Collection: Shop

I took the chemist's garlic tablets for the best part of a decade and couldn't have told you what they did. What sold me here was the label: one ingredient, 500mg, standardised for allicin, made in the UK. Two with my porridge, no smell whatsoever, and I've stopped shopping around. Next blood test is in October and for once I'm not dreading it.

My GP raised statins in June and I asked for a few months to try the natural route first. I'd avoided garlic supplements because of the smell; my husband is not shy about telling me. Three weeks in and he hasn't said a word. Easy to swallow, arrived in two days, and I like that it's one ingredient rather than a list I can't pronounce.

I'm the person in the office who gets every cold and it always goes to my chest. I started Allivin last autumn as a daily habit rather than something to grab once I'm already ill. I'm not going to make claims; all I'll say is it's been a quieter winter than usual and I've kept it up. Odourless as promised.

I keep a little book of my blood pressure readings, morning and night, so I'm a numbers man. The tablets the surgery offered left me dizzy and shattered, so I asked to try lifestyle changes first. Allivin is part of that: two capsules with breakfast, no smell, one less thing to think about. I'm not going to tell you what my book says, but I'm still writing in it and still ordering.

At sixty-six the size of a capsule matters more than you'd think, and these are a normal size, two with a cup of tea. No garlic taste, no repeating. My only grumble is that I wish one bottle lasted longer than a month, but my daughter has put me on the three-bottle bundle so that's solved. Delivery was quick and the box was tidy.

Since my cholesterol result I read every label in the supermarket, so I read this one carefully too. Odourless garlic extract, vegetable capsule, nothing else. That's why I stayed after the first bottle. I take it alongside what my doctor advised, not instead of it, and it's the easiest part of the routine by a mile.

Ordered one bottle to test the smell claim, because I've been burned before. It's true, there's nothing. Went straight for the buy-two-get-one box after that, which works out far cheaper a day and means I'm not reordering every few weeks. Capsules are small, dispatch was same day, and the emails aren't pushy.

My father died of his heart at sixty-eight and I'm seventy-two, so I've been proactive for a long time: the walking, the porridge, and a garlic tablet every day for years. I switched to Allivin because it's British-made and tells you the dose. Two capsules, no smell, arrives in a couple of days. I'll be taking it for as long as they make it.