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09.07.2025

Regular garlic vs. wild garlic | Which variety protects heart and blood vessels better?

Garlic is good for heart and blood vessels. Garlic lowers blood pressure and reduces the concentration of the 'bad cholesterol' LDL. [Medicine (Baltimore). 2018 May;97(18):e0255.] But what regular cultivated garlic can do, wild garlic can do better.

Wild garlic
Wild garlic - scientific name: Allium ursinum - is also called ramson. Ramson grows in woods but is also available in some garden centers.

Because ramson sows itself and is easier to cultivate than regular and cultivated garlic - scientific name: Allium sativum - more and more gardeners are discovering ramson.

You use the leaves of ramson, not the bulbs. The bulbs are edible, just like garlic, but you usually harvests the bulbs when you have too many ramson plants.

Study
In 2001, American physiologists from Georgetown University Medical Center published an animal study sponsored by Pfannenschmidt. Pfannenschmidt is a Germany-based manufacturer of wild garlic supplements. It is unknown whether these supplements are still available.

In a 30-day experiment, the researchers fed a group of rats - all of whom had high blood pressure due to a genetic defect - chow supplemented with finely ground garlic and wild garlic.

Rats in a control group were fed regular food.

If the rats had been adults, they would have taken a tablet containing 750 milligrams of dried garlic or a capsule containing 740 milligrams of dried wild garlic daily. If the adults preferred fresh garlic or wild garlic, they would have consumed a small clove of regular garlic or 7-9 grams of wild garlic daily.

7-9 grams of wild garlic is a handful of fresh, chopped leaves.

Results
After the experiment, total blood cholesterol levels decreased more in the group that received wild garlic than in the group that received cultivated garlic.

The researchers did not specify which type of cholesterol decreased. However, based on another animal study, we suspect that it was primarily LDL cholesterol. [Journal of Shadid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences. 2011;19(1):65-74.] Click on the table below for a larger version.

Supplementation with regular garlic lowered the rats' blood pressure, but supplementation with wild garlic lowered it much more. The effect of wild garlic became stronger over time, as the figure above illustrates.

Active substances
A look at the amount of bioactive substances in cultivated and wild garlic makes it clear why wild garlic has stronger positive cardiovascular effects than regular garlic.

Wild garlic contains more gamma-glutamyl peptides, which inhibit the angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE). This lowers blood pressure. In addition, wild garlic contains more adenosine than cultivated garlic. Because adenosine dilates blood vessels, this substance lowers blood pressure.

Finally, wild garlic contains more flavonols than cultivated garlic. Perhaps this explains why wild garlic lowers cholesterol levels more than cultivated garlic.

Source:
Int Urol Nephrol. 2001;32(4):525-30.

More:
This is the effect of garlic on your blood pressure 14.09.2024
Garlic makes running healthier 14.10.2015

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