Milk thistle extract
Is most commonly recommended to counteract
the harmful actions of alcohol on the liver.

Double-blind trials indicate that it helps the liver return
to a healthy state once a person stops drinking.
Some trials suggest it may improve quality of life and even life
expectancy in people with liver cirrhosis.
However, another trial found no effect in cirrhosis patients.

Milk thistle alters bile makeup,
thereby potentially reducing risk of gallstones.
However, this needs to be verified by human clinical trials.
Milk thistle extract has been shown to protect the liver
from the potentially damaging effect of drugs used
to treat schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis.
However, one trial found that it did not protect the liver
from the potentially harmful effects of the drug Cognex
(tacrine hydrochloride) used to treat
early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.

How much is usually taken?
For liver disease and impaired liver function, research suggests
the use of 420–600 mg of silymarin per day from an herbal extract
of milk thistle standardized to 80% silymarin content.

According to research and clinical experience, improvement
should be noted in about eight to twelve weeks.

For people with chronic liver disease, milk thistle extract may
be considered a long-term therapy.

For those who prefer, 12–15 grams of milk thistle dried fruits
can be ground and eaten or made into a tea.
This should not be considered therapeutic
for conditions of the liver, however.

Are there any side effects or interactions?
Milk thistle extract is virtually devoid
of any side effects and may be used
by most people, including pregnant and breast-feeding women.

In fact, it has been recommended as a treatment for itching due
to poor gallbladder function during pregnancy.

Since silymarin stimulates liver and gallbladder activity,
it may have a mild, transient laxative effect in some people.
This will usually cease within two to three days.

There is one case report of a 57-year-old Australian woman
experiencing several episodes of nausea, abdominal pain,
vomiting and weakness after taking a milk thistle preparation.
This case is so atypical, however, that
the Adverse Drug Reactions Advisory Committee of Australia
questioned whether the product taken might not have contained
other herbs or additives that could be responsible
for the adverse reaction.

Are there any drug interactions?
Certain medications may interact with milk thistle.
Refer to the drug interactions safety check
for a list of those medications.

Taken from Psychology Today:
No more guzzling green tea and enchinacea, or popping St. John's wort.
Milk thistle extract - long used as a liver tonic in european folk
medicine - may be a far better nutritional supplement thatn its acclaimed
herbal cousins. Researchers studied the effects of st. John's wort,
ginger, enchinacea, green tea and milk thistle on the white blood cells and
nerve cells of mice. Milk thistle was the only herb that boosted both
the immune and nervous systems, helping nerve cells produce more
nuerites and keeping cells alive longer. No one expected milk thistle to
outperform St. John's wort and enchinacea, on which amercians spent a
combined $380 million in 2000, according to Nutrition Business Journal. "It
was quite a suprise," says coinvestigator Dileep Kittur, M.D., a
professor of surgery and director of transplantation at S.U.N.Y. Upstate
Medical University in Syracuse, New York. "The other herbs had some effect,
but not as much. We thoguth they'd stand up to scrutiny in scientific
tests." If these findings are corroborated in human trials, researchers
may have found a plant-based product to help fight infection and treat
nuerological disorders including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases
and brain trauma. But don't stockpile milk thistle extract just yet.
"Our results are very preliminary," warns Kittur, who also found that
ginger and green tea may be developed as immunosuppresive agents for use in
organ transplantation. The results were presented at the Society for
Nueroscience annual meeting.

When research is done on mice, they sometimes give them fatal doses.
When compared to how much the human gets, would maybe be 100 times the
amount we would need to take. Also in research, what they give the mice
may not be the correct part of the plant that would be used or has
additives or added constituents that would change the chemical structure of
the herb. I learned this the other day from James Duke, PHD. I don't
always trust what medical doctors say about herbs.

Just my 2 cents'
worth.
Marlene


Source(s)
iherb


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