Overview
Garlic and Parsley: Forget all the superstitious hokum about garlic — it’s just a plant, and it contains some very useful substances.
The garlic plant has a long history of traditional use by people with cardiovascular, sinus, and other disorders. In recent times it has also found use as an antibacterial agent, an immune booster, an antioxidant, a cholesterol regulator, and as a treatment for cancer, digestive problems, and respiratory ailments.
Efforts are being made to test some of these applications, and some intriguing facts are coming to light. For example:
- Garlic offers significant cardiovascular protection, but not through any cholesterol-lowering effect — it seems to work by another, still unknown, mechanism.
- Garlic appears to have anti-carcinogenic activity.
- Consumption of a garlic extract protects the intestines from damage normally caused by anti-tumor drugs such as methotrexate and 5-fluorouracil.
- Garlic can prevent suppression of immunity by chemotherapy and ultraviolet light.
- Garlic has no effect upon demons, fairies, or any other magical creature.
LifeLink’s Garlic and Parsley supplement contains garlic oil and parsley seed oil in a base of wheat germ oil. Parsley is included to nullify the taste and smell of the garlic.
Read Garlic & Parsley Monograph
Garlic (Allium sativum) has a long history of traditional use by people with cardiovascular, sinus, and other disorders. In recent times it has also been promoted as an antibacterial agent, an immune booster, an antioxidant, a cholesterol regulator, and as a treatment for cancer, digestive problems, and respiratory ailments.
Not all of these uses have scientific support, but efforts are being made to test a few of them, and some intriguing facts are coming to light. For example, clinical studies have shown only a small cholesterol-lowering effect of garlic consumption. Yet garlic usage has shown significant correlations with cardiovascular protection, both in epidemiological studies and in clinical studies — such as the one conducted at the University of California, which concluded that the consumption of 4 ml/day of Aged Garlic Extract for one year lowered by a factor of 3 the calcium score (a marker of plaque formation) in the coronary arteries of atherosclerosis patients. If the cardiovascular protection seen in these studies of garlic usage is not due to a lowering of cholesterol, then another (unknown) mechanism must be at work.
Anti-carcinogenic activities of garlic and its constituents are suggested by epidemiological data and have been demonstrated in many tissue culture experiments. Unfortunately, almost no effort has been made to test these anti-cancer effects in human clinical trials. However, a clinical trial using 2.4 ml/day of Aged Garlic Extract resulted in a substantial decline in the incidence of colorectal adenomas — a precancerous condition.
The use of garlic or garlic extracts as antimicrobial agents seems unwarranted by the evidence. Although there are effective antifungal and antibacterial substances in garlic, they may be inactivated by heating and by acid conditions such as those found in the stomach.
In experiments with rats, consumption of Aged Garlic Extract protected the intestines from damage normally caused by anti-tumor drugs such as methotrexate and 5-fluorouracil. Garlic also stimulates the proliferation of macrophages and lymphocytes and is therefore sometimes used to prevent suppression of immunity by chemotherapy and ultraviolet light.
Each softgel of LifeLink’s Garlic and Parsley supplement contains garlic oil extracted from 574 mg of fresh garlic bulb, plus parsley seed oil extracted from 110 mg of parsley seed, in a base of wheat germ oil. Parsley is included in our formula to nullify the taste and smell of the garlic.
References
[1] Health effects of garlic. Am Fam Physician. 2005 Jul 1;72(1):103-6.
[2] Inhibiting progression of coronary calcification using Aged Garlic Extract in patients receiving statin therapy: a preliminary study. Prev Med. 2004 Nov;39(5):985-91.
[3] Effects of aged garlic extract (AGE) on colorectal adenomas: a double-blinded study. Hiroshima J Med Sci. 2004 Dec;53(3-4):39-45.
[4] Herbal medicines for treatment of bacterial infections: a review of controlled clinical trials. J Antimicrob Chemother. 2003 Feb;51(2):241-6.
[5] Alleviation by garlic of antitumor drug-induced damage to the intestine. J Nutr. 2001 Mar;131(3s):1071S-4S.
[6] The potential application of Allium sativum (garlic) for the treatment of bladder cancer. Urol Clin North Am. 2000 Feb;27(1):157-62, xi.
