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Silymarin helps to protect your liver, an over-worked organ.
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Milk Thistle and Liver Nutrition Center: About Milk Thistle
Milk Thistle and Liver Nutrition Center: Home
Milk Thistle and Liver Nutrition Center: What is Milk Thistle Silymarin ?
Milk Thistle and Liver Nutrition Center: What does Milk Thistle Silymarin do for us ?
Milk Thistle and Liver Nutrition Center: Are we taking enough Milk Thistle Silymarin ?
Milk Thistle and Liver Nutrition Center: Are there liver nutritions other than Milk Thistle Sily
marin ?
Milk Thistle and Liver Nutrition Center: Is Milk Thistle Silymarin a Cancer Inhibitor?
Milk Thistle and Liver Nutrition Center: Milk Thistle and Cancer - Animal Study
Milk Thistle Silymarin and Hepatitis
Milk Thistle and Liver Nutrition Center: About Liver
Milk Thistle and Liver Nutrition Center: About Hepatitis
Milk Thistle and Liver Nutrition Center: About Hepatitis B
Milk Thistle and Liver Nutrition Center: About Hepatitis C
Milk Thistle and Liver Nutrition Center: Hepatitis Links
>Milk thistle silymarin inhibits colon cancer.
Benefit of milk thistle silymarin and glycyrrhizin for hepatitis C.
Benefit of milk thistle silymarin on nerve cell growth.
Milk thistle silymarin inhibits prostate cancer.
Milk thistle silymarin inhibits tongue cancer.
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All About Milk Thistle:
An Introduction
"Milk thistle can't be beat as a liver protector."
What is Milk Thistle ?
Family: Asteraceae
Genus and Species: Silybum marianum
Milk thistle is an herbaceous annual or biennial plant with a dense prickly flower head with purplish tubular flowers. Milk thistle
is an edible plant native to southern Europe, southern Russia, Asia Minor, and nothern Africa,
and has been used for food in the countries surrounding the Mediterranean for a long time as well as a tonic herb
for the liver. Virtually all parts of the plant have been used as food with no known toxicity. Milk thistle was introduced to
North America by European colonists.
Today, milk thistle is best known as a producer of liver protectant known as silymarin, a group of milk thistle flavonoids. The milk thistle
in commerce is a standardized extracts prepared from the fruits (seeds) of Silybum marianum. Like Ginkgo biloba, milk thistle is
required to be standardized and rendered to concentrated forms to be effectively used for desired medicinal purposes, which, in
this case, is as a hepatoprotectant. In general, milk thistle extracts are standardized to a concentration of 70-80% of flavone lignans
including isosilybinin, silybinin, silychristin, and silydianin, which are collectively called silymarin.
History
Milk thistle has been known in Europe and other Mediterranean countries since ancient times. Theophrastus mentioned about milk thistle
around 4th century, B.C. Dioscorides wrote about the medicinal value of milk thistle, and Pliny the Elder wrote on the improvement of bile
flow by milk thistle, calling it "Silybum" around the 1st century, A.D. Nicholas Culpeper, an English herbalist mentioned in 1650 that milk
thistle is effective for removing liver obstructions. Von Haller documented the use of milk thistle for liver ailments in 1744.
Milk thistle has been mentioned as a folkloric remedy for asthma, cancer, catarrh, chest pains, dropsy, fever, hepatitis, rabies, jaundice,
vaginal discharge, malaria, plague, spasms, and spleen problems. Milk thistle has been under scientific and clinical investigation since
turn of the last century, mainly in Germany. In the 1960s, German scientists identified a group of active ingredients from milk thistle,
mainly from the seeds, and named them collectively as "silymarin". The preparation of milk thistle fruits and seeds were approved by
German Commission E as a highly safe and effective herb for liver health.
Usage
German Commission E approved the internal use of crude milk thistle fruit preparations for dyspeptic complaints. Standardized
extracts (usually ranging in silymarin concentration from 70 to 80%) are approved for toxic liver damage and as a supportive treatment for
chronic inflammatory liver disease and hepatic cirrhosis.
Silymarin is known to protect the liver by altering and strengthening the structure of outer cell membranes of hepatocytes (liver cells),
preventing toxins from entering the liver cells,
and by stimulating the regenerative ability of the liver and the formation of new hepatocytes through the activation of an enzyme nucleolar
polymerase A, which leads to the increase in ribosomal protein synthesis and cell division. Silymarin, as an
anti-oxidant, may also reduce damages to liver cells caused by chronic use of certain prescription drugs. The silybin component
of sillymarin has been related to cholesterol-lowering effects. Through the capability to increase bile solubility, sylimarin may also
help prevent or alleviate gallstones.
Dose: 12-15 grams per day of powdered seed is recommended for making infusions or other preparations to be taken orally. For
standardized extract, 200-400 mg of silymarine per day is recommended.
Side Effects: No side effects are known for crude preparation, as milk thistle is a food, and a relative of artichoke. For
standardized extract with high concentration of sylimarine, a mild laxative effect has been observed occasionally.
Chemistry and Pharmacology
A rather complete chemical composition list of milk thistle can be found in Dr.
Duke's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases.
Milk thisle seeds contain 1.5-3% flavonolignans, collectively called silymarin; 20-30% fixed oils, of which approximately 60% is
linoleic acid, approximately 30% is oleic acid, and approximately 9% is palmitic acid; 25-30% protein; 0.038% tocopherol; 0.63% sterols,
including choleterol, campeterol, stigmasterol, and sitosterol; and some mucilage. [Herbal Medicine - Expanded
Commission E monographs, by Mark Blumenthal, Alicia Goldberg, and Josef Brinckmann, first edition, 2000].
Silymarin's constituents are isosilybinin, silybinin,
silychristin, and silydianin, of which silybinin accounts for approximately 50% of silymarin. [Dr. Duke's Essential Herbs, by James A
Duke, 1999].
Other Notes
There have been very few clinical tests on milk thistle or any herb for women at pregnancy. Thus, although an extremely safe herb and food, milk thistle is recommended against women who are pregnant or lactating largely due to the lack of data and our ignorance.
Milk Thistle Research:
Anecdotal Evidences?
As a mild food and herb, milk thistle's anecdotes and folklores may not be as fancy and splendid as those of ginseng or ginkgo.
Unlike the latter two herbs, milk tistle is strictly non-Asian, and has been used in the regions surrounding the Mediterranean.
Medicinal efficacies of milk thistle fruits and seeds for protecting the liver and helping with various ailments associated with liver function
have been known and exploited for more than two thousand years, even before the preparation methods for standardized extracts were
available.
Scientific and Clinical Studies
Anecdotal efficacy of milk thistle for liver health has been supported by numerous studies. Some recent reports on
such studies are provided:
Gastroenterol Nurs 2001 Mar-Apr;24(2):95-7 - Milk thistle and the treatment of hepatitis
Drugs 2001;61(14):2035-63 - The use of silymarin in the treatment of liver diseases
J Immunol 1999 Dec 15;163(12):6800-9 - Silymarin suppresses TNF-induced activation of NF-kappa B, c-Jun N-terminal kinase, and apoptosis
Altern Med Rev 1998 Dec;3(6):410-21 - A review of plants used in the treatment of liver disease: part 1
Am J Gastroenterol 1998 Feb;93(2):139-43 - Milk thistle (Silybum marianum) for the therapy of liver disease
Hepatology 1996 Apr;23(4):749-54 - Inhibition of Kupffer cell functions as an explanation for the hepatoprotective properties of silibinin
J Hepatol 1989 Jul;9(1):105-13 - Randomized controlled trial of silymarin treatment in patients with cirrhosis of the liver
Cell Mol Life Sci 1997 Dec;53(11-12):917-20 - Silibinin, a plant extract with antioxidant and membrane stabilizing properties,
protects exocrine pancreas from cyclosporin A toxicity
Cancer Res 2000 Oct 15;60(20):5617-20 - Silibinin up-regulates insulin-like growth factor-binding protein 3 expression and inhibits
proliferation of androgen-independent prostate cancer cells
Cancer Lett 1999 Dec 1;147(1-2):77-84 - Inhibition of human carcinoma cell growth and DNA synthesis by silibinin, an active
constituent of milk thistle: comparison with silymarin
Outlook
Liver disorder is the 9th leading killer in the US.
About 80% of the 200,000 deaths each year caused by liver diseases in the US are attributed to alcohol consumption, and the
remaining 20% to hepatitis, pollutants, etc. It is estimated that there are over 11 million alcoholics in the US alone.
The liver is an overworked organ and performs many vital functions as "the chemical factory" of the body. It is the liver that
breaks down and detoxifies poisons that enter our blood stream, including alcohol, nucotine, and pollutants, and converts
and store nutritions, and synthesize bile.
Milk thistle is known to be the best medicine to boost liver health among all
available products be it natural or synthetic.Milk thistle sylimarin is safe and healthful as a strong anti-oxidant. Milk thistle
is extremely popular in Europe, and the markets in the US and the rest of the world are expanding.
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