In Pursuit of Garlic Read Free Page B

bacterium. Garlic may not have performed quite as well as the antibiotic, but it definitely inhibited the bacterium’s growth. In another test, a garlic solution caused E. coli bacteria to lose their shape, cluster together, and leak some of their contents. In experiments with strains of yeast such as candida, garlic was more effective than the fungal agent nystatin.
    There’s much more in Block’s book—and many others—to persuade you to eat more garlic. The oral bacterium Porphyromonas gingivalis, which causes gum infections and has been associated with inflammation around the heart and rheumatoid arthritis, is sensitive to garlic. In a five-week trial, thirty people using a mouthwash containing 2.5 percent garlic showed reduced bacteria counts, and—probably much to the dismay of their nearest and dearest, although the test results didn’t specify whether the scent of the mouthwash lived beyond the trial—the effect lasted for a couple of weeks after they’d stopped using the rinse. Clinical studies in the past decade also show that garlic packs a punch against Helicobacter pylori, which causes chronic gastritis and duodenal and gastric ulcers.
    AS FOR its antiparasitic activity, crushed garlic mixed with alcohol has been used for centuries to treat amoebic dysentery, as Dr. Schweitzer knew, as well as giardiasis, malaria, sandfly fever, and sleeping sickness. And the common treatment today for African eye worm, which afflicts millions in Cameroon and elsewhere in West Africa and is caused by the nematode Loa loa, is a mixture of onion and garlic juice dripped into the eye. In the past twenty years, garlic compounds have also shown some success in vitro against common viruses such as the herpes strain. The solution had to be so strong, however, that if it were used on living flesh it would damage the healthy cells around the treatment area.
    Many contemporary reports claim that garlic in some form—even consumed as part of a daily diet—prevents or inhibits the growth of malignant tumors. A 2009 in-vitro study tested extracts of various vegetables on cells from pancreatic, lung, stomach, kidney, prostrate, breast, and brain cancers, and garlic came out on top as the strongest inhibitor of cancer cell production. Results may be different in real life, however. But an epidemiological study of people in China compared the incidence of stomach cancer in two communities, one where average consumption of garlic was 0.7 ounces (20 grams) a day, and a second in which people ate less than 0.04 ounces (1 gram) a day (assuming an average clove weighs 2.5 grams, that’s eight cloves and about half a clove, respectively). The incidence of cancer in the first group, which ate the larger amount of garlic, was 8 percent of the rate in the other group.
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    Tabloids helped make garlic the top-selling single-herb supplement in 2006, [but] since their pages also feature Elvis sightings and UFO bases on Mount Everest, the legitimacy of their reporting is suspect.
    ERIC BLOCK, Garlic and Other Alliums
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    THERE ARE many conflicting opinions about garlic and cancer, but enough evidence of its ability to inhibit cell growth exists that studies are taking place to determine how and why it might be effective against malignancies. Does it alter the metabolism of carcinogenic cells in some way? Does it somehow suppress their growth? Or does it simply improve the efficacy of other drugs? Or does it do any of these things?
    As for cardiovascular disease, it seems the jury will be out for some time. Despite Dioscorides’s and Pliny’s conclusions that garlic opens the mouths of veins, most recent studies don’t support the claims—most made by the manufacturers of garlic supplements—that garlic reduces cholesterol. A Stanford University clinical trial that compared the use of fresh garlic with the use of garlic capsules and powdered garlic in 192 adults showed... nothing. An Asian review of adults treated with garlic for moderately