Dandelion Root
Taraxacum officinale
Also known as: Common Dandelion, Pissenlit, Taraxacum
Overview
A nutrient-rich plant with a long history of traditional use for mild digestive complaints, poor appetite, and as a gentle diuretic. Laboratory and animal studies show antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity and suggest dandelion can change the activity of liver enzymes that process drugs and other compounds — increasing some and reducing others — but none of these effects have been confirmed in humans.
Proposed mechanism
In mice, a hot-water extract of dandelion root raised the activity of several liver antioxidant and detoxification enzymes — glutathione-S-transferase among them — and reduced markers of alcohol-induced liver injury. That signal comes from the whole root extract at high doses, not from isolated taraxinic acid; no study has tested taraxinic acid against glutathione-S-transferase directly. A separate cell study did find taraxinic acid glucoside switches on Nrf2, the master control for detox enzymes, in human liver cells — but the enzyme it was shown to induce was heme oxygenase, not glutathione-S-transferase, and dandelion leaf outperformed root. The traditional use as a mild bile stimulant rests on animal experiments from 1931 and 1959 that used dandelion leaf rather than root. The root's inulin — a fiber ranging from roughly 2% of the root in spring to 40% in autumn — is fermented by gut bacteria and feeds bifidobacteria in culture. None of this is confirmed in people: European regulators classify dandelion root as a traditional herbal medicine "exclusively based upon long-standing use," having found no clinical efficacy studies.
Mechanisms describe how researchers think a compound may act, often from laboratory work — a proposed mechanism is not proof of a clinical effect in people.
Traditional & studied uses
Related pathways
Pathway tags are a research aid for browsing the glossary — they are not a claim that this ingredient treats any condition.