SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Image 1: Silybum marianum , a medical plant that has been used to treat liver disease for >2,000 years and is a staple in many "post cycle therapy" supplements you can current purchase at your favorite supplement store. Whether or not you are into "performance enhancing drugs" does not really matter. If you have browsed through the range of one of the myriad of on-line supplement vendors, you will have seen them: the "liver protectors" , "supplements for liver health" , or simply "post-cycle recovery" supplements. The most common ingredient, you will see on the labels of supplements listed in these or similar categories, is silymarin , a flavonoid complex consisting of silybin (the most active component), silydanianin and silychristin , which is either extracted or simply contained in a crude extract of the seeds of Silybum marianum , a flowering plant of the daisy family, the manufacturers put into their capsules. While scien...

Treatment with estrogens, mainly in women, and selective estrogen modulators (SERMS), which are also interesting for the average juicer, may yield hitherto unknown metabolic side effects. Scientists from Portugal ( Moreira. 2010 ) have found that both, tamoxifen as well as estrogen treatment influence the oxidative capacity of mitochondria: Fig. 1. Effects of E2 and/or TAM treatments on glutathione levels of liver, heart and brain mitochondria. ( Moreira. 2010 ) In spite of the distinct effect on glutathione levels, their effect on lipid peroxidation appears to be contrary: TBARS levels were used to determine the extension of lipid peroxidation (PX) induced by the pro-oxidant pair ADP/Fe 2+ . Fig. 3 A shows that liver mitochondria isolated from E2 + TAM females in the presence of ADP/Fe 2+ produced significantly lower levels of TBARS when compared with liver mitochondria isolated from the other groups of experimental animals. No significant alterations were ob...