Because I write about health topics, I get a lot of spam emails from people who want to sell me magic pills that cure diseases. Today I received one from someone who said that garlic pills can diverticulitis cure. Let’s examine that claim.

With the purpose of diverticulitis cure, a pill would have to do one of five things.

1. It could make the diverticula go away, returning your colon to a pristine condition.
2. It could repair torn diverticula.
3. It could prevent the formation of diverticula.
4. It could end the dangerous infection that has formed in someone suffering from a bout of diverticulitis.
5. It could prevent an infection from forming in the intestine of a person who has diverticula.

Taking them one at a time:

Make diverticula disappear. There is no evidence of any chemical anywhere that can make diverticula go away. Once you have diverticula, the only way to get rid of them is to have them surgically removed by a doctor.

(Fortunately, most people never have problems with their diverticula, so there is no need to perform surgery simply to remove the diverticula that have formed.)

Repair torn diverticula. This condition is more critical than simply having diverticula. Now those diverticula have opened and are releasing poisons into your body. Again, there is no evidence that garlic pills can make your body close those wounds. And the pills certainly cannot pull out a needle and thread and sew up tears!

Avoid the formation of diverticula. Diverticula form because a person’s diet does not have enough fiber. That is, plain and simple, the root cause of the problem. Theoretically, you could get your fiber by eating around 300 cloves of garlic every day.

Of course no one will do that. A more reasonable amount of consumption, such as five or six cloves per day, will give you less than a total gram of dietary fiber. That’s negligible when your goal is thirty to forty grams of fiber per day.

That tells us that garlic cannot be effective in preventing diverticula. But don’t go, because we have yet to see if garlic can fight bacteria.

Fight infection. Whether you’re trying to fight an infection you already have or are trying to prevent an infection from forming, garlic could be valuable if it has antibiotic properties. Does it?

My reference books tell me that garlic has been shown to be an effective antibiotic in laboratory tests. The results have been consistent for over 150 years: garlic kills bacteria. Tests show that the chemical that does the work is called allicin. It really works!

But there is a catch that garlic pill makers don’t tell us about. Allicin disappears when garlic is cooked, powdered, or processed. That means that garlic pills cannot offer the same healthy results that raw garlic does.

Eat fresh garlic if you want to help your body heal diverticulitis. Don’t buy garlic pills!