Milk Thistle Capsules

Recommended intake: Take 1 capsule daily, unchewed, with plenty of liquid during a meal.

Important information: Food supplements are not a substitute for a balanced and varied diet and healthy lifestyle. The stated recommended daily intake must not be exceeded. Keep out of reach of small children.

Allergens: According to the raw material specification, it contains no allergens requiring declaration under Annex II of Regulation (EU) No. 1169/2011.

Storage: Store in a cool, dry place, do not freeze, and protect from direct sunlight.

Why the seed is defatted

Milk thistle seeds are rich in fat; a good quarter of their weight is oil. For a highly concentrated extract, this oil has to be removed first, because it would dilute the extract and reduce the percentage.

The seed is therefore first pressed and then defatted before extraction even begins. The oil itself is not waste, but is used as cooking oil. The flavonolignans are not in the oil anyway, but in the fruit’s hard shell.

A rare class of compounds

Flavonolignans are hybrids. A flavonoid, as found in many plants, is firmly linked to a lignan building block, in other words to a molecule from the blueprint of wood. This combination occurs in very few plants.

Silibinin, the main component, itself consists of two spatially different variants that are present side by side in roughly equal proportions. That is why analysis certificates usually list Silibinin A and B, with a total underneath.

How 80 percent is measured

Here, too, what applies to other extracts applies: the figure depends on the method. Older spectrophotometric methods regularly produce higher values for the same material than a chromatographic determination, in which the individual flavonolignans are separated and measured individually.

The European Pharmacopoeia specifies chromatographic determination for milk thistle fruits. Anyone who wants to compare two products with 80 percent should therefore check whether the certificate uses the same method. Without this information, two percentages are only superficially the same.

A thistle that has made it everywhere

Originally native to the Mediterranean region, milk thistle can now be found on every continent except Antarctica. In California and Australia, it is considered an introduced species that spreads rapidly in pastures and is controlled there.

For cultivation, however, it is uncomplicated: it copes with dry, poor soils and is grown, among other places, in Austria, Hungary, Germany, and China. It is harvested when the flower heads have burst open and seed dispersal begins, which makes the harvest time a matter of days.