Garlic fights more than Vampires

[Guest guest]

Good news . . . they say if crushed garlic is left

standing for at least 10 minutes, it retains it's

healing benefits! - Rogene

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http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/docs/1999/107-3/forum.html

Garlic Fights More than Vampires

Will a clove a day keep the doctor away? That's what

A. Milner, head of the department of nutrition at

The Pennsylvania State University College of Health

and Human Development, believes. Milner has led a

number of studies that indicate that eating garlic

(Allium sativum, a member of the lily family) may help

reduce the incidence of breast cancer.

Garlic stimulates the body's immune system, boosting

the killing ability of natural killer cells and

increasing macrophage activity. Garlic also works

against heart disease and strokes by lowering

cholesterol levels and blood pressure. As an

anticancer agent, Milner and others' work shows that

garlic slows tumor growth and protects against

potential damage from oxidation, free radicals, and

nuclear radiation.

Garlic has long been a folk-remedy favorite--ancient

manuscripts from Sumer, Egypt, China, and Greece

describe the use of garlic for treating everything

from snake bites to epilepsy. There is now scientific

evidence that the bulbous herb is effective against

cancer. Over the last decade, Milner has published and

presented numerous studies on the anticancer effects

of garlic. In a study published in the October 1992

issue of Carcinogenesis, Milner and colleagues tested

the effect of garlic on mammary tumors in rats. They

found that dietary garlic administered in powder form

caused significant delays in the onset of first

mammary tumors and reduced the final number of tumors.

The team found that consuming garlic powder depressed

the binding of the potent carcinogen

7,12-dimethylbenz(a)anthracene to mammary cell DNA in

the rats, which may explain why fewer tumors

developed.

In a study published in the 15 October 1993 issue of

Cancer Letters, Milner and Sujatha Sundaram, a

doctoral candidate at Penn State, tested the effect of

six organosulfur compounds found in garlic on the

growth of canine mammary tumor cells in culture. Three

of the compounds--diallyl sulfide, diallyl disulfide,

and diallyl trisulfide--sharply curbed the

proliferation of tumor cells.

In the 19 April 1996 issue of Cancer Letters, Milner

and research assistant Schaffer compared the

effect of garlic powder, the water-soluble compound

S-allyl cysteine, and diallyl disulfide on the

incidence of mammary tumors induced by

N-methyl-N-nitrosourea. All three compounds were found

to delay the onset of mammary tumors in female rats,

and to reduce the overall incidence of tumors. Garlic

powder led the race, with an 81% reduction in tumor

incidence.

Finally, in a study published in the January 1994

issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, a team

of scientists from the University of Minnesota in

Minneapolis and the University of Washington in

Seattle looked at the effects of 15 different fruits

and vegetables on tumors among a group of women from

the Iowa Women's Health Study. Of all the fruits and

vegetables studied, garlic was found to have the most

dramatic relationship with tumor incidence. According

to the scientists, consumption of garlic was inversely

associated with risk for colon cancer, with a relative

risk of 0.68 for the uppermost versus the lowermost

consumption levels.

Milner and others must now delineate under what

circumstances garlic works, and exactly what it's

doing that's so beneficial. Along with Kun Song, a

doctoral candidate in the department of nutrition,

Milner conducted a study showing that heating in a

microwave or conventional oven can completely strip

garlic of its cancer-fighting benefits. However, if

the garlic is minced or crushed and allowed to stand

for at least 10 minutes before heating, there is

little or no loss of benefits. The 10-minute standing

period allows the enzyme alliinase in the garlic to

begin producing allyl sulfur compounds--the compounds

with the cancer-fighting properties. If the garlic is

cooked immediately after chopping, the heating process

deactivates the enzyme and the anticarcinogenic

effects of the garlic are lost. Milner presented these

findings at a symposium entitled Recent Advances on

the Nutritional Benefits Accompanying the Use of

Garlic as a Supplement, held in Newport Beach,

California, 15-17 November 1998.

So far, the only known adverse health effects from

eating too much garlic are gastrointestinal bleeding

and stomach upset, plus of course the much-maligned

garlic breath. But garlic's rising popularity--thanks

to the increasing public and scientific interest in

herbal medicine--means that consumers have a choice of

ways to take their medicine, including some odorless

varieties. Milner says that many of the commercially

available garlic preparations that he and colleagues

have tested, including deodorized varieties, have

anticancer properties. There is little reason to avoid

garlic and many reasons to enjoy it, says Milner--in

whatever preparation desired.