Most people are aware that eating garlic can help in the fight against heart disease and perhaps even cancer. But it may also help in losing weight! Scientists working at a research institute in Israel, the Weizmann Institute of Science, have found a compound in garlic that may significantly help in the battle to lose weight.

The four-person team have found that a compound called allicin is produced when garlic is crushed. Normally, this is nature’s way for the garlic plant to protect itself from insects, parasites, fungus, and bacteria – the allicin simply kills or repels the bacteria, fungus or insects. In fact, allicin has proved to be highly potent in killing many forms of bacteria!

Allicicn, the overwhelming odour of crushed garlic that everyone is familiar with, is produced when a compound in garlic called allin is broken down by a garlic enzyme called allinase. By simply crushing garlic a chemical reaction occurs between the enzyme allinase and the compound allin to produce allicin.

The scientific team led by Dr Mirelman fed two groups of rats a high sugar diet; a diet of mainly fruit sugar. One group obviously gained weight, however, the other group were also fed allicin – the highly potent compound found in garlic – and this group did NOT gain any weight, even though they consumed the same amount of sugar This suggests that allicin – the compound found in garlic - was somehow stopping the rats from gaining extra weight. The exact reason why it prevented weight gain in the rats is unknown.

But, garlic is known to reduce blood fat levels. So the possible reason for the rats not gaining weight is that allicin binds with or dissolves blood fat, thus lowering or limiting the level of body fat.

Although similar studies have yet to be performed on humans, it’s suspected that garlic may have the same effect on humans as it did rats because garlic behaves in the same way on blood fat levels.

Read more about this study here.

Breast cancer affects as many as 1 in 7 women in America, and kills over 50,000 every year. In the UK, 1 in 9 women develop breast cancer and over 13,000 die every year. So any way of reducing these appalling death figures would be a welcome boon for women and health authorities around the world.

Thirty nine post-menopausal women with recently diagnosed breast cancer and awaiting surgery were studied. The women were given either a muffin that contained 25 grams of ground flaxseed, or a plain (placebo) muffin that contained no flaxseed. The study was conducted over a 39-day period.

After the study, all breast-cancer tumours were removed from the women and analysed. It was found that the growth of tumours from the women who had been eating the flaxseed muffins was significantly reduced compared to the women eating the plain muffins. This is the first time it has been proved in humans that flaxseed can significantly restrict the growth of breast tumours!

The suspected reason why flaxseed was found to be so effective against breast cancer tumors is because it contains a significant amount of a compound called lignan. Lignan is known to regulate estrogen levels. High levels of estrogen have been linked to breast, uterus and cervical cancer.

Read more about the study here.