Not being terribly familiar with Oil of Oregano I took to my books and the venerable but often misleading Internet to bone up on the subject. My previous experience with this told me that as a topical anti-bacterial, oil of oregano does indeed have some legitimate qualities that would probably be useful in a pinch if you had no other way to treat an external infection.

Giardia is on the run from Oil of Oregano?

The web, as it turns out, is chock full of interesting articles about this miracle cure, but unfortunately most of the articles are chock full of nothing more than anecdotes about how wonderful this oil is. In a brief search I found that oil of oregano is supposedly good for treatment of colds, flu, sore throat, bronchitis, sinusitis, asthma, bladder infections, kidney infections, peptic ulcers, fatigue,  headaches, allergies, bad breath, indigestion, parasites such as Giardia Lambia, cold sores, puncture wounds, dandruff, warts, athlete’s foot, boils, nail fungus, bed sores, head lice, ringworm, psoriasis, eczema, arthritis, back pain, and a whole lot more. In short, oil of oregano can not only make everyone multi-millionaires who are constantly happy and never pay taxes, but it can also ensure world peace.

Let’s face it, any time that a product has a list of ailments it can cure that is this long, one just has to raise an eyebrow and ask about how realistic something like this could possibly be. As it turns out, a great deal of the hullaballoo over oil of oregano stems from a few small studies done in test tubes. As the website sciencebasedpharmacy.com so eloquently puts it:

“Oil of oregano is a great example of how test tube studies can be misleadingly exaggerated to imply meaningful effects in humans. With oil of oregano, a few small studies have been conducted, mainly in the lab, and believers argue  we should expect the same thing when we take it orally.”