Feature

Keep taking the garlic

Two cloves a day keeps the doctor away, claims David Roser. But what exactly does garlic do — apart from the obvious?

Garlic has a rich history, filled to the brim with anecdotes, stories of miraculous cures, religion and magic. But along with many other natural remedies it fell from favour in this country until a Dr Johann Hofels perfected the garlic capsule or pearle in the 1930s and brought it to England. Although progress was slow initially, over the next 50 years, garlic gradually became accepted as a valuable aid for the treatment of coughs, colds and catarrh. In 1987 garlic pearles were granted a full product licence for the conditions and as a result became an officially recognised medicine.

In the last few years garlic has gripped the British imagination with its apparent benefit as a cardiovascular protective agent. In Germany, manufacturers of many garlic based products are allowed to make the claim that garlic can protect the arterial system against ageing if the daily dose of garlic extract is derived from 4 grammes or more of whole garlic (the equivalent of about two small cloves).

Many human trials of garlic have taken place against two conditions that predispose to cardiovascular disease. The first is known as “platelet-stickiness”. Platelets are minute cells in the blood that repair damaged arterial walls becoming sticky. Unfortunately a meal high in saturated fats can also make platelets sticky, as can smoking and stress. Small doses of garlic can quickly reverse the tendency to stickiness.

The second condition is atherosclerosis, caused when surplus cholesterol from a fatty diet is deposited on the arterial walls. The problem begins with a fatty streaking — primary atheroma — which can be seen even in quite young children where a high fat diet has become a way of life.

Here garlic appears to exert a direct effect upon the liver — an organ which manufactures cholesterol and distributes it, along with cholesterol from the diet, around the body. Garlic affects the production of high density lipoprotein (HDL), a particle produced by the liver to scavenge cholesterol that has been erroneously deposited and return it to the liver.

At the same time, garlic appears to lower the production of low density lipoprotein (LDL), made by the liver to ferry cholesterol around the body and deposit it on receptor sited for metabolic purposes. Once the receptor sites are full because of too much saturated fat in the diet, LDL will start dumping its cholesterol load in other places. So if too much fatty food has been eaten, the body needs more HDLs and LDLs. Garlic seems uniquely able to assist in this important rebalancing. The precise way in which it acts is the subject of much research and review.

All forms of garlic appear to be active — powders, essential oils, boiled and fried — not to mention raw garlic, if you can take it.

Research suggests that boiling or frying garlic converts it into many of its breakdown components. These are now believed to be the active products of garlic metabolism which are absorbed into the body and do so much good. When raw garlic is eaten, body heat, along with acids and enzymes in the digestive process, will break down or “cook” the garlic by the time it reaches the intestines, where it is absorbed. These vital breakdown products can be measured in essential oil of garlic and are also present in garlic tablets.

So take your garlic with confidence, in your food and as a daily medicine. There is no finer way to protect against a whole host of problems other than simple coughs and colds. Tummy bugs, food poisoning and unhealthy arteries are all receiving attention as probable victims of garlic’s powerful activity. Even better, it costs only a few pence a day for perhaps the best health insurance policy there is.