"Best Food for Lead Poisoning: Garlic"
Dietary strategies for the treatment of lead toxicity
are often based on rodent studies;
however, for tofu, at least there was a population study of people,
showing lower lead levels in men and women who ate more tofu.
They controlled for a whole bunch of factors;
so, it’s not like tofu lovers were protected
just because they smoked less or ate less meat,
but you can’t control for everything.
Ideally, what we’d have is a randomized, placebo-controlled study.
Take a group of people exposed to lead,
split them up into two groups: half get the food,
half get some kind of identical placebo food
and see what happens.
Easy to do with drugs—
you can just use look alike sugar pills as placebos;
so, people don’t know what group they’re in,
but how do you make placebo food?
One way to do disguised food interventions
is to use foods that are so potent
they can be stuffed in a pill, like garlic.
There had been various studies on the effects of garlic in rats
and as a potential antidote for lead intoxication
distributed among different mouse organs,
but who eats mouse organs?
This animal study had some direct human relevance, though,
the effect of garlic on lead content in chicken tissues
to explore the possible uses of garlic
to clean up lead contents in chickens
which, like all of us on planet Earth, have been exposed to lead pollution,
in hopes we can minimize the hazard
of lead polluted chicken meat.
And, it worked!
Feeding garlic to chickens reduces lead levels
in the “edible mass” of the chicken by up to 75% or more.
Even if you don’t give them lead and raise them on distilled water,
they end up with some lead in their meat and giblets
(we just live in such a polluted world),
but actively feed them lead for a week
and the levels get really high.
But, give them the same amount of lead with a little garlic added,
give them some garlicky lead,
and much less lead accumulates in their bodies.
OK, but here’s the crazy part.
Same amount of lead, but this time you wait a week
and then give the garlic, and it worked even better.
The value of garlic in reducing lead concentrations
was more pronounced when given afterwards, after the lead was stopped,
after the lead had already built up in their tissues.
See, we used to think that the beneficial effects of garlic
against lead toxicity was primarily due to a reaction
between lead and sulfur compounds in the garlic
that would glom on to the lead in the intestinal tract
and flush it out of the body,
but what this study showed is that garlic appears
to contain compounds that can actually pull lead
not just out of the intestinal contents
but out of the tissues of the body.
So, “the results indicate that garlic contains chelating compounds
capable of enhancing elimination of lead.”
So, “garlic feeding can be exploited to safeguard human consumers
by minimizing lead concentrations in meat.”
But if garlic is so effective at pulling lead out of chickens’ bodies,
why not exploit garlic feeding more directly
by eating it ourselves?
Well, there had never been a study
on the ability of garlic to help lead exposed humans...
until now.
Actually, I’m embarrassed to say, the study was published back in 2012,
but I missed it.
That was when I was just setting up NutritionFacts.org, getting it up and running.
Now that we have a staff and a whole research team,
hopefully important studies like this
won’t slip through the cracks in the future.
But, here we go, a head-to-head comparison
of the therapeutic effects of garlic versus a chelation therapy drug
called D-penicillamine.
117 workers exposed to lead in a car battery industry
were randomly assigned into one of two groups:
the drug three times a day, or an eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder
compressed into a tablet, three times a day.
That’s about the equivalent of 2 cloves of fresh garlic a day,
for a month.
As expected, the chelation drug reduced blood lead levels
by about 20%, but so did the garlic.
The garlic worked just as well as the drug
and, of course, had fewer side effects.
Thus, garlic seems safer and as effective.
But saying something is as effective as chelation therapy
isn’t saying much.
Remember how for chronic lead poisoning, chelation drugs can lower blood levels
but don’t actually improve neurological function?
Okay, are you ready?
This is where it gets amazing.
Significant clinical improvements were seen in the garlic group:
less irritability, fewer headaches, improvements in their reflexes
and blood pressure after treatment with garlic,
but not the drug.
So, garlic was safer and more effective.
“Therefore, garlic can be recommended for the treatment
of mild-to-moderate lead poisoning.”