How milk thistle can help your gut and liver this festive season

So we’re halfway through December and while most of us will have a few Christmas parties already under our belts, the vast majority of excess lunching and boozing is still ahead of us. In marathon terms, we might be flagging, but we’re only on mile six. So what can help to ease the excess of the season? To replenish and offset some of that excess, Alice Mackintosh, founder of Equi London, tells me the answer is to get yourself some milk thistle.

To be clear, many supplements support the liver and all will work in different ways but here’s the bit to understand: the liver detoxifies not only the excess toxins that come with big boozy lunches and nights out but also the everyday stuff that’s in our body like hormones and waste and interestingly there are several different “liver pathways” that different chemicals go down.

So if you support one of these pathways but not all by drinking copious amounts of green tea or eating grapefruit for example, you’re not supporting all the pathways.

Milk thistle, however, is different in that it has a more optimum approach. This supplement is full of silymarin, an antioxidant that supports all the different and increased toxins we’re subjecting ourselves to right now as well as the everyday part of its job, which is basically detoxifying the normal stuff that’s hanging about inside us like waste and hormones.

Milk thistle also helps repair and regenerate all liver cells that have been harmed by said toxins as well as prevent damage caused by them. Remember, this isn’t just limited to alcohol – food at Christmas is generally very low in fibre, and high in fat and salt, so excess from food coupled with a lack of healthy fibre-rich greens can be just as bad for us.

Alcohol in itself is an “anti-nutrient”, meaning it increases the excretion of important nutrients like B vitamins, folate, zinc and magnesium. The irony is that we need a lot of those nutrients to break alcohol down, so when we drink we need even more – often around 30 per cent extra than on a typical day. And this is where milk thistle comes in.

Mackintosh recommends two ways to take it: if you’re having a particularly boozy month, take it every day, but if you’re just having a few big nights out then take it before bed as the liver does most of its work when you are asleep, and then again first thing in the morning.

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Will this help a hangover too? Yes, because it helps process fats as well as the toxins from booze more efficiently. By working closely with the gut to break the bad stuff down, it helps your tummy feel less sensitive in the morning.

Bonus “good gut” information: an ideal breakfast the morning after the night before is eggs and avocado. Eggs are full of selenium, an amino acid that supports the detoxification of alcohol, and protein to help balance and regulate blood sugar levels which are likely to be all over the place.

And if you want to take things up a notch, invest in a decent B complex with folate and make sure you’re eating greens for fibre for maximum liver pathway detoxification. Now go stock up and party, you’ve still got two weeks to go!

Nicola Elliott is the founder of the wellness brand Neom, and her book, ‘The Four Ways to Wellbeing: Better Sleep. Less Stress. More Energy. Mood Boost’, is published by Penguin