Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Garlic

Episode Date: September 20, 2019

For thousands of years, throughout an unprecedented number of cultures, garlic has been touted for its ability to improve our health. How? Well, by warding off vampires, silly. ... OK, there's some other stuff too. You should probably just listen. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, what's wrong with these about? Some books. One, two, one, two, three, four. Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Bones, a metal tour of Miss Guy to Medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McElroy.

And I'm Sydney McElroy. Oooh. Oh, what is that? A little bit of sound effects there, a little. It's half-hearted, but that's because it's early. Setting the mood. The mood has been set folks. Here at the McElroy House, spooky season has begun. It is official. Summer is dead.

We're putting a stake through its heart. Summer's over. It's spooky season here. It's still like 90 degrees out. It's still 90 degrees, which is spooky in a different way, kind of a bigger way to be spooky, but spooky season has begun. The terminal equinox is the 23rd. That for me is like the legal beginning

of spooky season. Well, it's not that yet. Yeah, but by the time people were nobody's going to listen to this on the day it comes out. You save it for Monday. Oh, okay. I understand from the from the boners, the saw boners are a legion of fans. Don't call them boners. Not just the best I came up with. Now, I respect them too much to call them boners. Not just the best I came up with. Now I respect them too much to call them boners. Saw boners. Again, if you just say the boners part, it sounds derogatory. They're saw boners. We also do have the terrifying friend that our youngest daughter is made in the house already. Yeah, we have one of the first to make a trick-a-treat, a horror anthology flick, that they're always threatening

to make us equal to you've been in requirement. What's his name? Sam. I think he's a little pumpkin head boy. We call him Little Pumpkin in the South. Little Pumpkin is his name here. Cooper loves him. He's terrifying.

Yeah. But either way, Sydney and I made a game that we have played throughout our lives, but it's kind of in a new round with Little Pump punk it where we hang little punk it. If you can imagine sort of the burlap sack pumpkin head in orange garb and then with the creepiest little human noise hands holding a lollipop or something. Yeah. Sydney and I have a little game where we try to hang a little punk it in places that would be.

I'll say inconvenient for the other person to find startling startling slightly startling. I think I still have the best one from where I pulled down the door to the attic and left him hanging from that cord. I'm good when I heard that screen down there. So that was good. I would argue that when I put him in the pantry and then got you to go look in the pantry to get Charlie's stuff for her lunch I set that whole thing up. That was good. Yeah, it's a real mastermind move. Anyway, so

Spooky season has begun. I wondered why I got a couple emails for this topic At almost at the same time really close together out of nowhere and then it occurred to me This is probably because we're coming up on spooky season. We have never covered garlic on this show. I don't know how that's possible. Garlic is, I think most people know, is a very popular folk remedy,

alternative medicine, herbal medicine, whatever you wanna call it, a lot of people use garlic for medicinal and health benefits. How have we never talked about it? I don't know. I don't know. And as I looked through our emails, many, many people have suggested this and I wasn't ignoring you.

I just hadn't gotten, I don't know. I think somewhere in my brain, I thought I had talked about this. But thank you to Beverly and Maddie and Morgan and Sheryl and Miles and Brooke and Brenna and Jesse and Emily and Heather and Drew and Shelley and Sierra and Rick and Jacob and Kate and Rebecca and Allison and Brian and Cosmo and Nikita and Kristen and Paxton It's like the animaniacs listing off all the countries and somebody some of these people have emailed us two or three times How have you not done garlic yet? Do it right. You are, that is valid. How have we not covered it?

Garlic has been used as medicine since the dawn of garlic. And not just one culture. This is one of those. Don of garlic sounds like a real and very boring book. Well, there are lots of histories of garlic, social histories, cultural histories, medicinal histories, because it's interesting in that garlic seem to arise as like a medicinal substance in varying cultures and places, geographical regions from different medicinal traditions. I guess on its own, I mean, maybe there were communications

where one culture learned it from another or something. I don't know, but as far as I can tell, there were independently this idea that garlic was healthy has arisen throughout time. It always makes you wonder, does that mean there's some legitimacy to it? But as we've... It doesn't make me wonder that anymore.

We've been doing this show for a few years now. And now makes me I had to I'm somebody who has had to Google the appeal to ancient wisdom felt logical fallacy because I keep forgetting the name of it. But that's how how frequently it comes up on this program. So no, I do not personally feel that way anymore. I still wonder that. I think it's good to always keep an open mind. And sometimes, yes, we continue to do something throughout time and place, and it never worked, and it still doesn't work. And then other times, there may be there's something there.

I'm always telling you that I need to keep an open mind. Sydney, you've broken my open mind as you have for so many others listeners to this program, I think. I don't have an open mind anymore. I have a close one that you occasionally will open the port call us to and let new ideas end a period. Science is all about following the evidence,

but it's first about asking the question. Follow the money. No, you have to ask the question. And you can't ask the question if your mind is closed. Okay. All right. What's the question? Is Garlet good for you? We'll get there. What's the question? Is garlic good for you?

We'll get there. That's the question. Well, I mean, that's this, that's for this episode. Okay. I don't think, if that's the question, life's a lot easier than I gave it credit for. I don't know how 42 is the answer. So the ancient Egyptian saw it as a, like a standard health kind of supplement, if you will. It was good for like strength and vitality.

And it was actually a lot of a lot of different writers have said that the the builders of the pyramids, so like the laborers in Egyptian society were given kind of daily rations of garlic to keep them like strong and toariol able to build the pyramids. If you look through the Ebers Papyrus, you can find a lot of different remedies. A lot of them are not just garlic. It's a recipe where garlic would be. I guess what we would probably call today the active ingredient or one of the active ingredients. The reason you're taking this is because the garlic is in there. And it was it was for a variety of different reasons. or one of the active ingredients, the reason you're taking this is because the garlic is in there.

And it was for a variety of different reasons. There was a recipe for, if your limbs are shaky, here's a garlic treatment for you. There was a recipe for a douche that you could use a garlic douche for protecting the Volvo. Oh, okay. You can protect your Volvo with garlic or you could induce labor, possibly with garlic. Don't please don't do this, by the way. Don't do this. Please don't insert garlic anywhere. Don't do this with anything.

Well, don't do. But. Dushin is not necessary and it can be harmful. But also don't put garlic. Double, don't do it with garlic. Anywhere, yes, except in your mouth, if you want to. Yep. And in your pasta sauce.

Well, yeah, and then ostensibly in your mouth next. It can also, it was also used for constipation, for flatulence, for indigestion. You could apply it topically for hemorrhoids or take it orally. There was a poultice that you could apply with garlic to your neck for growths of the neck, specifically for growths of the neck, probably referencing some sort of what we would think of now as like a cancerous growth. And you'll find that like a common theme for things before we knew what cancer was for

things that were tumors or cancerous growths, we were using garlic for for a very long time. I have a theory on this about why garlic. I have a theory after doing it, we've done this for so long. I tried to come up with a punchy name for it, like the appeal to ancient wisdom, logical fallacy, but I realized that it's already been summed up in a different, but it has a different context in that, which does not kill you makes you stronger. Is I think that peat in the back in the day, like before we understood, like,

it seems like almost anything that we knew actively didn't kill you could be medicine. Like maybe this is medicine. And I think garlic like falls into that trap, like it has a flavor and it doesn't kill you. So it's probably medicine. It does have a very strong flavor and odor. It's very potent.

She's potent. It does. It does. It is potent in a flavor sense. Yeah. So I think potent things because you know what's funny is I'm focusing on garlic, but in a lot of these same recipes and medicinal concoctions, you'll find onions mentioned.

In my mind, that's a similar idea. It's very potent. It seems very potent. Now, I am not suggesting that onions have become the medicinal buzz that garlic has, but still, you can also use a garlic ball and put it over the entrance of a snake hole if you want to keep the snake in there. I mean, if you find the rights as ball, that would probably work. I don't know how snakes feel about garlic.

Please don't give it, if you have a snake, please don't give it garlic. I don't know. It's less, it's fine and you know better than me. I don't know about snakes and garlic. Either way, whatever people use it for, they found it in King Tut's tomb. They found some garlic. And it's a question though, because it was usually used by the laboring class. It wouldn't have necessarily been eaten by royalty. And so the question was, was it King Tut's or was it like somebody left it in there accidentally? Somebody was helping carry stuff in there. Has some garlic in his pocket.

Hypocrites use lots of different foods as medicine. We know that was, that was the mainstay of Hippocratic medicine was eat well, sleep, exercise, drink water. That kind of thing. But he, garlic was one of the ones that he used very prominently. Again, strength, vitality, which I think you could probably tie to the fact that Garlic

is like we're using the word potent. Some people call it spicy. I don't know that spicy is the word I'd use, but I know what people are saying. It is a very strong flavor and an odor. It was again used for laborers, for athletes. Probably a lot of the early Olympic athletes used garlic as like a performance enhancing drug. And then in addition, there were all kinds of different ailments you could use it for.

Topical applications for again, things like tumors or growths, also pimples. There was also a recipe where you could mix it with honey and apply it for freckles. It's finally cure those freckles. When it was ingested, it was often thought to be for things like lung illnesses. It could be used as a diuretic to make you pee. It doesn't really do that, but it also could be used to aid in digestion. I think it's interesting because a lot of people tell me they can't eat garlic because it upsets their stomach. Interesting.

So, but it was thought to a lot for lung illnesses, respiratory problems, which we'll get into is probably starting to get into like it's calling to the humoral system of medicine, the balancing of your four humors. And when we start getting into the humoral system of medicine, we start talking about different foods and beverages as hotter cold. Sure. And different illnesses as hotter cold. And so the treatment of a cold illness would be with a hot food and a hot illness would be with a cold food.

It's honestly folks, it's very simple and intuitive if you look into it. Except for that it changes depending on who's writing about it and what year it is. Well, Sydney, it is an art. But to be honest, medicine changes depending on who's writing about it and what year it is. So, that's all of science. You're really open minded today, Sydney. I'm feeling very open minded.

I don't trust this open minded. It's the spooky season. I always like to open my heart and my mind to the supernatural for a little bit. Yeah. 11 months out of the year, Sydney is very bit. Yeah, 11 months out of the year, Sydney's very pragmatic, and then for one month of the year, she's like, what if we're wolves?

Maybe. Maybe. You have to ask the question. In book 20, chapter 23, titled, garlic 61 remedies. Of the Bible. No, plenty of the elder. Ah.

In natural history. The Bible innocence. Lays out, you may be able to guess how many remedies 69 61. I mean, it's titled 61 remedies. Sorry, I thought you were. Yeah, that's on me. Sorry, which I think my Bible thing I was going to say that I didn't hear the 61. Yeah, that's fine.

I got weirdly close though. Or did you just guess 69? Cause no, I did. It just happened to be close. Yeah. Anyway, everything can be treated according to Plenty with garlic, the hemorrhoids, dog bites, TB, toothaches, dropsy, asthma, madness, intestinal worms. Let's dropsy.

I feel like we're talking about that. It was probably being used to refer to heart failure. Okay. Although dropsy could sometimes, like it was a broad name. Made up. Yes, there is no one thing that is dropsy, like usually heart failure, but also sometimes like a heart attack or maybe epilepsy or maybe a stroke. Lots of things could have been called dropsy, but generally speaking heart failure is our closest.

Anyway, some of my favorites, because you can read the whole chapter, there are tons of different recipes, but some of my favorites are that you can use a fumigation of garlic, up the vagina for bringing about the placenta after a delivery. Oh wow.

No, you can't. You sounded like that's exciting. No, don't fumigate your vagina with garlic, please. Deal. You can mix it with some broken beans for separations of the chest, so like pneumonia or something. And this is the best quote,

Beasts of burden, it is said, will void their urine all the more easily and without any pain if the genitals are rubbed with garlic. So just get your Beasts of burden and rub their genitals with garlic. Yeah. Now I'm, I don't know a lot about veterinary medicine. So maybe that's something who knows.

I certainly don't. Generally speaking, it was always regarded throughout Greek and Roman medicine as good for the arteries. Now at the time we thought arteries carried, a lot of people have said, ah, see we had figured something out, but remember at this time a lot of people thought arteries carried, a lot of people have said, ah, see, we had figured something out, but remember, at this time, a lot of people thought arteries carried air and not blood. It would take us a while to figure out

the circulatory system. But again, it was only consumed by certain classes. It was not broadly eaten by everybody, because for instance, if you ate garlic, you were not allowed in the temple because the smell was considered profane and it was unholy. And so you couldn't come in a temple.

I assume if you ate enough that they could smell it. It was very popular, though, among the classes that we're eating at, Galen referred to it as the rustic's theriac. If you remember, a theriac is a cure all. So the rustic's theriac. That's a very polite Theriac is a cure all. So the rustics. Theriac? That's a very polite, can you imagine Galen, right? I think that tells you everything you need to know about Galen.

The rustics Theriac. It's awesome, but yes, we know exactly the tenor of this. It's a total Charles Winchester moment. It is. It's a rustic stereotype. That's exactly what that is. That's from MASH. Yes.

70s kids will love that gag. And like I said, I've kind of talked about the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans. We cover those things a lot on solbons. But ancient Chinese medicine also heavily featured garlic. A lot of these same ailments that we've already mentioned could be treated with garlic. There were some other things that were added to that,

the idea that depression or sadness or any sort of down mood could be treated with garlic. It's wild. And you look at how many, well, like, it's funny because like, cuisine does the same thing, right? Like, if you look at one of the very few flavor profiles that sort of like spans the culinary world, like garlic is prominent in like Italian cooking and Chinese cooking and so many different calls for many different. Yeah.

I mean, I mean, once it's spread and people could grow it, it did. There's a whole other culinary history that I'm not really touching on because that's a whole other body of research and evidence and stuff. But like it is interesting. You want to read that? Ham bones. I read an article from the 70s.

It's the ham bones. I don't know that show. It's made up because it's like saw bones for food. That's a good one. I like it. Thank you. Now I was just going to say, I read an article

from the times from the 70s All about like how garlic was becoming a big thing and the history of garlic and now everybody's eating it It's really interesting to see like in the 70s people like can you believe all these people eating garlic? And now I'm like yes, I eat garlic every day. Did that issue have a lot of good Charles Winchester guys in it? probably So master gags in it. Probably. So, like I said, in China, they were also using it for impotence. You could use it to get things going. Fatigue and Somnia.

It was seen as something very potent, though, and to be careful with. Like, it was good to consume it regularly, but not too much. Like, you needed to be monitored, you know, measured doses. Also an Ayurvedic medicine in ancient Indian medicine. There was similar things, but even a broader range of applications for topical use. So like for cuts and bruises and infections of the skin, parasitic infections, it was very, you know, it was very common to use scarlic. Again, it was mainly relegated to the lower casts in India.

It would use garlic. It wasn't something that the upper cast would always want to use. In lots of different cultures, garlic was seen as an afrodigiac. That spans lots of different places on earth where to improve your sex life, just eat some garlic. Plenty specifically says that if you want to use it as an affidavit, you should use it with fresh coriander and some wine, which like, okay, you're kind of cheating. That's always the fail set. Plenty, we're on to you. Anything that you want to use for stuff in the bedroom, you always say

add wine. Yeah, we get you, bud. We know. But then he says, the inconveniences, which result from the use of it, are dimness of the sight and flatch, flatchalency. And if taken into large quantities, it does injury to the stomach and creates thirst,

which seems like not great for bedroom time. Yeah, right. Like take some garlic and you're in the mood. Also though you won't be able to see and you'll be farting. And also your stomach hurts and you're streaming. But it will you will be wanting to have that. You'll be so randy. I have nothing for your partner. That takes us through the ancient world, Justin. But Garly did not stop there.

Garly was on a train and it was rumbling towards the future where everybody would eat it. But first let's stop by the building department. Let's go. Now, Sydney, you were going to take us into the modern era. Well, we're not quite in the modern area. We're going to, we're, we're, as we marched through history of garlic, like I said, this idea of it being something that could help balance out your humors and then combat specific diseases began to became more and more kind of crystallized as time went on.

As we've talked about before, the humor is the idea of the four humors, this system of medicine persisted for a pretty long time. There are four humors in your body. You've got to keep them in balance through taking in more, getting some out. Right, and that's health. That's health. That's pretty much it in a nutshell. The Abbas Hildegard von Bingen wrote that because of the hot nature of garlic, it could heat a man's blood. And so you needed enough of it.

She attributed some of even her own, when she was a child, she was kind of what they would have just called like a sickly or a weak child. And she attributed that to things like not enough garlic or other foods like that that were hot foods. So you need some of it. Everyone needs some. Some garlic, if you're vitamin G. But too much is dangerous.

She also noted that raw is stronger than cooked, which you could probably say is true about the smell and the flavor and such. Yeah. Raw garlic is definitely stronger than cooked. In the medieval period, we see that garlic is still consumed mainly by the lower classes again, but it was more and more targeted at like respiratory illness and cold diseases. And it wasn't just something you would ingest for general health

as much as like, oh, I'm weak, I'm tired, I'm sick, I got, you know, any sort of cough flim thing, that's where garlic comes in. And the smell of garlic being kind of a proof of its potency became very important in this period of time because we start to get into the measma theory of disease, the idea that like a disease is like a bad smell or something that drifts through the air and could be warded off with other smells and things like that. So you can see where garlic would fall into that. The smell of garlic is so pungent you could ward off disease. Specifically with the plague, it was thought that garlic could help ward off the plague. And we've talked about

the plague doctors, the big masks they wore the beaks. You could have like fresh smelling herbs in there or strong smelling herbs like garlic in there to help ward off. It should be pretty intense. Those are the intense guys you don't want to mess around with. One way or another, it was a strong enough smell that they thought this would fight things off. Throughout the renaissance, you start to see some more upper-class citizens using garlic, but again, it's more like for medicinal purposes now, as opposed to the lower classes are

eating it. It's a health food. It's used on a daily basis. You got to be careful with it because it does have some medicinal properties, but people are eating it all the time. You could grow it, too. That was the other other big advantage is it's not too difficult to grow So you could grow it and which is part of why I had this lower class association It was almost too easy. You could grow it in your own garden

Yeah, whereas the upper classes were importing spices from around the world The lower classes are just digging guard garlic from their backyard but the the in the Renaissance and upper class citizen could be expected that like if they had just digging garlic from their backyard. But in the Renaissance, an upper-class citizen could be expected that if they had a house call from their doctor, they would have some garlic cloves in their doctor bag. The doctor would walk around with some garlic cloves in there because that might be part of the prescription. As we move forward in history into modern times, I want to jump a little bit to modern times because this is kind of these ideas of garlic persisted for quite a while.

We see that even up through World War One, some of these ideas about garlic were still in place. It used to be called Russian penicillin because specifically the Russian army used garlic a lot on the front lines to treat battle wounds. You would apply like, poltuses or tinctures or paces of garlic. That kind of thing, the medics would use moss that was soaked in garlic to pack wounds to prevent infection before we had antibiotics and that kind of thing. Obviously, as we move into World War II, you saw less and less of that because penicillin was a lot of... Puzzle and then real medicine, right?

And that kind of thing. But this concept of garlic is medicine, persistent in the modern times, and then I think, as we'll talk about, now there is still a lot of perceptions of garlic as a health food. I wanted real quick to cover the idea of vampires in garlic. It's not really medical, but it's medical adjacent. Sure, and it was our end of this episode. And it's interesting. I had a really hard time finding a single answer as to where this myth comes from. It looks like the difficulty is that the vampire myth itself

persists in so many different cultures throughout time in different ways. They're different names for a vampire-like creature depending on where you are in time and place, right? But this idea of something that sucks blood is is pretty pervasive, something that is sort of dead, but not dead, and also will drink your blood. And that which sustains us, no longer sustains them. Exactly. I gotcha. It's okay. And it's funny because as pervasive as these vampire myths

are, which is a whole other study, why did we create vampires in our brains and be scared of that? I thought you were gonna end that sentence with, why did we create vampires? Like, Sydney, scared of that? I thought you were going to end that sentence with, why did we create vampires? Like, Sydney, I don't know, but I don't know. Why do the scientists keep making them? But like, why did we think garlic would fight them?

And you see this, like, the Egyptians made wreaths of garlic to protect them. In ancient China, it could be smeared across the forehead of children to protect them. And these were the creatures, had different names, but they're all vampire-esque creatures and these different cultures. In Romania, you would, you might even consider

if somebody had died stuffing their mouth with garlic or rubbing their body with garlic before you buried them, so they didn't come back as a vampire. Why? Well, some theories are that garlic was already seen as a health food, and disease was often equated with evil spirits, vampires or demons or evil spirits. So if disease is evil and garlic fixes disease, garlic fixes vampire. Does that make sense?

It makes sense to me. So that's one theory, is it just that simple? Did it have something to do with the fact that arsenic can smell garlicky? And so arsenic could kill things, and so maybe somebody smelled that and thought, well, maybe garlic would work too. That's a theory. That's a weird one. Comest threat. Is it? Because we have arsenic, so let's just use that with the vampires.

Is it a plague thing? There were some people who suggested that during the plague, garlic sellers didn't get the plague at the same rate as everybody else. And so garlic warded off the plague and vampire mythology kind of as we know it is closely related with some of the plague fear. And so is that where that came into play. One possibility that I really like came from a National Geographic historian, Mark Jenkins, who talked about an outbreak of rabies.

And basically what they found is that the rabies thing would give you hypersensitivity to smell. And so something like garlic might really bother you. And around this same time, this is in Hungary from 1721 to 1728 when this outbreak of rabies occurred. The idea was that if they saw this outbreak of rabies, they couldn't explain why all these animals were acting the way they were. And it was scary and seemed evil and demonic.

And then we're seeing these vampire mythologies arise at the same time. Okay. And then they're also hypersensitive to smell and garlic is very pungent. Is this where it came from? I don't know. I think it's all very interesting and cool. One way or another, many people throughout time and history have said there is a vampire like creature and garlic will kill it. Go figure. And we don't know. This one's up in the air folks. Yeah, I don't know what garlic does to vampires because there aren't vampires, but I'll agree to disagree. But the question of what can garlic do for us, the humans. The humans. Not theirs. I was going to say the not dead, but the undead is the

vampire living. The living. Now that's a better one isn't it? So what can garlic do for us? Well, from the mid-1800s, Louis Pasteur had started doing some studies into garlic to find that it did, in fact, kill some bacteria in a lab. Which was interesting, right? It's surprising. And he noted specifically that garlic killed helicobacter pylori, which we would later find is the bacteria responsible for ulcers. It's not a call, ulcers. We have found since then that like garlic was used to fight cholera, typhoid, diptheria. It was used during the influenza epidemic of 1918. Lots of different people started using it as this like viral virus killing, bacteria killing,

sometimes fungal killing thing. Based on this research that indicated that in a lab, it does seem to kill some kinds of bacteria. Later on, we would figure out that it's because garlic has something called Alicin, which is like a sulfur-based kind of substance, and it's part of what gives garlic that powerful smell, or it is what gives garlic that smell. But it also helps protect the garlic plant by killing pests and stuff, right? Right. And it can be useful to kill bacteria and fungus. So this is where some of the modern claims of what garlic can do for you, probably stem from, was that researched done by pasture or that led to our kind of idea that it can help

fight or cure whatever infections, right? Yeah. And have you heard infections, right? Yeah. And have you heard that about garlic? Yes. So I know that and I know that Larry King says it's good for your heart. Well, I'm going to get into each of these because garlic, those are two of the biggest claims. There are others. First of all, an important thing to remember about any substance, just because it can kill

bacteria in a lab does not mean that it will cure an infection in your body. Those two things are very different. And sometimes something works in a lab and works in your body. Penicillin. It was a great discovery that did that. Guru in a petri dish inhibited the growth of bacteria and and then we put it in humans, and they got better. Excellent.

So just because we can put some bacteria and some garlic together in a lab and see the bacteria die, doesn't mean we can treat your infection with garlic. So far, we don't have any evidence that garlic is better at treating any infections in the human body. And even when we do those studies,

they're not being done on a large scale with eating garlic. They're taking like certain doses of garlic supplements, which would be a whole other ball game, powdered form of a high dose of garlic. And again, I don't have any evidence that they can be used in place of antibiotics. I'm not saying they're bad for you. I'm just saying they do not treat infections the way an antibiotic would treat

that infection. I have no evidence that they're useful against viruses, which we don't use antibiotics for, right? But I have no evidence that you can do that. There are small studies that suggest things, but again, no big giant trials that would actually prove that garlic could do that. There has been some argument that they don't do it directly by killing the bacteria, then they do it by boosting the immune system. Again, in a lab, we have found some, you can inject a rat with some garlic and watch some certain immune factors increase or decrease appropriately whatever that could indicate

some boosting of the immune system. And humans, I have no idea. I have no evidence right now that says garlic will help you get over a cold faster, which is something that I see a lot of. I'm not saying it can hurt you in a cold. I'm just saying it's not going to treat your cold. We need tons more research on anything like that. All we know right now is that it does have some antiseptic properties, meaning it can kill, like I said, some bacteria in a lab, for sure, and some fungus in a lab, but that doesn't mean it's going to cure you when you put it on your body. In terms of heart disease, a lot of that stems from the idea that garlic inhibits platelet function, platelets are the things that clump and cause clotting, and so they can cause heart attacks, right?

Plac, build up in your arteries, and then break off in heart attacks. So the idea is that if garlic interferes with the plate lit clumping, it will prevent heart attacks. Okay. And the question has been, could you use it like you use an aspirin? Epoids, I don't know. No. No. Okay.

That was good to me, my guess. I should have just gone for it. No. But Larry told me, Larry's so old. What's secretive? It's not massive doses of garlic. So far, we have, yes, it is possible to take enough garlic in to create some sort of blood thinning effect. Specifically, it can interfere

with other medications you're taking. And so you got to be careful with that if you eat enough. And now, again, when I say eat enough, I'm talking like people who are mehagodosing with supplements and things like that. Right. Not eat enough is probably even a misleading way to put it in. Take enough medicinal. Consume enough intense garlic. It so far it would be we have not found that like eating garlic, the way a normal person would eat any garlic, you're not going to eat enough to interfere with platelet function. So the idea that it could replace aspirin is not, it's just, we're not there. No, you can't do that. The other ways it's supposed to help your heart is through cholesterol or blood pressure. Again, when it comes to blood pressure, yes, we've seen in some studies,

some very small studies, that people who take garlic have slightly lower blood pressure after taking it than people who didn't, who took a placebo, but they don't reach statistical significance to suggest that you could trade out your blood pressure medication for a garlic pill. Same thing, actually with cholesterol, even worse evidence, the most recent studies on cholesterol don't show any difference with garlic. Your cholesterol profile, if you take garlic or not. So, the most recent study suggests that it doesn't help at all. Again, it doesn't hurt, but it doesn't help. So all of the evidence that it can help prevent a heart attack is weak at best and sometimes non-existent on all these different fronts. The other things that people have claimed, the cancer claims are even weaker than the ones we've already

discussed. There was a study done last year that looked specifically at stomach cancer because different cancers of the gut and colon were big targets for garlic. That was one of the big areas of interest in research was can it prevent different gut, stomach and colon cancer? There is no difference in rates of gastric cancer among garlic eaters and non-eaters.

They've never proven any of these cancer claims in large trials. Again, they find these antioxidants in a lot of different substances and a lot of different foods and herbal supplements and things like that. But just because there's antioxidants doesn't mean it's preventing cancer in your body. It's so much more than that, right? Right. I'm not saying eating antioxidants is harmful. I'm just saying that the idea that you can do that and you're going to prevent cancer, we still haven't proven that. Yeah. Do I think there's a link between our health and food, of course? Obviously. But right now, I can't tell you that if you eat enough garlic, you're going to prevent

cancer. There, and obviously, I don't think anybody's claiming it's going to cure, well, there's probably somebody claiming it can cure. Obviously, we have no evidence that it would cure or treat cancer either. Interesting in that study, they also found that there was no difference in the rates of the helico-bacter pylori bacteria that I mentioned earlier between people who ate garlic and people who didn't. They also analyzed the data for that. A couple of our listeners specifically asked me about yeast infections. I'd never heard this, man, I thought I'd heard everything. I didn't know that there were people out there who would advise you to put a clove of garlic in your vagina

if you had a yeast infection. Don't, please, do not do this. At best, it will not do anything and at worst it will cause you some irritation and burning. Please don't put garlic in your vaginas. It does not treat a yeast infection. This has been studied if you can believe it. There have been two studies. One was orally like taking garlic for yeast infection.

Absolutely nothing happened. The second showed that they had people insert a cream made of garlic, as opposed to just a garlic clove at least. And the patients did report some subjective improvement. I think maybe my symptoms are better, but the authors never did any cultures to prove that the garlic actually treated the yeast infection. So we would call this a very weak, low powered study. It was a very small study and they didn't do the appropriate proving.

So please, if you have a yeast infection, get it treated the way that we all agree works. Yes. A doctor or one of the over-the-counter medicines that are approved for yeast infections, please do not put garlic in your vagina. But you knew that anyway, didn't you deep down? Listen, you can't sell that coming, right? Don't put yogurt in your vagina either.

I know the show isn't about yogurt, but that is the one I often hear is, do you put yogurt in your vagina for a yeast infection? Please do not do that. Yeah. That doesn't work. Eat yogurt. Yes.

Don't put it in your vagina. Don't. And still get your yeast infection, please do not do that. That doesn't work. Eat yogurt. Yes. Don't put it in your vagina. Go. And still get your yeast infection treated. As a mosquito repellent, is another popular thought about garlic. There was a double blind placebo controlled, randomized control trial with crossover. That's a really good study.

If you don't know anything about studies, just know this was a very well designed study that was done in recent years that showed no difference in mosquito bites in patients who ate garlic and patients who didn't. So if I could try to sum up this, it seems like a slightly different, slightly different from our normal sort of solvus inclusion in that don't replace any traditional medicine with garlic, but it seems like as long as you're not like mega-dosing it, it doesn't heart like eating garlic. Maybe you can give your, maybe it's a little bit

of a placebo, maybe it's doing a little bit of something. I would say that's fair to you. It was one of those where I really wrecked my brain to think, can you harm yourself with garlic? Other than like, if it makes you sick to eat it, don't, obviously. You know, because some people just don't tolerate garlic well. My mom is one of them. So it makes you sick, don't eat it.

But if you're on certain medications, they can interfere with garlic. So if you do take prescription meds and you're thinking of taking garlic supplements, I would go talk to a doctor or a pharmacist first. But if you're just talking about eating garlic, like in your food, I mean, it may help in some ways. And it's not going to hurt you. And if you want my personal opinion, it's delicious. I am one of those people who sees a recipe that costs for two clubs of garlic and assumes that they met six and just it was a misprint. So I would say that are there some is garlic a healthy food? Yes. It is. Is it medicine?

No. And I think it's important to draw that distinction. Garlic is a healthy food. And unless there's some contraindication, eat away. But it's not medicine. If you're sick, still go to a doctor. Folks, that is gonna do it for us for this episode of solbons. We hope you've enjoyed yourself.

We have had a fun fun fun time get us sharing on this spooky season with this very creepy episode. Ooh, I like garlic now. Maybe crazy. Garlic. We are part of the maximum fun podcasting network. You can find them at maximumfund.org and learn all about all the great shows that are there. We have some merchandise. If you've got Mackelroymerch.com, that's MCELROY. Merch.com. You can buy some solbona stuff. I think there's a pin and T-shirts and what have you. You can buy a book at bit.ly-forod-slash-solbornsbook or just search

for it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or wherever your local bookstore. Whatever you want to do. And if you're gonna be at the shows next weekend, the Mabin Bam and Tash shows will see you there in DC and Pittsburgh. And thanks to TaxWare for these sorts of medicines as the Internantia River program. And thanks to you for listening. That's gonna do it for us this week. So until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't, draw a hole in your head. Alright!