Garlic May Ward Off Heart Woes

According to Gardner, Kraus' work now offers a reason for that failure, because hydrogen sulfide has no effect on cholesterol.

Another expert urged caution in interpreting the Birmingham team's results.

Eric Block, professor of chemistry at the State University of New York, Albany, has also done extensive work on garlic. He called the paper "provocative" but expressed some concerns.

For example, he said, "the benefits of garlic on cardiovascular disease remain controversial, because they have not been established by the gold standard method of placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical studies," he said.

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It's also uncertain that garlic's purported beneficial effects are due to the mechanism described in the new report, Block added. Clinical trials are needed to help prove that point, he said.

According to Block, Kraus' team, "should be more conservative in over-extending some of their conclusions in the absence of additional work." However, "their work does represent a significant advance in the science of this amazing, ancient, ever-popular herb," he said.

Kraus stressed that his study only looked at the effect of fresh garlic, not garlic supplements. "What we are proposing is that you eat a garlic-rich diet," he said. "We haven't really tried to look at supplements yet."

"Garlic-rich" has different meanings, depending on the part of the world being studied, Kraus added. "In the Middle East, that would be 5 to 10 cloves of garlic a day," he said. "If you go to the Far East, it would be even higher."

More information

There's more on garlic and health at the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.