Garlic is an herb that has been used since ancient times to treat a wide variety of medical conditions. You can consume garlic as an extract in supplement form, eat it raw or cook with fresh or powdered garlic. Cooking garlic may affect the amount of its active ingredient---called allicin---that you consume, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC), but cooked garlic still offers many health benefits.
Fighting Cancer
Eating cooked garlic may reduce your risk of developing cancer of the stomach, colon or rectum, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and it also may help treat a wide variety of existing cancers, including cancers that affect the lungs, prostate, breasts, bladder, colon, rectum and stomach. The UMMC adds that eating garlic may also prevent throat cancer. If you already have cancer, consuming cooked garlic may help your immune system fight the cancer while decreasing the amount of side effects you suffer from chemotherapy treatment.
Fighting Heart Disease
You can use cooked garlic to fight heart disease in several ways. The NIH reports that garlic can combat two conditions that often lead to heart disease---atherosclerosis and high blood pressure---by helping arteries remain flexible and lowering blood pressure by as much as 8 percent. The UMMC reports that garlic may also lower blood levels of cholesterol, homocysteine and C-reactive protein, all of which contribute to heart disease.
Strengthening the Immune System
Since garlic's active ingredient, allicin, has antiviral, antibacterial and antifungal properties, garlic may help your immune system function well. Eating garlic regularly may help prevent you from catching the common cold, according to the NIH, and garlic can strengthen your immune system overall, thereby reducing your risk of contracting any kind of infection.
Cautions
Cooking garlic may reduce the amount of allicin that you get from it. Keep in mind that each fresh garlic clove contains about 1 percent of allicin. When you cook garlic you should be able to enjoy its health benefits by eating between 3 ½ and 29 g of cooked garlic each week, says the NIH.
Garlic has blood-thinning properties, so you should talk with your doctor about how much garlic to eat if you're taking medications such as aspirin, Plavix or Coumadin that also thin your blood.
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