More Evidence On Garlic And Heart Health

Yet more evidence has come out regarding garlic and heart health.

It’s no big news that garlic is helpful for the heart and cardiovascular system in general; plenty of articles have been written before on the topic.  However, this latest study highlights the actual mechanism by which garlic oil can protect the heart from the ravages of diabetes.

Diabetes And Heart Health

So what’s the big deal about that?  Simple, really.  Diabetes tears up the cardiovascular system- diabetics are almost 70% more likely to have heart disease as a cause of death and adults with diabetes are 2-4 times more likely to die of heart disease than non-diabetics (more fun statistics on diabetes here).  Oh, and by the way, diabetes also happens to be exploding in this country at a breakaway pace.

I’m not exaggerating.  As of the writing of this article, something like 1 in 10 Americans has Type 2 diabetes… that’s the kind you acquire later in life, usually by burning out your pancreas by eating sugar by the bucketfull.  ONE IN TEN.  For those over 65, it’s more like one in FOUR.

Oh, but it gets better.  The CDC recently released an estimate that Americans are on track to raise those overall rates to one in five or perhaps even one in THREE.

I don’t want to get off topic with a rant on how bad diabetes really is, but I feel the need to include a little something because it seems like people shrug off this disease like it’s no big whoop.  WRONG.  Back in my diagnosis classes, the running joke was this… if on a test, you’re asked which organ does something, and you don’t know, guess “liver” (because the liver does so darn much).  If you’re asked which disease can inflict some horrible symptom on you, and you don’t know, guess “diabetes” (because diabetes does so many bad things to your body).

Garlic And Hearth Health

Okay, now that I’m done ranting about diabetes, let’s get back to what garlic oil can do to prevent heart disease in diabetics… because as we’ll see, the mechanisms of action should also help non-diabetics as well.

The researchers fed diabetic rats either garlic oil or corn oil (as a control group).  One nice part of this study is the researchers actually made their own garlic oil with fresh garlic using steam distillation, which would ensure high quality.

While the rats were still alive, they tested their cardiac function with echocardiography (ultrasound, basically) and found that while diabetes (which they induced with a drug) caused decreases in heart rate, body weight, ejection fraction (that’s a measure of how much blood is actually squirted out of the heart with each beat), and fractional shortening (another measure of heart function), all of these nasty effects were reversed with garlic oil.

When they physically examined the hearts of the diabetic rats, they found cardiac damage typical of that caused by diabetes (altered gene expression, decrease in the actual muscle protein fibers that make the heart contract).  Again, for the rats given the garlic oil, these telltale signs of heart damage were decreased… and the more of the garlic oil the rats got, the less damage there was to their hearts.

The researchers believe that the garlic oil helps prevent damage caused by Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS), which you may have heard of out on the streets by the term “free radical”.  Diabetes-caused hyperglycemia (too much sugar in the blood) leads to an increase in free radicals, which are especially damaging to the heart tissue.

If you read my article on how antioxidants work, you know that basically they absorb those nasty free radicals before they can cause damage to your body.  What sort of damage?  How about altered gene expression (switching inappropriate genes on and off like a crazy little kid playing with a light switch), or altering the electrical conduction of the heart (remember it’s a muscle and needs to contract rhythmically, which is done electrically), or even apoptosis (programmed cell death).

That last one, apoptosis, is done by your body on a regular basis to clear out the worn-out cells. A somewhat harsh metaphor is, to take the weak, lame horse out of the herd and shoot it to put it out of its misery (and perserve the health of the rest of the herd).  But free radicals seem to send that process haywire, so perfectly good horses are getting shot with no rhyme or reason, and much too often.

(My apologies to you horse lovers out there.   No actual horses were harmed during the writing of this metaphor.)

The bottom line is, free radicals tear your heart muscle down… make it weaker bit by bit by breaking down the heart muscle itself and altering how well it conducts the very electrical signals that make the heart beat nice and regular like it’s supposed to.  Since diabetes increases the level of free radicals dramatically, that obviously will cause a lot of damage to the heart… unless you have some trusty-dusty antioxidants to absorb those ugly free radical and spare your heart muscle.  That’s why when you increase your intake of garlic, heart health increases along with it (according to this research).

Further Implications Of The Garlic Oil Study

By the way, there’s a lot implicated by this really well-designed study.  While the researchers were looking at extreme cases of damage induced by diabetes, free radicals are constantly on the attack in your body.  It isn’t just diabetes that creates free radicals.  You’ve got free radicals in you right now, just from regular, normal metabolic processes.  Then, exposure to all the junk and toxins and crap floating around in our food, water, air, and sprayed onto our furniture, clothing… I’m going to stop before I get on a rant, here.

Suffice it to say that all the toxic crap surrounding us in the modern age dramatically increases the levels of free radicals in our bodies.  This study shows in a very real, nuts-and-bolts sort of way what the damage caused by free radicals looks like… at least in the heart.  But similiar damage is caused throughout your body by free radicals.  We just haven’t gotten around to cataloging it so thoroughly as in this study on the heart.

That’s why I keep telling people to get some extra antioxidants into their lives.  A healthy diet isn’t enough.  If this were a thousand years ago, and we didn’t have an environment so polluted that even seabirds in the Arctic are full of mercury, then sure, a healthy diet should do the trick.  But we’re under chemical stresses our ancestors never even dreamed of.  So along with a good multivitamin and fish oils (I talk about the reasons for those in other articles), I definitely advise that you take a good, potent antioxidant supplement to protect you from the ravages of free radicals.

Get a little garlic in you and stay healthy!

Source article:  http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/jf101606s