"It is vain to do with more what can be done with less."

—William of Occam

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I screwed up twice in ten years

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Over the past ten years I've chomped down a clove of raw garlic (with water) once a day. Except for twice when I dropped it out for a month or two. The only times I've gotten a cold in the last ten years were during those two times when I neglected to take my garlic. PS: I didn't get any cancer in those ten years either.

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The science

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Here's what Dr. Greger of NutritionFacts.org has to say about garlic in his blog "Fighting Cancer and the Common Cold with Garlic."

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Raw garlic is compared to roasted, stir-fried, simmered, and jarred garlic.

 

Garlic lowers blood pressure, regulates cholesterol, and stimulates immunity. I’ve talked before about its effect on heart disease risk factors, but what about immunity? Eating garlic appears to offer the best of both worlds, dampening the overreactive face of the immune system by suppressing inflammation while boosting protective immunity—for example, the activity of our natural killer cells, which our body uses to purge cells that have been stricken by viruses or cancer. “In World War II garlic was called ‘Russian Penicillin’ because, after running out of antibiotics, the soviet government turned to these ancient treatments for its soldiers,” but does it work? You don’t know until you put it to the test.

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How about preventing the common cold? As I discuss in my video Benefits of Garlic for Fighting Cancer and the Common Cold, it is perhaps “the world’s most widespread viral infection, with most people suffering approximately two to five colds per year.” In the first study “to use a double-blind, placebo-controlled design to investigate prevention of viral disease with a garlic supplement,” those randomized to the garlic suffered 60 percent fewer colds and were affected 70 percent fewer days. So, those on garlic not only had fewer colds, but they also recovered faster, suffering only one and a half days instead of five. Accelerated relief, reduced symptom severity, and faster recovery to full fitness. Interesting, but that study was done about two decades ago. What about all of the other randomized controlled trials?

 

There aren’t any. There’s only that one trial to date. Still, the best available balance of evidence suggests that, indeed, “garlic may prevent occurrences of the common cold.”

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What about cancer? Is garlic “a stake through the heart of cancer?” As you can see below and at 2:05 in my video, various garlic supplements have been tested on cells in a petri dish or lab animals, but there weren’t any human studies to see if garlic could affect gene expression until now.

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