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Eating more garlic in your food may help you lower your cholesterol level, according to Israeli and Polish researchers reporting on their experiments on the effects of garlic on animals.
The researchers investigated the effects of adding different doses of garlic to a cholesterol-rich diet for rats, and reported in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry that beneficial effects were dependent on the dose.
When the researchers fed the animals a diet rich in cholesterol and also gave them 500 milligrams of garlic per kilogram of body weight for four weeks, they found the garlic lowered total cholesterol, reduced LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, and reduced total cholesterol in the liver.
The researchers stressed that results from animal experiments can not be automatically applied to humans, and urged clinical trials with humans with atherosclerosis and high blood cholesterol levels.
“The above-mentioned data on serum antioxidant activity, proteins, and lipid metabolism could justify the inclusion of commercial garlic in coronary atherosclerosis-preventing diets,” said Shela Gornstein from the Hebrew University – Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem.
Source: Medical Week staff, week of May 10, 2006
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