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Milk Thistle

D

davd

Well-Known Member
Messages
80
Location
Yorkshire
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
As anybody taken milk thistle food supplement and has it affected your blood sugar levels.
Apparently it helps your liver cleansing but can also drop your sugar levels so diabetics need to be careful when taking it.
If you have an alcoholic drink it helps liver not to be damaged as much.
But if it does lower blood sugar levels it may also be better than taking metformin , I maybe be able to reduce my dosage .
 
H David
I haven't tried milk thistle but I have seen similar claims made for many different supplements,
Green tea, cinnamon, bitter melon, ginger, apple cider vinegar, ginseng, and many others.
I've tried a few over the years. I can't say with any honesty that I noticed any particular benefits from them.
As far as I can see the most effective way to lower blood sugar levels is to avoid eating the things that make it rise too high.
However your experience may differ from mine, the only thing you can do is try it and see.
If you do try it , make sure you only change that one thing and your diet remains the same throughout your trial, otherwise you won't know if any improvements are due to the milk thistle or something else.
 
I take your point there, I was thinking about milk thistle for the benefits to my liver more than sugar levels but was worried it might push them too low if taken along side metformin .
Through diet I got my levels down from 98 to 39 but just lately let my diet go a bit and back up to 49 to just top of pre diabetes level.
Dont like metformin side effects so thought milk thistle for my liver health might also help me to reduce metformin dosage.
 
Please bear in mind that as a food supplement, milk thistle extract has not undergone the same scientific scrutiny as medication such as metformin. More research is needed, IMO. Just saying.
 
There are studies out there which say it can help lower blood glucose, but nothing I can see after 2014. Would be curious to hear more.
 
Hi, I was taking it for Haemochromatosis, iron overload. I only take about 25drops in the morning. My Ferritin had reduced from 198 to 179 which was interesting. No idea if it was the Milk Thistle. The only reliable was is to give blood, which I can’t do cos I’m too old and blood donation ppl wouldn’t take me. Long story. But hubs looked on a US site and they recognised MT but there’s no definite research.
 
Hi I used to take milk thistle for its liver protection benifits. But still got high blood sugar. And have just been put on metformin. If your having alcohol it most likely adds more sugar than the milk thistle will reduce.
 
If you combine alcohol with anything else you won't be able to trust your readings for carb impact.

Your liver will "shut down" while it metabolises the alcohol and stop trickle-feeding glucose into your bloodstream. This could be compounded if there are carbs in the alcohol - this mainly relates to beer (there are no carbs in ethyl alcohol itself). You'll still get lower readings but with the added carbs to be managed. And if you eat and/or take a supplement at the same time it will not be really possible to work out what the actual cause is of whatever you're seeing in your readings.

In practical terms this is the same sort of effect as metformin - a lowered reading that doesn't reflect the impact of whatever else you ate or took as a supplement.
 
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