ARTICHOKE
CYNARA SCOLYMUS
ASTERACEAE
ARTICHAUT
The majority of Asteraceae are herbs or shrubs exceptional trees.
They occur in many temperate regions, they are less important in warmer regions.
It is a large family of over 20 000 species.
The artichoke is a large Asteraceae, native to Mediterranean, perennial (flowers appear at the second year of cultivation), with long leaves in rosette, but not prickly reinforced with ribs exposed.
Flowers more or less blue or purple, are grouped to form a whole (head) of 8 to 16 cm in diameter, which is carried by a stem robust, ridged, hollow, often branched. The basal part of the flower made up (the receiver) and the fleshy base of the bracts (small leaves surrounding the flower) are edible after cooking.
The artichoke leaf is the medicinal part.
COMPOSITION AND CHEMICAL PROPERTIES
We generally use young leaves of an artichoke, which can be either:
* Pressed to provide juice to be purified to give some galenic preparations,
* Dried rapidly fragmented and macerated in a conventional manner (mother tincture)
* Sprayed after passing through the liquid nitrogen (-190 ° C), the cryogenic grinding.
The active compounds appear to be acid-phenols (see glossary,) derivatives of caffeic acid (5-caféylquinique acid and 1-5-dicaféylquinique).
There are also (without prejudice to their importance in herbal) banal organic acids (malic, citric, succinic) and sesquiterpene lactones (see glossary) (cynaropicrine), which give bitterness to extracts of artichoke, and the flavonoids (see Glossary) derivatives lutéolol and apigénol.
Experiments in rats have shown:
* In vitro, the phenolic acids (derivatives of caffeic acid) were hepatoprotective, protecting liver cells (hepatocytes) against the toxicity of carbon tetrachloride,
* In vivo, the flow of bile secretion was increased with no net increase in gallbladder contraction (choleretic).
For some authors the only flavonoid compounds are active. Other studies, also in rats, showed a cholesterol lowering effect of total extracts and a amphocholérétique effect (increased secretion and excretion of bile).
In humans, it is considered that the artichoke is mostly choleretic and a little cholesterol (also with a decrease joint triglycerides).
USES
The hepatic gland (liver) is not just a digestive gland (indirectly responsible for the absorption of fat) is a detoxifying organ, regulating blood sugar but also blood lipids, metabolizes foreign substances to body (of drugs), storing vitamins etc.. hence the importance of its proper functioning.
Many undesirable substances in the human body are excreted in bile after conversion or conjugation to one understands better the importance of drugs increasing the production of bile by the liver and expediting their evacuation in the intestine.
We therefore advocate the extracts of artichoke (Cynara):
* In cases where an increase in bile secretion seems desirable or restart an activity deficient liver: following viral hepatitis or jaundice, toxic (drug, alcohol, chronic poisoning accidental or occupational)
* To control abnormal blood lipids: cholesterol or triglyceride blood too high
* In combination with other herbal referred to hepatobiliary (Boldo, rosemary, Kinkeliba) as a treatment:
o dyspepsia due to inadequate secretion or biliary excretion (bloating, slow digestion of fats,
o as a treatment for chronic constipation.
There are many herbal compounds using the fluid extract of artichoke, but can also prescribe the artichoke one, example:
* Cynara mother tincture, 50 to 150 drops per day,
* Artichoke Powder cryobroyée 600 to 800mg per day
* Dry extract of artichoke juice: 1g per day
* And even by intramuscular or intravenous purified artichoke extract: 100 mg vials
1 to 2 times per day.
If indications antidyspeptiques extracts of artichoke always seem interesting, it seems that the possibility of regulating lipemia (cholesterol and triglycerides) with the addition of a slight decrease in blood pressure, are more valid.
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