How Garlic and Onions Promote a Healthy Heart

October 24, 2002

Way back in the first century A.D., Dioscorides, the Roman who

codified Greek herbal medicine, wrote in his Materia Medica that

garlic " clears the arteries. " And the ancient Indian Ayurvedic text

Charaka Samhita holds that garlic " maintains the fluidity of the

blood, strengthens the heart and prolongs life. "

Modern researchers have confirmed that both raw and cooked garlic and

onions contain compounds that inhibit the tendency to form artery-

clogging blood clots, thus lowering heart-attack risk. There is

evidence that a clove a day may also lower elevated levels of blood

cholesterol, as well as high blood pressure, although not all studies

confirm these benefits.

Other allium compounds have been shown to inhibit cancer in the test

tube and in animals. In population studies, people who eat more

alliums have lower rates of stomach and other cancers. Garlic appears

to stimulate the body's production of an enzyme called glutathione-S-

transferase, which helps detoxify potential carcinogens. In a major

five-year study of more than 35,000 women aged 55 to 69 in Iowa,

garlic was the single most protective food against colon cancer. The

women who ate garlic more than once a week had a 32 percent lower

risk of colon cancer than those who ate less than a clove a month.

Garlic's sulfur compounds may offer particular protection against

cancers of the breast, esophagus, prostate, skin and stomach.

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