You can protect your liver and more with Milk thistle Extract

Darrell Miller

12/23/10

Date: December 23, 2010 09:48 PM
Author: Darrell Miller (dm@vitanetonline.com)
Subject: You can protect your liver and more with Milk thistle Extract

Milk Thistle Benefits

Milk thistle has been used to treat liver problems for centuries. Its Latin name is Silybum marianum which explains the name of its main flavanoid complex, silymarin, which is obtained from the seeds. Milk thistle offers both a regenerative and a boosting effect to the liver, improving its effect on toxins while enabling it to recover from damage caused by cirrhosis, hepatitis and the effect of toxins and drugs.

Milk thistle also helps to reduce the cholesterol content of the blood and to improve the generation of glutathione, the body's master-antioxidant. Many studies have shown that milk thistle enables patients to survive longer after life-threatening liver conditions such as cirrhosis, and also protects it from the effects of sustained use of common drugs such as acetaminophen (Tylenol and Paracetamol) that progressively damages liver cells, and also of many antipsychotics and antibiotics that have a similar effect.

There are no doubts that taking milk thistle does your liver a great deal of good and leaves it in a much healthier state than it found it.

Milk Thistle and Painkillers

Over the counter painkillers such as Tylenol and paracetamol are based upon a chemical known as acetominophen. Milk thistle can be used to reverse the damage that acetaminophen can cause to your liver if you catch it early enough. Here is how this form of painkiller can cause damage to your liver.

Acetaminophen undergoes processes known as sulfation and glucuronidation prior to being excreted from the body. This process is not harmful to the liver, and is a normal biochemical means of removing excess acetominophen from your body after it has done its work. However, if you have taken excess acetaminophen (>4g/day or 8x 500mg tablets) there is too much for the above process to handle, and a secondary biochemical route (the cytochrome p-450 system) is taken that generates an intermediate product known as NAPQI.

Normally, this NAPQI is safely metabolized by the antioxidant glutathione but if there is insufficient glutathione in your system then the NAPQI will destroy cells in your liver. That can occur if too much acetaminophen has been taken for the glutathione to handle, if alcohol is also involved or if the diet of the patient is nutritionally deficient. If left untreated this condition can be resolved only by a liver transplant, without which it is usually fatal. Milk thistle can help to repair this damage and survival is more likely with patients who take milk thistle than those that do not.

So if you take acetaminophen or drink alcohol on a regular basis, or you just want to protect your liver, what is stopping you from taking milk thistle?

• Milk Thistle Extract 120ct 175mg

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Milk Thistle One Daily 350mg 30ct

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Milk Thistle Phytosome 30ct 200mg