Milk thistle, its antioxidant activity, anti-inflammatory activity, hypolipidemic activity, hypoglycemic activity, hepato-protective activity, neuro-protective activity, other health benefits and therapeutic uses and risk factors
Description : Milk thistle is an important plant belongs to Daisy family. It derives its name from the milky sap,
Article Details :
Milk thistle is an important plant belongs to Daisy family. It derives its name from the milky sap, which comes out of the leaves of milk thistle when they are broken. It has been traditionally used for various medicinal purposes and offers numerous health benefits.
Biological activity
Antioxidant activity
- It exerts potent antioxidant activity that helps to protect the body from oxidative damages
- It is closely related with improving the level of glutathione in body, which is an important antioxidant thus its consumption is thought to be very effective for restoring antioxidant level in body
- It plays vital role in neutralizing free radicals thus helps in protecting the body from their detrimental effects
- It is also related with preventing the oxidation of lipid, which is considered as one of the leading causes of cardiovascular diseases
- Moreover it plays significant role in preventing oxidative stress thus helps in reducing the susceptibility of developing chronic diseases
Anti-inflammatory activity
- It plays significant role in preventing inflammation as it exhibits powerful anti-inflammatory activity
- It helps to delay the onset of inflammatory events within body by reducing the level of inflammatory markers, as a result decreases the susceptibility of developing chronic inflammatory diseases
- It also helps to prevent swelling and pain
Anti-carcinogenic activity
- Silymarin component of milk thistle exhibits powerful anti-carcinogenic activity that significantly reduces the prevalence of carcinoma
- Its oxidative stress reducing capacity is also responsible for reducing the risk of developing cancers
- It helps to suppress the growth of malignant cells in body even it may destroy cancerous cells also
- It helps to prevent metastasis
- It is very effective for reducing the prevalence of colorectal cancer and liver cancer
Hypoglycemic activity
- It is extremely useful for decreasing insulin resistance thus plays vital role in reducing the prevalence of hyperglycemia
- It contains various important biologically active components that help in enhancing insulin sensitivity, which ultimately decreases blood sugar concentration
- It has seen that consumption of milk thistle extract significantly improves HbA1C and fasting blood sugar level
Hypolipidemic activity
- It exerts potent hypolipidemic activity and thus helps in reducing total body fat percentages
- Its consumption is closely associated with decreasing the concentration of LDL, which is considered as one of the risk factors of atherosclerosis
- Whereas it also helps in reducing the level of other fats in body like VLDL, triglyceride etc
- It is also related with improving the ratio of HDL and LDL in body thus its consumption is thought to be very helpful for improving lipid profile
Health benefits
Role on immunity
- It helps to improve the overall immunological responses of the body
- It significantly improves the resistance power of the body as a result lowers the susceptibility of becoming ill
- It also helps in protecting the immune cells from free radical induced oxidative damages thus promotes their activity, which ultimately strengthen the defense mechanism of the body
- It helps to make the body able to fight against infections as well, thus its consumption is thought to be very effective for reducing the risk of developing infectious diseases
Role on nervous system
- It has been traditionally used as an important preventive measure for neurological disorders
- Silymarin component of milk thistle has neuro-protective effect. It helps to protect every nerve cell from free radical induced oxidative damages as a result promotes their activity
- Its anti-inflammatory activity is also related with delaying the progression of neuro-inflammatory events thus helps to protect the brain from inflammatory damages
- It plays vital role in improving the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease by decreasing the number of amyloid plaques in brain
- It also helps to improve the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease
- It helps in preventing mental decline
- It is also associated with improving memory and cognition
Role on skeletal system
- Its consumption is very useful for strengthening overall skeletal system
- It helps in promoting bone mineralization as a result it increases bone mass and bone mineral density, which subsequently decreases the prevalence of bone Read more
