MILK THISTLE
Milk Thistle Liquid Extract
Drop 50ml of this mercifully taste-free liquid in a glass of water
before you go to bed and in the water you drink throughout the next
day.
The night before: Two glasses of champagne and three glasses of red
wine; a full-on Thanksgiving dinner.
The morning after: Incredible. I felt like I'd almost completely
got away with last night's revelry.
Verdict: This is by far the best remedy I sampled. It eliminated
nausea and limited that debilitating tiredness. Milk Thistle is
available in pill form, but I found the tincture worked better for
me. 9 out of 10
Its supposed medicinal qualities have been in demand for two millennia. Used by the Romans to treat the victims of snakebites and sickly children, legend has it that the white veins of milk thistle's leaves were created from drops of milk shed by the Virgin Mary.
Marketed as a liver tonic more than half a century ago, capsules made from the plant extract have sold steadily for decades. But now a new generation of partygoers, desperate to avoid the aftermath of festive over-indulgence, are discovering the plant, which is related to the daisy family and is native to the Mediterranean region.
Supermarkets and pharmacies report that demand for milk thistle before New Year's Eve is soaring as discussions on social networking sites extol its qualities as a potent hangover cure.
For many centuries extracts of milk thistle have been recognized
as "liver tonics." Research into the biological activity of
silymarin and its possible medical uses has been conducted in many
countries since the 1960s, but the quality of the research has been
uneven. Milk thistle has been reported to have protective effects
on the liver and to greatly improve its function. It is typically
used to treat liver cirrhosis, chronic hepatitis (liver
inflammation), toxin-induced liver damage including the prevention
of severe liver damage from Amanita phalloides ('death cap'
mushroom poisoning), and gallbladder disorders.
Reviews of the literature covering clinical studies of silymarin
vary in their conclusions. A review examining studies with a
double-blind protocol concluded that milk thistle and its
derivatives has no significant effect on mortality or course of
disease in individuals with alcoholic and/or hepatitis B or C
disease.
Toxin-induced liver damage
Research suggests that milk thistle extracts both prevent and
repair damage to the liver from toxic chemicals and medications.
Workers who had been exposed to vapors from toxic chemicals
(toluene and/or xylene) for 5–20 years were given either a
standardized milk thistle extract (80% silymarin) or placebo for 30
days. The workers taking the milk thistle extract showed
significant improvement in liver function tests (ALT and AST) and
platelet counts vs. the placebo group.
The efficacy of silymarin in preventing drug-induced liver damage
in patients taking psychotropic drugs long-term has been
investigated.
A clinical trial in humans showed that silymarin (140 mg orally 3
times daily) was not effective when used for 1 year in combination
with ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) for the treatment of primary
biliary cirrhosis. A study in baboons indicated that continuous
intragastric infusion of silymarin retarded the development of
alcohol-induced hepatic fibrosis over a 3-year period. The authors
suggested that the failure of silymarin to show beneficial effects
in other clinical trials may have been due to poor compliance with
treatment, resulting in insufficient dosing.
In a 2010 study published in the journal Cancer, milk thistle was
associated with a trend towards reducing the liver damaging effects
of chemotherapy in a randomized double-blind placebo controlled
study of 50 children.
