Garlic Oil Reduces Effects of Chemotherapy, Radiation

CHICAGOGarlic has been widely used as food and medicine for many centuries throughout the world, and now new research published in the Journal of Food Science suggests garlic oil reduced the decrease of white blood cells affected by chemotherapy and radiation treatment in mice with cancerous tumors.

Demand has grown recently to find more natural ways to reduce the adverse effects of the two major methods for cancer treatment, ionizing radiation and chemotherapy. The findings support the idea that cancer patients may benefit from consuming garlic oil as a complementary medicine to their treatments.

The researchers noted further research is needed to assess whether garlic oil could reduce the adverse effects induced by other chemotherapeutic drugs used to treat cancer patients.

A 2010 study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found garlic and garlic oil have significant potential to prevent cardiomyopathy, a form of heart disease that is a leading cause of death in people with diabetes. Researchers fed either garlic oil or corn oil to laboratory rats with diabetes. Animals given garlic oil experienced beneficial changes associated with protection against heart damage. The changes appeared to be associated with the potent antioxidant properties of garlic oil, the researchers wrote, adding that they identified more than 20 substances in garlic oil that may contribute to the effect.