Does garlic lower cholesterol?
No, says Christopher Gardner,PhD, of the Stanford Prevention Research Center. “The idea that garlic lowers cholesterol has been around for decades,”he says. “Older research suggested that it did have an effect, but the studies were poorly conducted.
Newer studies seemed to say no, but they did not chemically analyze the supplements people were actually using.”
In search of the answer, Gardner recruited 192 people with slightly high cholesterol (130 to 190) and divided them into 4 groups: two got one of two common garlic supplements, one got the equivalent dose (about a clove) of crushed raw garlic, and one received a placebo.
At the end of the study, neither supplements nor raw garlic had the slightest effect on cholesterol. Bottom line: garlic might change your breath, but it won’t alter your blood lipids.