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Milk thistle contraindications
Is it safe to take the herb milk thistle with anti-hypertensive medication, as well as with other herbal remedies such as glucosamine and ginkgo? Since I take milk thistle daily, I would really appreciate your advice.
Milk thistle, as you will know, works to support liver detoxification which means, while we have no clinical trials to prove this one way or the other, common sense dictates it will have an effect on any medication or herbal remedies you take. Definite contraindications listed in the pharmacist references I use to check these queries include warfarin, diazepam (valium), lovastatin (Mevacor) and amytriptyline (Elavil) where advice to practitioners is to use milk thistle cautiously or not at all.
While, in general, we have little guidance on mixing herbal remedies with prescription drugs because we do not have definitive clinical evidence one way or the other, we have even less on mixing herbal remedies with other herbs. You do not state why you take milk thistle or why you are interested in taking glucosamine or ginkgo alongside it so I cannot comment in any definitive way.
What I can tell you is that if you plan to continue taking milk thistle on a daily basis, you should consider using a supplement called Maximum Milk Thistle. This combines silymarin, which is the active agent in milk thistle, with another substance called phosphatidylcholine. The latter is a key component of cell membranes, which appears to help the body better absorb the silymarin in the milk thistle. The combination of these two, which you can mail order from the Nutricentre (0800 587 2290) has been shown in clinical trials to dramatically improve even previously damaged liver function.