Jarrow Formulas Milk Thistle (Silymarin Marianum), Promotes Liver Health- 150 mg Per Capsule - 200 Veggie Capsules

For my dog. Hope it work well..

Milk thistle is amazing. I started taking it because I took a couple of rounds of antibiotics and started to eventually feel side effects. My gut was pretty messed up. When I told my doctor about this, guess what he wanted to do? Place me on another round of antibiotics. Surprise, surprise. So then I decided to take the plunge and went to see a naturopath, or what my friends like to call a hippie dippy, witch doctor. Haha. And I felt like the naturopath gave me more insight to my body than ever before. He recommended a couple of herbs and milk thistle was one of them. I'm so glad I started taking this. I've read up on it a lot and it has crazy benefits. The thing about this herb is it's not like you'll notice a night and day difference right away or even within a few weeks. It's a difference that you'll notice big time in the long run...if that makes sense. It helps to clean the body out as a whole and once your liver is functioning well (milk thistle's main superpower is liver detoxification), everything else will function better too. This is a side note....but I did notice something funny/interesting about this herb that I didn't really expect. So, when it comes to drinking alcohol, I'm a light weight and I've always been the person that feels the nasty hung-over effects in the morning, even with just 1 - 2 glasses of wine. But one day, I decided to take milk thistle about 2 hours before going out ....and I noticed I wasn't feeling as "susceptible" to the effects of alcohol as I normally do. I mean...I wouldn't recommend using it to be able to drink more or anything, but if you're a cheap drunk, you get the point. ;) Then the next morning....to my surprise.... I woke up feeling great! Hell, I even went for a run....it was awesome! Milk thistle contains silymarin and silybin, antioxidants that are known to help protect the liver from toxins, including the effects of alcohol. It's also shown to decrease, or even reverse, damage to the liver that’s been caused by prescription medications, antibiotics, pollution, heavy metals and so on. If you're still undecided, I've included a bit more info about it below. It helps with: 1. Liver Detoxification & Health It helps rebuild liver cells while removing toxins from the body that are processed through the liver. It's effective at naturally reversing the harmful effects of alcohol, pesticides, jaundice, psoriasis, fatty liver, heavy metals in our water supply, pollution, and even poisons! The liver is actually our largest internal organ and is responsible for performing a number of essential detoxifying functions. Basically, if our liver is in bad shape, our whole body will be in bad shape. As a “blood purifier,” the liver needs to actively clean the blood each and every day in order to support nearly every system within our body. 2. Helps Protect Against Cancer Milk thistle seeds are a high source of the antioxidant flavonoid called silymarin. Silymarin is associated with decreasing the risk for cancer development by boosting the immune system, fighting DNA damage and reversing cancerous tumor growth. In 2007, after reviewing numerous studies involving milk thistle therapeutic treatments, researchers at the University of Minnesota found that: “There is strong preclinical evidence for silymarin’s hepatoprotective and anticarcinogenic effects, including inhibition of cancer cell growth in human prostate, skin, breast, and cervical cells.” (4) This antioxidant stimulates protein synthesis and changes the outside layer of healthy cells, keeping them protected from damage and mutation. It inhibits toxins from dwelling in the body; helps with cell renewal; and counteracts the harmful effects of pollutants, chemicals and heavy metals that can cause “free radical damage.” 3. Can Help Lower High Cholesterol Milk thistle benefits heart health and helps lower high cholesterol levels by lowering inflammation, cleaning the blood and preventing oxidative stress damage within the arteries. 4. May Help Control or Prevent Diabetes One 2006 study conducted by the Department of Pharmacology at the Institute of Medicinal Plants found that when diabetic patients were given silymarin extract over four weeks, their fasting blood glucose and insulin levels improved significantly compared to patients receiving a placebo. This is likely true because the liver is partly responsible for regulating hormones, including the release of insulin into the bloodstream. Insulin is responsible for managing blood glucose (sugar) levels in the blood, which is especially important for those with diabetes. 5. Helps Prevent Gallstones Milk thistle benefits help support the endocrine and gastrointestinal systems by aiding in the production of bile and enzymes, on top of helping clean the blood. Milk thistle can help purify the body of metabolic waste, thereby regulating the function of the gallbladder, in addition to the kidneys and spleen. 6. Boosts Skin Health healthy skin, showered clean skin Milk thistle is considered to be a potent inhibitor of UV-induced oxidative stress that can cause skin diseases like skin cancer. Research also suggests that applying silymarin found in milk thistle to the skin reduces skin damage caused by radiation treatment in patients who have had treatments for cancer. 7. Has Anti-Aging Effects Because milk thistle’s antioxidants help prevent free radical damage throughout the body and remove pollutants and waste from the blood and digestive tract, it can actually slow the aging process. This is true on both the surface of your skin and also within your organs. 8. Milk Thistle and Glutathione Silymarin, the active ingredient in milk thistle, is an antioxidant that can protect against depletion of glutathione, which is a “master antioxidant” that’s extremely useful at helping prevent disease formation. Its biggest role is to help fight oxidative stress that leads to such diseases as cancer, diabetes, heart disease and neurodegenerative diseases. It can help prevent damage to important cellular components caused by reactive oxygen species, such as free radicals. Disclaimer: I was NOT given this product for free to review. I just really love this herb!

Great product and seller

OK, I did buy this stuff and have just began to use it at the same time I have given up a 25-40 drink/week alcohol habit. Not a huge amount, but for my little 5'3" arse, it's too much. I've quit drinking before (said I had to quit quit drinking, nobody likes a quitter, etc.) so pretty much know the effects from quitting for a month or two. Always positive things. Such as: weight loss, better skin tone, more money in my pocket, more time, better grades, better conditioning, ability to focus, lost beer goggles, Brad Pitt abs, etc. Since some of y'all are probably here to detox your liver from your inbibemental overindulgifications, I'll spout off a little about the drinking thing. Better than having your friends tell you. Get mad at me all you want :) SO... being 47 and having drank since I was 14, I can tell you A) it's addictive as hell and B) you'll make every justification possible to have "just one more" if you have a problem with it. You'll take a day or two off and reward yourself with drinking. You'll find your svelte younger body becomes more of an amorphous blob (I puffed up to 167 and it wasn't muscle... my woman was not thrilled) and you find more injuries from working out and they take longer to heal. These are some of the benefits of drinking, along with dry eyes/mouth, developing sleep apnea, dry skin, increased snoring and an overall spiritual void that presents itself to you as something being wrong with you, like you are defective. I guess that's the 'depressive' part of it and getting poor sleef. Now, I'm a confident guy in general, athletic, fairly well educated and naturally a pretty happy camper. I love life and thank God every day for another chance to quit acting like a moron. Booze has just got in the way of that relationship for too long. So, after years of the on/off drinking yoyo, I can now affirm that drinking, in general, sucks. It's all hype and really no benefit. And I'm a former beer, wine and whiskey maker and know a lot about booze in general. When I quit I lose weight (down to 153 now with an added few #'s of muscle and losing still) and any feelings of self worth that are negative start to melt away. So, folks, my advice is to either quit or keep it to a drink a week - no more. That's if you can. I'm a borderline alchy, so that's hard to do but possible later, after I get my s*** together. I can have it around, but have to have the commitment that it's for company only and I'm DRY; for now, at minimum, maybe forever. I'm just taking the time to write this in the chance you read it and have gone through the same thing as I have and are looking for solutions. So, my hope is that this review helps somebody. I'll report back in a few months how my time has been with the thistle and being dry. God bless!

Hi, this is a true story - my own - about how well Milk Thistle (MT) works, and this brand in particular. I have a very severe form of Myofascial Pain Syndrome (MPS) which causes painful contraction knots in the muscles called trigger points. In my case, virtually every muscle contains virtually every possible trigger point and there are over 620 possible. These knots are very painful and that pain can be eased somewhat by routine trigger point injections, where a needle is inserted into the knot and it is broken up and perforated to some extent to get it to release a little and relax. Here's the problem: These trigger points are often filled with toxic metabolic byproducts from staying in a contracted state with subsequent constricted blood flow. When needled, this toxic sludge then gets into the bloodstream. In my case, needling just a few bad trigger points would release so much 'yukky business' into my body that I would have severe vertigo for 4 - 5 days, with the first couple being so bad that I would literally crawl around my house (live alone) to keep from falling over. Oh, I'm not the frail, sickly type either...I'm an ex-powerlifter and retired big city street cop...hardly the weak, excuse making type. But this poison would take me down fast and take almost a week to clear. Since the toxins had a predictable lessening, I knew my liver was clearing it, just REALLY slowly, so I sought ways to speed that up, either by helping my liver or deactivating the toxin. Since I really didn't know what the poisons were, it was the liver route...or get used to seeing my house from my Corgi's perspective. I found out that MT has been known for the bulk of human history as a liver remedy, but I thought that was just so much 'folklore' to be kind. Then I started discovering that MT has been tested in a variety of empirical settings and some rather unbelievable anecdotal ones as one of the better liver drugs out there...when balanced against its huge safety margin and therapeutic value, probably the best. In fact some of the pharmas use silymarin as the active agent in their liver drugs, which is simply refined MT. Good enough for me. Cut to the chase: I started taking 3 caps of MT, 3x a day and immediately all symptoms of vertigo and toxicity were gone. Yes, I said IMMEDIATELY...as in hours, not days. Once this efficacy was confirmed, I was able to have my clinician radically increase the number of trigger point injections. When I say radically, I went from about 4 or 5 injections knocking me out for a week, to tolerating 180 per session, 2x a week for four months. Thousands of injections that did immense good at actually taking the fight to the trigger points the way only a sharp needle can. I was able to eventually taper down to the recommended dosage of just 3 caps a day when the toxic load was much decreased. So here's my take on Milk Thistle: This stuff works like I wish most things did...very, very well. I have had no side effects, in fact, it has prevented disabling side effects from another very effective treatment. Win - win. If your liver needs help, you could do a lot worse than MT. If you get nauseous from a massage, flushing yukky business out of your muscles, then start taking MT before, during, and after. Before I get too carried away, let me say that I'm not a doctor, but this stuff is amazing medicine for the right problems. Do your own research and you decide...it worked for me under conditions that you would have had to see to believe. I chose this brand because it had the most and best reviews...remembering what my doctor told me: "If you want to know if a medicine is any good or not, see if they reorder it." Makes sense to me. UPDATE 05-04-13: Since I see that 21 people (at the time of this update) found this review hard to believe, let me add a few more pieces of information: 1. Drinking alcohol now is kind of expensive...actually it's largely a waste of time. Why? Whatever the MT does to the liver makes it clear ethanol VERY quickly...at least in my case. So a strong Belgian ale that would've been good for an hours buzz, now might give about 10 - 15 minutes. I'm not saying that I'm recommending drinking more if you use MT, just that it did something to my liver that is hard to explain medically, so I will just report what I observe. 2. Anyone wondering about the actual dosages, frequency, locations, techniques, etc...in the admittedly rather extreme trigger point injection protocol should contact me directly. I will provide you with more than enough information to convince anyone including physicians. Let me state that Aetna Specialty Pharmacy told me that I received more injectable supplies BY FAR than the next closest patient in the entire network. The reason one can only get 4 injections (in my case) at the doctor's office is that is all the insurance will reimburse for in the billing codes. Get a script for the injectable supplies and a lot of education and help and much more is possible. 3. If you want to vote that the review didn't help, let me know why and I will be happy to share as much as necessary to satisfy your interest. I don't make a cent from Jarrow, they make money off of me, and I'm glad to give it to them based on all you've read so far. Thanks for taking your time to read all this. I'm sold and convinced that there is something potent in milk thistle and I'm better for it. YMMV. Good luck whatever you decide.