ABOUT
- Herbal Medicine
- The Clinic
- Richard Whelan

HERBS
- Alphabetically

CONDITIONS TREATED
- By Group
- Alphabetical

CLINIC INFORMATION
- Clinic Hours
- Clinic Location

This months ~ FEATURED ARTICLES
	High Blood Pressure
.
FEATURED HERBS
	Kola Nut
.
FEATURED VIDEOS
	Pregnancy Nausea

What is it?

Both the seeds and the leaves have been used in herbal medicine but most modern usage revolves around the approximately 7mm long grey seeds and the extracts made from them. St Mary’s thistle is a familiar prickly plant that lives for 2 years and grows to a little less than a meter in height.

How has it been used?

St Mary’s thistle has been famous as a liver herb for thousands of years. Modern research shows that St Mary’s thistle has a truly remarkable ability to both regenerate damaged liver cells and to protect them from poisons.

TOP | HERBS A-Z LIST

Personal experiences

I use a great deal of St Mary’s thistle in my practice. The kinds of people I use St Mary’s thistle for typically show some indicators that their liver needs some support. This can appear in such signs as poor skin, a furry tongue, excess debris in their blood analysis, a heavy or languid pulse, food allergies or disturbed digestive function.

I don’t think anyone can deny that we are surrounded by more pollution and chemical additives than at any other time in history and it is clearly the liver that bears the brunt of this onslaught of toxicity.

There are compelling arguments that much of the reason for the increases in cancer and allergy based illness in our society are due to this heavy toxic load that we now carry as a collective. In St Mary’s thistle we have a herb that both protects the liver from damage and at the same time helps it to regenerate itself.

I use St Mary's thistle in tincture form and in a tablet made by a reputable Swiss company that highly concentrates its active ingredients for ease of longer term use.

I have also had excellent results with a very cheap and simple way to take St Mary's thistle as follows.

Take one heaped dessertspoon of St Mary’s thistle seeds and grind them as fine as you can in any kind of small kitchen blender. Mix the powdered seeds into water and drink it all down. The ground St Mary's seeds are not bad tasting at all, just a slightly nutty flavour. Doing this treatment once a day for a week can have a remarkably uplifing effect on someone that has been feeling sluggish, irritable and unwell (in the old days we would call this feeling 'liverish'

St Mary's thistle combines perfectly with Dandelion root, Golden Seal and Celandine to heal and support the liver.

TOP | HERBS A-Z LIST

Excerpt from Felter & Lloyd's Kings Dispensatory from 1898

Congestive conditions of the iver are those most benefited by St Mary's thistle. To some extent the whole venous apparatus is influenced by this drug, giving power to the veins, and preventing varicoses and other dilatations. Dull, aching, splenic pain passing up under the left scapula, and associated with pronounced general debility and despondency is the indication for its use. It controls splenic pain even where no enlargement can be detected, and it is the remedy for hypertrophy of the spleen when non-malarial in character. Congestion of the liver, spleen and kidneys is relieved by its use. Bilious states, with stitches in the side and pain in the abdomen, hard and tender right hypochondrium, gall stones, jaundice, hepatic pain and swelling, vomiting of pregnancy, and leucocythemia, are conditions in which it is highly useful.

TOP | HERBS A-Z LIST