Can 2 Garlic Cloves a Day Keep the Doc Away?

April 4, 2005 - Eating two cloves of garlic a day will keep your doctor away, animal studies show.

The finding has nothing to do with bad breath. It relates to a much more serious problem -- a potentially lethal form of high blood pressure in the lung's blood vessels called primary pulmonary hypertension. It's a major cause of fatal heart failure.

In primary pulmonary hypertension, blood has a hard time leaving the right side of the heart. The culprit: tight blood vessels in the lungs. Symptoms include: shortness of breath, especially during exercise; chest pain; and fainting episodes. The exact cause of primary pulmonary hypertension is unknown.

Garlic may be coming to the rescue, suggest David D. Ku, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.

Ku's team recently found that allicin -- a compound found in garlic -- prevents a mild form of pulmonary hypertension in rats. Now they find that the garlic compound prevents a much more severe form of pulmonary hypertension in rats.

Ku reported the findings in a presentation to Experimental Biology 2005, held April 2-6 in San Diego.

"These findings confirm our earlier reports and further demonstrate that garlic is also protective against the development of chronic pulmonary hypertension and that the preservation of [lung blood-vessel function] may represent an important mechanism," say researchers.

Human studies, of course, will be needed to see whether garlic keeps humans as healthy as it does lab rats. Meanwhile, it can't hurt to eat a little garlic every day, Ku says, in a news release. How much? He says the amount of allicin given the rats would, in human doses, come out to about two cloves of garlic a day.

SOURCES: Ku, D.D. Experimental Biology 2005, April 2-6, San Diego; abstract 88.1. News release, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.