When ordinary people pay attention to health, they always hope to find a way to promote health and prolong life without effort or even much adjustment to their lifestyle.
Recently, articles on garlic health preservation in WeChat Circle of Friends have started to catch fire again, including garlic’s ability to prevent cancer, bacteria, blood lipid, blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases.
A thoughtful friend asked me: Garlic is already one of the most important spices and ingredients in our diet. If it is so multifunctional, why are there so many cancers, infections and cardiovascular diseases? Is it the wrong way to eat, or is garlic not that magical?
Just a while ago, my colleague published an influential research paper on the medical value of garlic. Here, I would like to discuss [garlic and health] with you in combination with the data.
Garlic Favored by Modern Medicine
Human beings have eaten garlic for thousands of years. In many civilized traditional medicines, garlic is considered to have various medicinal values.
1. Modern Medicine’s Attention to Garlic
In 1858, the famous microbiologist Pasteur discovered that garlic had antibacterial effect, so garlic was used to treat gangrene in both world wars.
Modern medicine really began to pay attention to garlic in 1944. American chemist Cavallito extracted a substance with strong pungent smell from garlic, named Allicin. After that, alliin, ahoene and other active substances in garlic were also discovered one after another. In the following decades, new studies have continuously discovered various health values of garlic.
2. Medical Value of Garlic and Its Extracts
The functions of garlic and its extracts reported in research papers include:
(1) Antibacterial, including bacteria, fungi, etc. A large number of in vitro tests have proved the antibacterial effect of garlic and its extract;
(2) Anti-virus, including anti-common cold, influenza and even HIV;
(3) anti-tumor;
(4) Benefits to cardiovascular system, including lowering blood lipid, reducing platelet aggregation, lowering blood pressure, etc.
Therefore, after years of publicity, garlic and its preparations have become the largest natural food supplement in the United States, with annual sales reaching more than 20 million US dollars.
So, as my friend asked, since garlic has so much medical value, we have indeed been taking it all the time, so what is the effect and is there any real data to support it?
Garlic Reduces Blood Lipids? The test failed
In the 1970s and 1980s, some sporadic animal experiments and small-scale human studies suggested that garlic may have the effect of reducing blood lipid. Until 1994, a meta-analysis summarizing a large number of research results on garlic summarized the previous studies, indicating that garlic may really have such a effect.
Although the author cautioned very cautiously at the end of the paper, The quality of the research included is relatively low, and further rigorous tests are needed to reach the final conclusion. However, the industry is still excited. After continuous publicity by the media, garlic has begun to be deeply loved by Europeans and Americans with high incidence of hyperlipidemia. Raw garlic, garlic powder and capsules extracted from garlic all sell well.
The medical profession is not as aggressive about this [eat more harmless] thing as it is about drugs with potential side effects. Until 2007, a well-designed randomized controlled trial found that garlic did not seem to show such a effect of lowering blood lipid.
The researchers recruited 192 subjects, They had mild dyslipidemia, But there were no other diseases. They were randomly divided into four groups, Raw garlic, garlic powder tablets, garlic extract tablets and placebo tablets are respectively given for a long time, The garlic was added to special sandwiches, and the four groups looked and tasted almost the same. The subjects were regularly drawn blood, and their blood lipid levels did not change in what during the six-month observation period, and there was no difference between the four groups.
You can say that taking it for decades may see the effect. However, half a year is not short. If the effect is so weak, why don’t we choose those drugs that have been thoroughly studied and have immediate results? Does this also tell us that garlic is not so magical?
Garlic anti-cancer? There are still many disputes.
The conclusion of garlic anticancer came from some observational studies at the earliest. It seems that eating garlic in large quantities can reduce the occurrence of gastrointestinal malignant tumors such as gastric cancer, esophageal cancer, colorectal cancer, etc.
Later, there were several sporadic tests to confirm it, but there were more or less some problems in the design.
For example, the most important one was carried out by researchers in our country, which included more than 5,000 high-risk patients with gastric cancer, some of whom were given garlic and selenium, and some of whom were given placebo. As a result, the risk of cancer, especially gastric cancer, among garlic users after 5 years was significantly lower than that of placebo group.
In fact, the accuracy and authenticity of the study are not necessarily guaranteed, and the addition of other ingredients to the garlic group does not mean that it works alone.
In addition, we already know that garlic has local antibacterial effect, and a very important high-risk factor for gastric cancer is Helicobacter pylori, which has long been parasitic in the stomach.
Is it possible that garlic does not directly fight against gastric cancer, but indirectly reduces the occurrence of gastric cancer by inhibiting Helicobacter pylori?
If so, can we solve this problem through short-term and thorough anti-Helicobacter pylori treatment without eating a lot of garlic every day for a long time?
Unfortunately, the current research is too rough to answer such questions.
Is it really no problem to eat too much?
The more troubling problem is that in almost all of these medical studies, only a large amount of garlic can be used, and a small amount of garlic does not seem to be beneficial to what. Even if garlic can resist cancer, how much is good?
1. World Health Organization’s Unreliable Recommendations
The World Health Organization’s advice on this issue is to take 2-5 grams of raw garlic per day, i.e. About 1-2 whole garlic or garlic cloves. Or 0.4 to 1.2 g of dry garlic powder; Or, 2-5 mg garlic oil; Or 300 ~ 1000 milligrams of garlic essence; Or, 2-5 mg allicin.
However, the World Health Organization also said that there is not much data to support this dose. In other words, they also don’t know whether eating this way is really beneficial to health, but people can try this first and let researchers count it over time.
2. You can’t eat more garlic either.
At the same time, it should also be noted that although garlic is natural, it cannot be eaten without scruple.
The most obvious is halitosis and gastrointestinal discomfort, while some people eat according to the recommended dose, even if they eat capsules, their bodies will emit garlic smell.
3. In addition, it is best to read the instructions for patients taking drugs.
There are some drugs that interact with garlic ingredients to enhance drug toxicity. The common ones are [warfarin] and [dabigatran] (both oral anticoagulants).
Other studies have found that mothers feed their babies breast milk after eating garlic, and babies eat breast milk more violently. Researchers also do not know why…
Summary
After all, garlic is an ingredient and spice. Even if it is good for health, daily consumption may not have as good an effect as imagined. It is not surprising that future studies will produce disappointing results like those of blood lipid reduction studies.
If you want a healthy body, you need to change your life style and improve your life style. You cannot expect one thing to solve many problems.