turns clove from a hero into a villain. The third mistake is thinking that if a little is good, a lot must be better. This is where clove shows its dark side, and it’s not the spice’s fault; it’s because people don’t respect how powerful eugenol is. When do we cross that dangerous line?
It’s usually around 10 whole cloves. That might seem like a lot, but some people chew cloves all day, thinking they’re getting more benefits, or they make super strong teas with many cloves in one cup. The first signs that you’ve had too much are stomach problems: intense heartburn, nausea that won’t go away, or diarrhea. Your body is trying to get rid of the extra eugenol any way it can.
The real danger is to your liver. This important organ processes all the eugenol you eat. With normal amounts, it handles it fine. But when you flood it with huge doses, it gets overloaded. Liver enzymes go up, and in very bad cases, there can be real liver damage. So, remember this golden rule: with cloves, less is more. Two cloves a day or two cups of mild tea are enough. More than that, and you’re in risky territory.
⚠️The Fourth Mistake: Mixing with Diabetes Medicine
This mistake sets the stage for understanding the fourth one, and it has to do with something cloves do very well: lower your blood sugar. The problem isn’t that it doesn’t work; the problem is that it works too well. To understand this mistake, let me explain how cloves affect your body. Eugenol makes your body more sensitive to insulin. If you think of insulin as a key and your cells as locks, cloves make those locks open more easily. Sugar gets into your cells better, your blood sugar goes down, and your pancreas gets a break.
Why is this so dangerous? Because if you already take medicines like metformin, glyburide, or insulin, cloves add to their effect. It’s like pressing the gas pedal when you’re already going fast. Your blood sugar can drop very low, causing confusion or dizziness. This is where our common enemy, metabolic disorder, comes in, which feeds ongoing swelling.
Cloves help fight this by improving blood sugar control, but this same power makes it a double-edged sword. Low blood sugar also causes stress in your body. Your cells suffer when they don’t get enough fuel, and the solution ends up making the problem you wanted to fix worse. So, the answer is simple: if you have diabetes or pre-diabetes, talk to your doctor before using cloves regularly. Check your blood sugar more often at first, and adjust the doses of both your medicine and the cloves so they work together, not against each other.
⚠️The Fifth Mistake: Using Cloves as a Cure for Tooth Problems
Now, let’s talk about the fifth mistake, one that dentists see all the time. We’ve seen that this spice helps with teeth. So, the mistake isn’t using cloves for tooth pain. The mistake is believing that cloves cure tooth problems. It’s the difference between a temporary fix and a real solution. And confusing the two can be costly.
First, let’s confirm what cloves do well. Their eugenol is a strong natural pain reliever and germ killer. When you put it on a sore tooth, it numbs the nerves, reduces local swelling, and kills surface bacteria. That’s why dentists use things with eugenol after some procedures. Putting a whole clove on the affected tooth or using diluted clove oil on a cotton ball can give you real relief. In about five minutes, the pain lessens. You can get back to what you were doing, and this is helpful when you can’t get to the dentist right away.
But here’s the big mistake: using this relief as an excuse not to get treatment. Dentists tell stories of patients who come in after months of treating themselves with cloves. What started as a simple cavity is now a deep infection. Why do we fall into this trap? Because cloves are too good at hiding the pain. They give a false feeling that the problem is under control. Meanwhile, the bacteria keep working, eating away at the tooth from the inside, getting into the pulp, and reaching the root. So, this should be the clear rule: cloves are for getting by until your dentist appointment, not for avoiding it. And never as a final treatment.
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⚠️The Sixth Mistake: Misusing Clove Essential Oil
Now we get to the sixth mistake, the most important one. It has to do with a small bottle that looks harmless: clove essential oil. Essential oil isn’t just concentrated clove; it’s clove turned into a super powerful chemical. Just one drop of this oil is like chewing 70 cloves at once. It’s a concentration our bodies were never meant to handle.
The first danger comes from using it on your skin without diluting it. Many people read about the benefits of cloves for skin and put the essential oil directly on it. Big mistake. Pure eugenol is harsh. It can burn your skin like acid. If you want to use clove oil on your skin, the rule is clear: one drop in 10 ml of a carrier oil. This could be coconut, almond, or jojoba oil. This 1% dilution is safe. More concentrated than that is playing with fire.
And I need to be very clear: you should never drink clove essential oil. This isn’t an exaggeration; it’s a documented medical fact. Even a tiny bit can cause severe liver failure. What happens in your body? Your liver gets flooded with pure eugenol. It’s like getting a month’s worth of doses in one second. Liver cells start dying in huge numbers. Markers of liver damage shoot up.
Older generations understood this better. They used plants in their natural form, respecting the amounts nature designed. They didn’t have the technology to make these super strong extracts, and maybe that limit protected them from our modern tendency to go to extremes. Essential oil has its place, but it’s not in your mouth or stomach. It’s for aromatherapy, where you breathe it in diluted. It’s for massages when mixed correctly. It’s for putting on a tooth very diluted, or for cleaning your home as a germ killer. But never, under any circumstances, is it a food supplement.
⚠️The Seventh Mistake: Ignoring Interactions with Medications
And so we come to the next mistake: not considering that the eugenol in cloves has blood-thinning properties. It makes your blood flow more easily. In normal amounts, this is good. It helps prevent clots and improves circulation. But when combined with certain medicines or if you’re having surgery, the effect gets much stronger.
If you take warfarin, aspirin, or clopidogrel, adding cloves to your routine is a problem. These medicines already reduce clotting; cloves add to that effect, and what was protection becomes a risk of bleeding. The second critical conflict happens before any surgery. Surgeons need your blood to clot well during and after the operation. That’s why they ask you to stop aspirin days before. But many people don’t mention cloves because they don’t know you use them, and many don’t mention it because they think it’s just a spice.
Other natural remedies also interact with cloves. Garlic has blood-thinning properties, and so do ginger, cinnamon, ginkgo biloba, and high doses of vitamin E. If you combine several of these without knowing, you create a blood-thinning cocktail in your body. The thing is, this mistake happens because many people separate medicines and natural remedies in their minds as if they were different categories. But your body doesn’t make that distinction. For your body, everything is chemistry, and all chemistry interacts, whether it’s natural or not.
Next, click below to discover 5 benefits of cloves and how to use cloves properly…
