Milk thistle tea is an aqueous extract of the active ingredients found in the soft parts of the milk thistle herb, which also is known as silymarin, the name of its main active ingredient. This herbal tea is prepared by pouring 8 ounces (236.5 ml) of boiling water over a heaping teaspoon of the soft plant material, covering the container with a lid or top, allowing it to steep for at least 10 minutes before straining and sweetening it with a natural sweetener.
Steeping is an all-natural process because heated, pure water serves as the solvent. A medicinal tea also can be called an infusion as long as this method or preparation is used and the soft and delicate parts of the plant are used. The root and the seeds would not be used to make a tea, because they are the hard parts of the herb.
Most of the benefits of milk thistle tea for the liver and gall bladder and are obtained when the tea or infusion form is ingested. This tea, like any other beverage, can be sweetened slightly using an all-natural sugar such as stevia extract, raw honey, agave syrup or one of the varieties of sugar alcohols such as sucralose. Using the bulk herb instead of commercially prepared milk thistle tea bags is preferred because it is the most natural form of the plant employed to make this detox tea. People who suffer from mild liver damage; hepatitis A, B or C; or cirrhosis after adopting a healthy diet and lifestyle might want to drink milk thistle tea if they are not diabetic, pregnant or suffer from a hormone-sensitive condition such as breast, ovarian or uterine cancer.
The liver detoxifying properties of milk thistle tea also are beneficial for people who have not been diagnosed with liver ailments, because the liver is a vital organ responsible for the detoxification of harmful substances, which helps to prevent them from harming other organs. Health problems and conditions such as skin problems that the average person might not associate with any malfunction of the liver usually are improved when milk thistle tea is consumed on some kind of regular basis. It is not difficult to link certain skin problems with an unhealthy liver, because one of the principal clinical manifestations of liver disease is a condition called jaundice, which is a yellowish discoloration of a person's skin and the whites of his or her eyes.