Milk Thistle

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Video: Milk Thistle

Video: Milk Thistle
Video: Does Milk Thistle Work for the Liver? 2024, May
Milk Thistle
Milk Thistle
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Milk thistle is one of the plants of the family called Asteraceae or Compositae, in Latin the name of this plant will sound like this: Silybum marianum (L). As for the name of the milk thistle family itself, then in Latin it will be as follows: Asteraceae Dumort. (Compositae Giseke).

Description of milk thistle

Milk thistle is known by many popular names: rostopsha, tartar, elecampane black, lump, maria thorns, white thistle, maino ostopestro and ostropester. Milk thistle is an annual or biennial prickly plant, endowed with a spindle-shaped stem and a straight ribbed stem, the height of which is one and a half meters. Such a stem is also endowed with patches of tomentose pubescence. Milk thistle leaves will be somewhat glossy, leathery, alternate, and endowed with white spots. The lower leaves of this plant will be broad-lobed and elliptical, while the uppermost leaves are stalk-enveloping, lanceolate, sessile and pinnate, and along the edge they will be jagged with yellow spines. The flowers of this plant are tubular, they are collected in rather large baskets with a tiled wrapper, which consists of prickly and also prickly green leaves. The fruit of milk thistle is a shiny achene, endowed with a tuft and painted in black and yellow tones.

This plant blooms from July to late autumn, while fruit ripening will continue from September to October. Under natural conditions, milk thistle is found in Central Asia, southern regions of the European part of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus and Western Siberia. For growth, this plant prefers vegetable gardens, orchards, wastelands and weedy places.

Description of the medicinal properties of milk thistle

Milk thistle is endowed with very valuable medicinal properties, while for medicinal purposes it is recommended to use the roots and seeds of this plant. Seeds of this plant should be collected in the period from late August to early September at the time when the wrapper on the overwhelming majority of the side baskets dries up.

The presence of a table of valuable medicinal properties is recommended to be explained by the content of resins, fatty oil, essential oil, flavonoids, tyramine, histamine, vitamin K in the seeds of this plant, and in addition, the following micro- and macroelements: aluminum, lead, potassium, magnesium, zinc, chromium, strontium, selenium, calcium and vanadium.

As for traditional medicine, here this plant is quite widespread. Traditional medicine recommends the use of aqueous vitamins and alcohol extracts from the seeds and fruits of this plant for various diseases of the liver, spleen, gallbladder, hemorrhoids, chronic constipation, chronic bronchitis and articular rheumatism.

It has been proven that preparations based on this plant have the ability to enhance the formation of bile and accelerate its excretion, increase the protective properties of the liver in relation to various poisonings and infections, and will also protect prophylactically intact liver cells. For this reason, milk thistle is recommended to be used for cholecystitis, cirrhosis of the liver, cholangitis, acute and chronic hepatitis, and in addition, for various functional disorders of the liver after poisoning with chemical compounds, including alcohol. Such medicinal agents are also used for diabetes mellitus and various chronic gastrointestinal diseases.

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