What Garlic Is Good For, And What It’s Not

Perhaps you have heard, as Geezer has, a few too many disquisitions on the health benefits of garlic. Garlic may be an antibiotic. Garlic may be an anti-fungal. Garlic is almost certainly an effective means of birth control, if only one of two otherwise consenting adults has eaten it.
One thing that garlic is good for, according to reliable studies, is lowering cholesterol. The University of Florida’s College of Health and Human Performance tell us that an analysis of five studies, reported lin the Annals
of Internal Medicine indicates that eating
one-half to one clove a day reduced cholesterol levels by 9 percent. It also reports that another study in Circulation, the journal
sponsored by the American Heart Association, suggests that garlic
may help maintain the elasticity of aging blood vessels. And the New York Times reports on a 2001 Australian study, in which a group of 46 patients with
high cholesterol were randomly chosen either to get dietary counseling
on reducing fat consumption and garlic pills or to get counseling and a
placebo.  The study found that the group that received garlic in their pills had a
significant reduction in total cholesterol and L.D.L. cholesterol,
while the placebo group had a nonsignificant increase in total
cholesterol and L.D.L. cholesterol. H.D.L. cholesterol was
significantly increased in the placebo group compared with the garlic
group.
And then, of course, Garlic also keeps the vampires away.