That this, that or the other Medicinal plants/extract
is antibacterial is usually a marketing claim based on a bunch of
dubious reports, largely anecdotes, and not on sound, rigorously tested
and reproducible science (1). See for example 2, the US National Institutes of Health’s summation of garlic’s health benefits. Certainly no verifiable reports of its ‘proven’ antibacterial properties listed there.
What
if instead we probe the underlying premise, as to why antibacterial
even became perceived to be a desirable quality? A more illuminating
journey attends such a quest, revealing how certain concepts take root,
how their underlying flaws lie hidden in plain sight, sometimes for far
too long, all until a newer body of work permeates our collective
consciousness, forcing us to confront the untenable aspects of the
original concept and eventually to incorporate this newer knowledge
within its fold. In doing so, our understanding of something fundamental
about nature changes. In this case, it’s about recalibrating our
overwhelmingly adversarial stance towards bacteria, a stance that rooted
and took off sometime in the mid-20th century.
When
did antibacterial become a sought after aim and is it really always
beneficial? Such a notion is of fairly recent vintage. How could it be
otherwise when Bacteria itself pervaded collective human consciousness only after the late 19th century concept of Germ theory of disease took hold?
Word usage frequency reveals how use of antibacterial tracks with that of Antibiotics,
itself an early 20th century discovery (See figures below from Google
Ngrams for the words antibacterial, antibiotics and bacteria in the
English corpus of books, 3).
With their large-scale manufacture streamlined post-WWII, antibiotics
became mainstream medicine starting in the early 1950s. With them
spread the linked notion that getting rid of bacteria somehow bestowed
health. Antibacterial thus became established as a desirable end goal in and of itself, even
among the healthy, or at least it became a commercially exploitable
goal for health product manufacturers and their marketers. So it
continued for the good part of half a century or more.
Much more recently, this premise of antibacterial benefit started crashing into a dead end with the mainstreaming of the Microbiota
concept, the idea that the human body isn't so much a single individual
as each a unique eukaryote-microbe ecosystem. After all, we do acquire
our final 'tissue', our microbiota, post-birth as our body gets rapidly
and permanently colonized by microbes from our environment.
Back
when antibiotics and antibacterial were all the rage, who'd stop to
think and consider 'good' bacteria? Bacteria were then largely seen as
'germs', to be summarily rid of without a second thought. But now? Now
we have to seriously consider the consequences. Data's increasing
by the day on the harms that attend the thoughtless meddling with and
ridding of our microbiota (4), largely through widespread indiscriminate use of antibiotics and other antibacterials (4, 5, 6). Such harms are many, ranging from increasing rates of allergies and autoimmunities to obesity.
Each
individual has unique microbiota, the result of unique life history
(c-section or natural birth for example), genetics and epigenetics
(which largely determine the processes that attend stable microbial
colonization), age, diet, gender, infection and treatment history,
lifestyle choices and location. Consider the infamous Typhoid Mary. Even
as she worked as a cook in household after household, spreading Typhoid fever in her wake (7), Mary Mallon herself remained unharmed from the disease she was spreading. In the context of the human-microbiota ecosystem, 'good' bacteria is thus inherently contextual and individual.
Of course, we already understand this implicitly. After all, our
knowledge of human biology is incomplete enough that the process of
regulator approval of drugs and therapies is guided by their average, and not individual, efficacy (8).
How
then is it possible for one plant/extract to eliminate the 'bad'
bacteria, leaving the 'good' untouched in those who consume/apply it? In
this light, the claim that garlic or some other plant extract is
antibacterial is revealed for the parlous and now increasingly untenable
marketing ploy it really is, especially when it lacks clear data
showing it can kill or inhibit specific bacteria when used at specific
doses, similar to how antibiotic potency is assessed. And even
antibiotics do rid our bodies of helpful microbes even as they eliminate
the harmful ones (9).
This is not to say garlic or other medicinal plant extracts aren't beneficial
to human health. They certainly appear to be and the largely anecdotal
data supporting such assertions are obviously long-standing. However, we
currently lack a clear understanding of exactly how they are
beneficial, when, where and in whom. We won't know without rigorously
controlled scientific studies. This is where the science funded by grant
agencies like the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCAM) becomes critical, for plugging these major gaps in our knowledge and understanding of ancient 'home' remedies.
Bibliography
3.
Original Google Ngram paper: Michel, Jean-Baptiste, et al.
"Quantitative analysis of culture using millions of digitized books."
science 331.6014 (2011): 176-182. http://www.librarian.net/wp-cont...
4. An Epidemic of Absence: A New Way of Understanding Allergies and Autoimmune Diseases. Moises Velasquez-Manoff, An
Epidemic of Absence: A New Way of Understanding Allergies and
Autoimmune Diseases Reprint, Moises Velasquez-Manoff - Amazon.com
5. Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics is Fueling Our Modern Plagues. Martin J. Blaser. Missing
Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues:
9780805098105: Medicine & Health Science Books @ Amazon.com
https://www.quora.com/If-garlic-is-such-a-great-antibacterial-does-it-also-kill-our-good-bacteria-If-not-why/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala
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