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How Much Garlic Is Too Much?

Garlic is considered very healthy and is used in particular to prevent arteriosclerosis and to naturally lower cholesterol levels. Nevertheless, one reads again and again that one should not eat too much garlic. But how much garlic is too much garlic?

How Much Garlic Is Healthy and How Much Garlic Is Too Much?

If you just want to know how much garlic is healthy and how much garlic is too much, please scroll down to our conclusion and garlic rules. All other readers will find out below what positive properties garlic has, but also what side effects garlic can have if you eat too much of it.

Garlic is a well-known naturopathic remedy for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Because garlic not only regulates blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol levels (in many people, not all!), it is also supposed to

  • blood thinning (anticoagulant),
  • antioxidant,
  • clot-dissolving and
  • have an anti-thrombotic effect

and is therefore often used for arteriosclerosis or to prevent it.

Since garlic is also neuroprotective (nerve-protecting), it is also recommended for the prevention of Alzheimer’s and stroke. The sulfur compounds contained in garlic (alliin, allicin, diallyl disulfide, ajoene, S-allyl cysteine, etc.) and its essential oils are responsible for the positive properties. So it is often advised:

Eat garlic regularly!

Many people, therefore, like to cook with garlic (also because of its aroma, of course). However, cooked garlic doesn’t work quite as well as raw garlic (13) (2). Therefore, people who want to use garlic therapeutically or preventively use garlic capsules or simply raw garlic, which can be used e.g. B. is cut into slices placed on a slice of bread and eaten with relish. Now it says again:

Eat garlic regularly, but not too much!

Only nowhere is it explained how much garlic is still okay and how much garlic is too much. Of course, overdoses of whatever is never particularly healthy. But what if you don’t know what amount corresponds to an overdose? And most importantly, what happens if you overdose on garlic?

Does garlic damage the intestinal flora?

Garlic exhibits antibacterial properties, which is why it is part of our natural antibiotic. However, while conventional antibiotics often damage the intestinal flora, this should of course not be the case with a natural antibiotic, since the absence or significantly fewer side effects is an important advantage of such a formulation.

As far as the intestinal flora is concerned, it actually seems to be the case with garlic that it inhibits the rather undesirable bacteria in particular (e.g. clostridia) but can do little to harm the desired lactobacilli in the intestinal flora, since these have a certain exhibiting resistance to the active compounds in garlic (14).

Garlic can even have a direct positive effect on intestinal flora. Under the influence of garlic, the level of the beneficial short-chain fatty acids in the intestine increases, and the diversity of the intestinal flora increases. In addition, it is known that garlic increases the body’s defenses against harmful germs, such as e.g. B. Helicobacter pylori strengthens (15).

With normal garlic consumption (as described below), there is no risk of damaging the intestinal flora. On the contrary, garlic can even have a very positive effect on intestinal flora and intestinal health in the recommended consumption quantities.

Does garlic cause bleed?

Garlic is often discouraged when people are taking anticoagulant medications (blood thinners) because of concerns that garlic may increase these effects and contribute to bleeding.

It is also often advised not to take garlic capsules or eat garlic for a few days before an operation so that there is no unwanted bleeding during the operation and any bleeding can be stopped quickly.

Are these fears justified? Can garlic actually reduce blood clotting to such an extent that it could lead to bleeding or increase the blood-thinning effect of anticoagulants?

Rare isolated cases of bleeding from garlic consumption

There are only a few case reports on this topic from the last 30 years or more, which suggest that garlic has a too strong blood-thinning effect, e.g. For example, a 2016 case study called “the risk of bleeding from some supplements a cardiac surgeon’s nightmare” ( 8 ):

Case study 1: bleeding after cardiac surgery

After his bypass operation, a 55-year-old heart patient suffered from severe secondary bleeding, so he needed blood and platelets. Doctors found no cause other than the supplements the man had been taking regularly: omega-3 fatty acids with 675mg of DHA and a garlic-thyme supplement with 100mg of thyme powder and 20mg of garlic extract, which was equivalent to 2g of fresh garlic, so not even an average clove of garlic (3 g).

Case study 2: Spinal cord bleeding from garlic?

In 1990, an 87-year-old man was reported ( 9 ) to suddenly develop a spinal epidural hematoma (a buildup of blood in the spinal cord). No cause could be found – except the man’s fondness for garlic. He ate 4 cloves a day. However, the weight given in the case report is only 2 g. A clove of garlic usually weighs 3 g. So it is not certain if he actually only ate 2g of garlic and the cloves were so small or if it was in fact around 12g of garlic.

Case Study 3: Garlic Anemia?

A case study from March 2022 ( 10 ) states that a patient probably suffered from anemia because she ate “large amounts of raw garlic”. Unfortunately, the full version of the study was not available on the day of our research, so we are currently unable to make any more precise statements about the specific quantity. As soon as the study is available again, we will update the text accordingly.

Case study 4: bleeding from garlic surgery?

A case report from a plastic surgery clinic in 1995 is interesting. Even then, the clinic wrote that all patients were given a long list of blood-thinning medication and blood-thinning foods 14 days before the planned procedure, which they did not do in the two weeks before the procedure are likely to ingest or eat, including berries, alcohol, wine, tomato sauce, fruit, aspirin, and ibuprofen—an indication of how everyday foods can affect blood clotting.

Finally, garlic was added to the list because a 32-year-old patient had severely delayed blood clotting, which led to complications during the operation. The patient always ate a lot of garlic (unfortunately without specifying exactly how much) (11).

Prerequisites for increased risk of bleeding from garlic

From a naturopathic point of view, natural foods can influence blood clotting, but they only do this to regulate blood clotting, i.e. to keep it in a healthy balance. However, they will not reduce clotting as much as anticoagulants do, which then – unlike food – also leads to an increased risk of bleeding.

For example, a 2009 study showed that garlic generally does not measurably thin the blood (beyond healthy levels), at least not in doses of 2 g of fresh garlic ( 1Trusted Source ). Not even together with anticoagulant drugs did the garlic show an enhancing effect in this study. The above case reports will therefore tend to be exceptions.

In order for such exceptions to occur, i.e. for garlic to lead to an excessive tendency to bleed, at least four conditions seem to be necessary, all of which must be met at the same time:

  1. The respective person reacts particularly sensitively to the blood-thinning effect of garlic – otherwise, there would not only be rare case reports.
  2. The respective person eats garlic regularly, mostly daily.
  3. The person in question eats raw garlic or takes a garlic supplement.
  4. The respective person regularly eats quite large amounts of garlic, whereby amounts of 2 g of fresh garlic per day are apparently sufficient for sensitive people.

How Much Garlic Is Toxic?

In order to find out whether a substance is toxic or from which quantity it is toxic, toxicity studies are carried out – but not on humans, so that there is no corresponding study in which one would have found that so and so much garlic harms a person or would even kill him.

In a 2006 study ( 3 ), rats were therefore given various doses of garlic for 28 days: 0.1 g, 0.25 g, 0.5 g, 1 g, 2.5 g, or 5 g garlic per kg body weight per day. From 0.5 g per kilogram of body weight, damage to the liver occurred. But even with the two lower doses, the liver values deteriorated.

Nevertheless, the scientists described amounts of up to 0.25 g per kilogram of body weight as safe. For a 70-kilogram person, this would correspond to a maximum daily amount of 17.25 g of garlic or almost 6 cloves of garlic (assuming an average weight of 3 g per garlic clove).

Garlic protects against liver diseases

Now, based on the tests above, one might assume that garlic is not that good for the liver. However, a 2019 observational study found that people who eat raw garlic twice a week or more often have a lower risk of liver cancer than those who eat raw garlic less often or never. Unfortunately, the consumption quantities were not given here. So you don’t know how much raw garlic was eaten in each case.

Also in 2019, a study appeared showed that the more participants consumed raw garlic, the lower their risk of developing non-alcoholic fatty liver.

The fatty liver risk was lowest when raw garlic was eaten 4 to 6 times per week. However, if garlic was eaten 7 times or more per week, the risk increased slightly again – a possible indication that a healthy balance is important when it comes to garlic.

What you should definitely not do with garlic

What you should never do is swallow garlic cloves whole. Apparently, this practice is recommended in some places on the web to avoid garlic breath.

Aside from the fact that garlic breath also occurs when the garlic is swallowed whole, there have now been 17 cases of serious esophageal injury from people swallowing garlic cloves whole, in quantities of up to a whole bulb of garlic at a time, without water. Almost all of those affected had to be operated on. The corresponding case study collection was published in June 2020 (7).

Since garlic can irritate the skin, skin rashes and even severe chemical burns can occur if raw, freshly crushed garlic is applied to the skin, e.g. B. in the form of poultices on aching joints or on the chest (for colds). Therefore, it is better not to apply garlic in this form (4).

Conclusion: How much garlic is too much?

Unfortunately, it is not possible to say in general terms how much garlic is too much. Especially with garlic, it is often the case that you notice for yourself what is too much, since overdoses can lead to discomfort, burning in the mouth, stomach problems (burning of the stomach lining), diarrhea and flatulence.

In individual cases (!), nosebleeds can also result from excessive garlic consumption ( 12 ).

The dose at which garlic is unfavorable for the individual depends very much on the individual. So keep an eye on yourself and reduce the garlic dose if you notice that it is not doing you any good, or switch to black garlic. Not only does black garlic cause no garlic breath. It is also better tolerated and is said to provide better protection against arteriosclerosis than the white one (see the previous link). Nevertheless, of course, you don’t eat huge amounts of black garlic either. We would not recommend more than 4 cloves per day.

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Written by Jessica Vargas

I am a professional food stylist and recipe creator. Although I am a Computer Scientist by education, I decided to follow my passion for food and photography.

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