Milk thistle is a flowering plant used medicinally as an herbal supplement. Most often, the herb is claimed to be useful for treating or preventing liver diseases, although people use it for other uses as well.
As a plant, milk thistle contains many different compounds.
Of these compounds, it appears that silymarin (which is actually a mixture of four different flavonolignans) is the medicinally active component of milk thistle. Silymarin has many different effects in the body.
Silymarin may work for liver disease in several ways. It helps liver cells to regenerate and changes the outer membrane of liver cells to decrease the penetration of toxins. Silymarin may also decrease inflammation and fibrosis, and may also affect the immune system. It may also help prevent the liver from metabolizing certain substances into toxic byproducts.
Silymarin also acts as an antioxidant, which may explain how milk thistle works for several different conditions, including
diabetes. Because oxidative stress may damage the
pancreas in people with diabetes, compounds with antioxidant activity may preserve the ability of the pancreas to produce
insulin.
Certain parts of the milk thistle plant seem to have estrogenic effects, which might explain how it works for
prostate cancer and various other conditions.
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