How to maximize the health benefits of garlic

When it comes to the health properties of garlic, it has been used as a medicine for thousands of years. But in this age of modern medicine do those beliefs still hold true? Here are some things to keep in mind when adding garlic to your diet for health benefits.

If you love garlic, you probably don't care about its health benefits — you'll eat it no matter what. Still, the "stinking rose" has been used as a medicine by traditional healers for more than 5,000 years. Papyrus documents from 1550 BC show that Egyptian doctors prescribed it for many different conditions. It's been used to treat bubonic plague, cure snakebites and ward off evil spirits. Here are some things to keep in mind when adding garlic to your diet for health benefits.

While you can't expect miracles, including garlic in your daily diet or taking garlic pills offers modest heart protection.

• Some nutritionists believe that the liberal use of garlic in the traditional Mediterranean diet helps to explain why this cuisine appears to protect against heart disease.
• A recent review of 10 studies found evidence that garlic pills may reduce low density lipoprotein (LDL) or "bad" cholesterol by about 11 percent, on average.

Some studies found that garlic had no effect on cholesterol. However, research shows that garlic may do more for the heart than lower cholesterol.

• The herb makes cell fragments in the blood called platelets less likely to clump together and form artery-blocking clots.
• Garlic's impact on blood platelets is modest. Taken together, though, its heart-healthy actions add up to a good reason for including a clove or two — or four — in your daily diet.

There's no question that garlic contains potent chemicals, but whether they can fight colds or cancer is still unclear.

• Garlic contains potent compounds that make life miserable for bacteria, viruses, fungi and cancer cells.
• The presence of these compounds, especially the sulfur compounds that give garlic its characteristic odour, seems to cause cancer cells to self-destruct.
• In theory, this should mean that eating garlic slows or prevents the formation of malignant tumours.
• Rates of certain cancers are unusually low in countries where the cuisine features generous amounts of garlic.

A few studies show that people who consume plenty of garlic and its plant cousin, the onion, have low rates of oral, throat and gastrointestinal cancers.

• A review in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that people who eat about five cloves of garlic per week cut their risk of colon and stomach cancer by 30 and 47 percent, respectively.
• Garlic may protect against stomach cancer by destroying Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium known to cause ulcers and damage the stomach lining.
• Most of the studies on garlic for colds were done with garlic supplements, not fresh garlic.

• Always chop or crush a peeled garlic clove and let stand for 10 or 15 minutes before adding it to a recipe to let its healing compounds form. Otherwise, the heat will render the garlic impotent.
• Another option is to eat your garlic raw.