Do Garlic Pills Cure Diverticulitis?
Because I write about health topics, I get a lot of spam emails from people who want to sell me magic pills that cure diseases. I got one today from someone who said garlic pills can cure diverticulitis. Let’s examine that claim.
With the purpose of cure diverticulitisa pill would have to do one of five things.
- It could make the diverticula go away, returning your colon to a pristine condition.
- It could repair torn diverticula.
- It could prevent the formation of diverticula.
- It could wipe out the dangerous infection that has formed in someone suffering from a bout of diverticulitis.
- It may prevent an infection from forming in the intestine of a person who has diverticula.
Taking them one at a time:
Make diverticula go away. There is no evidence of any chemicals anywhere that can make diverticula go away. Once you have diverticula, the only way to get rid of them is to have them surgically cut out by a doctor.
(Fortunately, most people never have problems with their diverticula, so surgery is not necessary simply to remove diverticula that have formed.)
Repair of torn diverticula. This condition is more critical than simply having diverticula. Now those diverticula have opened up and are releasing poisons into your body. Again, there is no evidence that garlic pills can cause your body to close those wounds. And pills certainly can’t take out a needle and thread and sew up tears!
Prevent the formation of diverticula. Diverticula form because a person’s diet does not have enough fiber. That is, plain and simple, the root of the problem. Theoretically, you could get your fiber by eating about 300 cloves of garlic every day.
Of course no one will do that. A more reasonable amount of consumption, such as five or six cloves per day, will give you less than a total gram of dietary fiber. That’s meaningless when your goal is thirty to forty grams of fiber per day.
That tells us that garlic may not be effective in preventing diverticula from forming. But don’t walk away, because we have yet to see if garlic can fight bacteria.
fight infections. Whether you’re trying to fight off an infection you already have or trying to prevent an infection from forming, garlic could be valuable if it has antibiotic properties. does it?
My reference books tell me that garlic has been shown to be an effective antibiotic in laboratory tests. The results have been consistent for over 150 years: Garlic kills bacteria. Tests show that the chemical that does the job is called allicin. It actually works!
But there is a catch that the makers of the garlic pills don’t tell us about. Allicin disappears when garlic is cooked, ground or processed. That means garlic pills can’t provide the same healthy results that raw garlic does.
Eat fresh garlic if you want to help your body heal diverticulitis. Don’t buy garlic pills!