People will do almost anything they can to avoid cancer; doctors and salesman are, thus, are overly eager to dispense advice on how to do so. Is garlic one of those golden substances with cancer preventative potential? Or a gimmick that may actually turn out to cause it???
Preventing cancer with garlic... does it work?
Traditional healers and modern scientists often see things differently, but when it comes to garlic, there seems to be a fairly longstanding consensus about its health-promoting properties. So what are we to make of a new meta-analysis of 19 published studies which found no credible evidence of a link between garlic intake and reduced risk for a wide number of cancers? While it did acknowledge “very limited” evidence linking garlic intake to reduced risk for colon, prostate and ovarian cancer, that’s faint praise indeed.
When I spoke with Daily Health News contributing editor Andrew Rubman, ND, about this surprising finding, he pointed out that an issue with meta-analyses — studies that evaluate data from numerous others to reach a conclusion — is that researchers are able to pick and choose among previous studies to skew their findings in a particular direction. This is a particular issue with single-factor studies, when researchers look at a variable in isolation. Dr. Rubman is not saying this is necessarily the case here, but to evaluate how worthy its findings are would require careful investigation of the studies used. It is possible, he says, that the studies showing no discernable effects of garlic used products that were relatively weak or garlic processed at high temperatures, which would diminish its healthful properties.
Dr. Rubman continues to support garlic as one among many cancer-prevention tools when it is part of a healthy diet. He told me that preliminary human studies, evaluated by Natural Standard (http://www.naturalstandard.com/), a clinical database that evaluates evidence-based natural therapies, suggest that regular consumption of garlic, particularly unprocessed, may reduce the risk of developing several types of cancer, including gastric and colorectal. “More studies are necessary to better evaluate preventative or curative capacity,” he said.
Dr. Rubman noted that it is best to crush raw garlic to release its health-benefitting enzymes and then let it rest for 10 or so minutes to “bloom.” Most people start a dish by heating garlic in oil, which is fine, but Dr. Rubman advises adding some at the end of the cooking process as well to ensure that you’ll get the full health value, since some of its healthful properties are reduced — even destroyed — by heat. Another possible solution is to take capsules of cold-pressed extraction of garlic (he recommends those made by a Japanese company called Kyolic, http://www.kyolic.com/). However, with such excellent garlic in markets today, Dr. Rubman says he sees no reason not to consume it fresh in your favorite dishes.
Source(s):
Andrew Rubman, ND, medical director, Southbury Clinic for Traditional Medicines, Southbury, CT. www.naturopath.org.
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Reprinted with the permission of:
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