Milk Thistle: Liver Support, Regeneration & Silymarin Science

Your liver works overtime. Processing everything from last night's dinner to environmental toxins, your liver needs consistent support to stay healthy and resilient. In this episode, Chris and Mel dive deep into milk thistle, the gold standard herb for liver protection and regeneration. 

You'll learn why milk thistle has been trusted for over 2,000 years, how silymarin (the compound complex in milk thistle seeds) protects and regenerates liver cells, and why freeze-dried milk thistle preserves the beneficial compounds that get lost in standard processing.  
 
Chris shares her experience growing milk thistle and why it's one of Eclectic Herb's bestsellers, while Mel explains the science behind this powerful plant and its uses beyond liver support. 

What's in this episode: 

• The 2,000-year history of milk thistle, from Pliny the Elder to Victorian physicians  
• How Eclectic Physicians used milk thistle for digestive complaints and sluggish bile 
• Silymarin: the compound complex that protects and regenerates liver cells  
• Using milk thistle for liver support, fatty liver disease, hepatitis, and cholesterol management  
• Why milk thistle works for acne, skin health, and detoxification pathways  
• Growing milk thistle: Chris's insights on harvest, seeds, and why it's invasive 
• The antidote potential for poisonous mushroom exposure  
• Why freeze-dried whole seed milk thistle makes a difference  

Herbal Terms in This Episode: 

• Silymarin: A complex of flavonolignans found in milk thistle seeds that includes silibinin, silychristin, and silydianin. This compound stabilizes cell membranes, reduces oxidative stress, and supports liver detoxification and regeneration. 
• Hepatoprotective: An herb that protects the liver from damage caused by toxins, medications, alcohol, or disease. 
• Galactagogue: An herb that promotes or increases breast milk production in nursing mothers. 
• Biliousness: A term used by Eclectic Physicians referring to sluggish bile flow and digestive complaints. 

We'd love to hear from you! 

Do you already use milk thistle for liver support? Have you noticed benefits for your skin or digestion? Share your experiences with us on  Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook @eclecticherb

Get your freeze-dried milk thistle here and explore other liver-supporting herbs at eclecticherb.com 

Full show notes, transcript, and Chris's in-depth blog on milk thistle:

Thanks so much for tuning into Eclectic Herbal Wisdom! 

We'd love to show our gratitude by giving you a 20% discount on your whole order at eclecticherb.com. 

Just use the code PODCAST20 at checkout for 20% Off all your herbal goods! 🌿

And, if you have time, be sure to reach out and let us know what you think of the show! 

At Eclectic Herb we're passionate about bringing you herbs as fresh as plants in the wild!

That's why we take the time to gently freeze dry our herbs, right after they've been harvested at the peak of their medicinal potency. 

We know you'll feel the freeze dried difference in every capsule, every powder, and every bit of herbal love you get at Eclectic Herb! 

Follow @eclecticherb on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook

Transcript

MILK THISTLE: LIVER SUPPORT, REGENERATION & SILYMARIN SCIENCE

Eclectic Herbal Wisdom Podcast - Transcript

MEL: Milk thistle is my number one go-to herb for all things liver support and function. If you're feeling like your liver could use a little more love these days, then you definitely want to stick around because this episode of Eclectic Herbal Wisdom is all about milk thistle and how it can support you and your liver too.

It just so happens to be our herb of the month here at Eclectic Herb. So go ahead and grab yourself a cup of herbal tea and cozy in to learn all about this incredibly powerful plant and how it could very well become one of your absolute favorite plant friends moving forward.

And if you're new here, hi, my name's Mel and I'm a clinical herbalist. I am the lead herbal educator here at Eclectic Herb, and I'm the co-host of Eclectic Herbal Wisdom.

CHRIS: And I'm Chris Alstat. I'm a naturopath and the owner of Eclectic Herb. I've grown milk thistle for years and I've watched this herb help so many people. It's really lovely and you're gonna love it.

MEL: Oh, I love that. It has helped so many people. And if you look back on the history of milk thistle, there are references that go back 2,000 years when Pliny the Elder was known to use it. They actually called it St. Mary's Thistle way back when, and it was also known to ancient authors as food and as medicine.

Pliny once stated that the juice of the herb mixed with honey was a remedy for carrying off the bile, which tells you a lot about how we might use it today. We actually still use it today to help with decongesting the liver.

Oftentimes you would find milk thistle in medieval Catholic folk remedies and religious ceremonies as well. It was commonly used as a folk remedy to support breastfeeding and milk production for mothers, because if you look at the leaves, they have these ribbons of white running through them that were said to be sprung from the drop of Mother Mary's milk, which I think is so sweet.

Today we still can use milk thistle for a galactagogue, which produces breast milk, but more often people will use milk thistle's cousin, which is blessed thistle.

It kind of fell off for a while as just a folk remedy, but then it became revitalized when this German physician named Johann Gottfried Rademacher was really credited for using milk thistle for gallbladder and liver disorders and things like jaundice. Rademacher had actually stated that the most active ingredients in milk thistle came from the seed coat, which is so true.

So it was used quite often way back then for various liver and biliary issues, including things like hepatitis. And it was also used for hemorrhoids way back when.

CHRIS: Oh wow. I didn't know that. That's very interesting.

MEL: Isn't it? And it was really just interesting to watch it come back and be revitalized later on.

CHRIS: Yeah, that's all very fascinating. I know that here in the States, the Eclectic Physicians used to use it quite extensively. If you think about health back in the Victorian times and think about what they were eating, they were eating heavy diets. Vegetables were very scarce in the winter, so they used to salt things to preserve them. So they had many digestive complaints along with the diet that they were eating.

And back then the thought on ill health is they thought that a lot of it came from the bowels, the bile and the blood. So congestion of the bowels, and they used to treat that by purging both ends. And then biliousness, you might have heard that term, which relates to sluggish bile. And then impure blood, and always you think about the bloodletting that the doctors used to do.

So what milk thistle did back then is they thought it was a very gentle herb, a tonic type herb, not a drastic curative one that brought on a great relief, but something that tonified everything to bring about a cure.

And there were some things that they used to do with it. They used to eat it as part of their diet, the powdered seed generally. They would grind it up with a mortar and pestle and mix it into porridge and things like that to eat it. And they would take that daily over long periods, kind of more for chronic conditions.

And then they would crush the seeds and make infusions or decoctions, and then they'd tincture it. So the Eclectics would give alcoholic extracts of milk thistle, and they would use that when the digestion was weak and things like that.

MEL: That is so interesting. I love the thought of the mortar and pestle and the seeds. That was one of the things I was taught early in my herbalism studies to crack some milk thistle seeds on top of a salad or something like that. It's a really good idea, especially because milk thistle is really nutritious as well.

It's loaded with a lot of different minerals like calcium and iron and magnesium and so many others. I think it's so cool, but it's not just the seeds that were nutritious. Oftentimes people would eat the roots, so they would take the tap roots, kind of like a carrot almost, and they would cook them as soon as they could harvest from the young plant, which was cool. If they let it get too old, it would get kind of fibrous.

They would also eat the leaves like spinach. But if you've ever seen a milk thistle plant, you know it's really spiky and spiny. So you do want to get rid of the spiky, spiny parts unless you enjoy chewing on things that really poke your inner mouth, which I hope you don't.

I know that the flowers can be eaten as well, so before the seeds have produced, the young flowers and their stems could be eaten if you wanted to do that. I think there's a lot of excitement when I think about the way these plants that grow so prolifically can be used as both food and medicine.

CHRIS: Yeah, I think the whole part of the milk thistle plant can be consumed. It's a little bit hard to harvest with the spines and stuff like that, but very nutritious.

MEL: Absolutely. So one of the things that I really wanted to talk about in pretty great depth about milk thistle is one of the most beneficial properties, particularly for the liver and so much more you're about to learn about, comes from a group of compounds that are called flavonolignans, and they are primarily found in the seeds of milk thistle.

So these compounds have several different things in them, including silibinin, silychristin and silydianin. So it sounds like a party of silly people, but really together what they're called is silymarin. And that's the main complex that's responsible for all of the liver protective and liver regenerative effects.

So it's pretty amazing when you dive into the science of silymarin. What it does is it helps to stabilize cell membranes and reduce oxidative stress. It supports the liver and all of the detox pathways, particularly when the liver has been exposed to things like alcohol or even medications, environmental toxins. Maybe you've been painting a room in your house and those fumes have been getting into your body. Silymarin helps the liver to detoxify all of that, which is just amazing.

It's also been studied and shown to help regenerate the liver cells, which is going to be really helpful in particular cases when people have fatty liver disease or when they have hepatitis or things like that. So it's really supportive in that way.

There's also been quite a bit of research that shows that silymarin can help to reduce the cholesterol in your body and help to manage inflammation. So all of these things are really helpful not only for when your liver is overloaded and needs some support, but also preventatively to keep those pathways clear and to support the body in just being nice and healthy.

CHRIS: Yeah, it's amazing the research on this one. You know, it helps protect the liver, but also helps restore it. And so if there's any damage that's already been done, it can help repair those liver cells. And not many herbs do that. So that's pretty exciting.

MEL: Absolutely. And I think one of the things that's so cool about it too is that oftentimes when we think about like a liver cleanse or a liver detox, we think about things that are really harsh and purgative and drastic. But milk thistle is really gentle and nourishing, which I really love about it. You can take it for long periods of time. You can take it as a daily tonic. And that's really beautiful because you're not shocking your system, you're supporting it.

CHRIS: Yeah, exactly. And you know, it's something that works really well for a lot of different conditions. So we've had people who've had hepatitis, liver disease, gallbladder issues, high cholesterol. We've even had people who've done chemotherapy and it's helped protect their liver during that process.

So there's a lot of different applications for it. And you know, when we talk about the liver, we also have to talk about the skin because the skin is a big organ of elimination. So when the liver gets congested, a lot of times that's going to show up in the skin.

MEL: Yes, absolutely. And I was just about to bring that up because I think it's such an important connection to make. When we're looking at things like acne, herbalists always think about the liver right away. When the internal detoxification pathways get clogged up, it pushes all of that out through the skin. So you look to support the liver. So milk thistle is something that's very effective for things like that.

CHRIS: Yeah.

MEL: I really love it for that. And when you brought up the mothers, that makes me so happy because milk thistle is also known to be safe in pregnancy. And so that can really help if we've got a mama who is breastfeeding and maybe has number two on the way at the same time, you can get a lot of support in that way too.

So yeah, it's just really amazing to think about how much it does, not only for the liver, not only for the kidneys, but for our skin, for all of the elimination pathways. And especially here, it's January. This is our herb of the month at Eclectic Herb, and everybody's on their detox and their cleanse. But something as simple and as plentiful as milk thistle can really work wonders.

Before we dive too deep into other things, I did just want to mention one really cool thing is that the silymarin, again, that compound, has actually been shown to be the antidote for poisonous Amanita mushrooms, which is pretty darn cool. It's been used preventatively as well as the treatment after, and it drastically reduces the liver damage and lowers death rates from poisonous mushrooms.

So if you're out mushroom hunting and you're not wise and not getting 100% proper ID first, don't do that. Always get 100% proper ID. But in the event somebody still decides to take some poisonous mushrooms, have some milk thistle around. It could really help a lot.

So yeah, I know that milk thistle is now kind of an invasive plant in a lot of places. A lot of people might hate the thistles that they see around, but I'd love to hear from you, Chris. I know you mentioned in the beginning that you've grown milk thistle quite a bit at Eclectic Herb and your farm, so I'd love to hear a little bit about that. If somebody really is into this and they want to bring it into their world, how can they do that?

CHRIS: It's not a native plant here, so it was actually brought over by the settlers and it outcompetes native plants. I would not actually recommend growing this one unless you're very careful. In some states it's banned. For example, Washington State. We're here in Oregon, but Washington State, this is a class A noxious weed that is banned. And the reason for that is it grows very easily. They get up to about probably about six feet tall.

And then they have all these beautiful flowers on them. The flowers look a bit like artichokes, kind of big, maybe a bit smaller than artichokes, but with purple petals. And then you can cut those. I think within one seed head, one plant produces about 6,000 babies if left to go.

So if you think about the dandelion fairies with the seed and then the little fluffy thing on the top and it flies away, milk thistle looks like that, but bigger. So one plant will just spread and it goes everywhere. And other plants can't compete with it.

If you want to be careful and if you want to grow it, then you have to be sure to get all those seed heads when they're ripe and before they turn into that fairy stage.

Again, you can eat the stems and the leaves, so it's very nutritious. The stems remind me of, in Japan, we eat butterbur. They're a little bit similar to that, but you just deal with the spines if you're going to harvest it.

But the seeds, there's nothing like it fresh. You cut them and you can put them in your grinder. They're a little bit oily, so the shelf life is not that long. That's one thing to be careful of. If you do get fresh seeds somewhere and you want to add them to your food, you can just put them in your herb grinder. But because of the oil, they're a little bit like flax seeds or linseed where they don't last that long. So probably got a shelf life of up to a year.

MEL: Huh. That makes a lot of sense. So I've always thought like, wow, milk thistle is really cool and a great herb to have on board, but there's no way in heck I would want to grow it and harvest it. But when I heard that there's 6,000 baby milk thistles in each plant in those seeds, that's amazing. And still I don't want to fight with those spiny leaves myself. That's a lot of work.

So one of the ways, if you're listening to this episode right now and you're like, gosh, I really need milk thistle, and I also don't want to grow it, especially if you're in Washington or one of the many places where it is considered such a noxious weed and you don't have the time to grow it with great intention where you're making sure that those seeds aren't flying off into the world to spread further, you can get milk thistle with the fresh seed that has been freeze dried through Eclectic Herb, so you know you're getting the good stuff.

If you remember earlier in this episode, I talked about how the majority of that silymarin, that complex of great beneficial compounds inside of milk thistle comes from the seed and the outer coat. So that's what you want to make sure that you're getting. And we fresh freeze dry those here at Eclectic Herb. So we'll be sure to link to those in the show notes so that you can get some if you decide that you want them.

And for those of you that are learning something here or excited about milk thistle now, I would love to hear from you. So please reach out and let us know what you learned about this, or if you already have a relationship with milk thistle, let us know on Instagram or TikTok at Eclectic Herb or really any of those social media places you can find us at Eclectic Herb.

CHRIS: I think this is an herb that everyone should try. It's something that should be considered for daily routine. It's one of our best sellers. And ours is amazing because it's the whole herb. It's not extracted or reduced or anything like that. So I would recommend definitely you go out and try some.

MEL: Yeah, that's a great point. A lot of times when you go out and get an extract of an herb, they're only extracting certain compounds. And one of the beautiful things about plants is that they come with these innate and beautiful, brilliant souls that know many different compounds dance together to provide the most benefit.

I can think about this when we think about just the extraction in cannabis, for instance. You have your CBDs and then you have your THC, and they just isolate everything. But these plants have their own innate brilliance. They put this all together for a reason. So getting that whole plant medicine is really fabulous.

And if you want to dive deeper on milk thistle, Chris wrote an amazing blog as our herb of the month over at Eclectic Herb. We'll be sure to drop a link to that in the show notes for you as well.

And then in our next episode, we're going to be diving deep on other herbs to help support and love your liver. So if milk thistle isn't for you, don't worry. There's more for you. And as you head out into the world of the new year and you hear detox, detox, detox, just remember supporting your liver can work wonders for you.

CHRIS: Thanks for listening, everybody, and be sure to tune in next week.

MEL: All right everybody, thank you. Take care.

CHRIS: Bye.

END OF TRANSCRIPT

For full show notes, resources, and links mentioned in this episode, visit: eclecticherb.com/podcast/milk-thistle-herb-of-the-month