Category: Uncategorized

I would like to know-does pumpkin seed lower dht level all over the body or just from the scalp?c an topical application of it mean dht will only be lowered from the scalp?

To our knowledge, this is the first randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial to investigate the efficacy and tolerability of PSO in men with mild to moderate AGA. This study shows that PSO supplement during 24 weeks has a positive anabolic effect on hair growth and that this is due to the possible effects of 5-reductase inhibition in patients with mild to moderate male pattern hair loss. The authors concluded: “this double-blinded study did involve 76 subjects and, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, is the first study to examine the long-term efficacy of PSO on AGA. The study shows that PSO could improve AGA and that it should be considered a potential alternative treatment. However, replication will be needed in order to confirm the results of this first-stage study and additional studies are required to elucidate the mechanism responsible for the positive effects of PSO on AGA.”

Ref: Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2014; 2014: 549721.

Effect of Pumpkin Seed Oil on Hair Growth in Men with Androgenetic Alopecia: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial

Most were happy that they were on the medication and few had complaints of side effects. Not everyone saw benefits.

Are you happy you took fin? from tressless

I am away in Ireland this week and saw the rain come down hard for a short while. One person at the hotel commented that it ‘was raining cats and dogs’ out there. At it turns out, this phrase reflects a unique situation in Ireland in the days when everyone had a thatch roof (made of straw packed tightly together to keep the rain out, the picture below shows a thatched roof made of straw).

The history of this phrase goes back to the days when most people had thatched roofs and in the winter, when the houses got cold, the dogs and cats would find their way into the thatched roof, digging themselves a hole to keep warm. As the roofs got older and started to leak because of heavy rains, the dogs and cats still crawled into their holes, and the roofs eventually gave way. The dogs and cats fell from their holes in the thatched roofs, falling into the house…. hence the term ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’.

In the 1400-1600s, the poor people of Ireland would sell their urine by peeing in a pot and bringing the pot of urine to the local tannery where they would get a few pennies for it. These people were know to be ‘piss poor‘. Urine was used to prepare the hides of cattle to make leather. Some people were so poor, they ‘did not have a pot to piss in‘ hence the phrase reflected the poorest of the poor. We have adopted the same phrase today to reflect a sense of poverty.

The third phrase we learned from the Irish ‘By Hook or By Crook‘, really reflects two towns between Waterford and Wexford (actual names of towns). A particular road forked and one way took you to the town of Hook and the other road took you to the town of Crook. If you were a determined traveler (or in the case of the English General Oliver Cromwell whose mission was to concur the Irish with an army of 3000 troops in 1649) you could get to whichever town you wanted and he was determined to concur these towns by whatever road it took to do it. The phrase has come to mean that people who are determined to achieve their goals, will do it ‘By Hook or By Crook’

Isn’t language wonderful. I am writing this in Ireland. Have a wonderful 4th of July.

“Drake, Lynn, et al. “The effects of finasteride on scalp skin and serum androgen levels in men with androgenetic alopecia.” Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology 41.4 (1999): 550-554.”.

Can’t post a link because it’s behind a paywall my university has a subscription for. That study is published in a well respected journal and sees to be cited many times

“Scalp skin DHT levels declined significantly by 13.0% with placebo and by 14.9%, 61.6%, 56.5%, 64.1%, and 69.4% with 0.01, 0.05, 0.2, 1, and 5 mg doses of finasteride, respectively. Serum DHT levels declinied significantly (P<.001) by 49.5%, 68.6%, 71.4%, and 72.2% in the 0.05, 0.2, 1 and 5 mg finasteride treatment groups, respectively.”

The values are without error margins but I’m willing to bet that they might not even differ significantly.

I’m not sure why you claim that my post contains mis-information and then proceed to say the exact same thing.

It’s a competitive inhibitor, sure. But that just means that the affinity for finasteride to the enzyme is much larger than the affinity of testosterone to the enzyme. If it was reversible you wouldn’t see such a flat response and it also wouldn’t take 2 weeks for DHT to go back to baseline.

Finasteride does irreversibly inhibit any 5alpha-reductase it comes into contact with (see e.g. the Merck patent which is even called “Irreversible inhibition of human 5?-reductase ” https://www.google.com/patents/US5962442 ” In practice, the halflife of the enzyme-inhibitor complex is so long that the inhibition is for all intents irreversible, and release of the inhibitor probably occurs by death of the enzyme rather than turnover to regenerate catalytically competent enzyme.”) .

That’s as good as destroying the enzyme because it forms a strong bond with it that has a longer half-life than the enzyme itself. In other words, the enzyme will die long before it’s able to release finasteride.

The body replenishes 5AR constantly and that’s exactly why it takes >2 weeks for the DHT to go back to baseline.

Nice citations; however, the effectiveness of finasteride may be due to other factors such as the sensitivity of the receptors and the rate at which the enzyme is turned over in response to the blockade, etc.. Enzymes are always consumed in a chemical reaction and the human body just produces more of it. Skin levels may not be reflective of the type of response seen clinically. This is the practical side, because we see patient who do not respond to the drug regardless of the dose and then we see great responders. I can’t address your mechanistic point very well and correlate the DHT levels, enzyme levels and clinical responses. You have clearly spent more time on this than I have; however, what I focus upon is clinical responses and side effects to the drug. With my focus, the pharmacology you reference does not produce a one-to-one clinical response with the values of DHT in the skin as you are referencing.

I like it when the consumer does research on what is happening to them and the treatment options. Sometimes what is read needs to be filtered by an expert so that is my role here in this reader’s posting which I am publishing at his request.

Dr. Rassman,
Does blow-drying your hair accelerate hair loss? If so, is it worse if you use a brush attachment? Can you blow-dry transplanted hair?
If the plan is to transplant, say, 1200 follicles, how does the patient know that many were actually transplanted? Thanks, Doctor.

Blow drying does not accelerate the hair loss, but as the hair becomes miniaturized, the hair is more fragile and if one pulls too much or handles the hair roughly, then the hair may break off, giving the illusion that the hair loss is accelerating.

I really do not believe that you need to worry about the number of grafts you are paying for in our office. My finance office reconciles the patient accounting daily and routinely refunds money to patients who did not receive the targeted number of grafts. One of my patients, a well known actor, paid for 2500 grafts at my personal rate of $10/graft. When the accounting was finalized that day, he only got 1400 grafts, so we sent him a refund check for $11,000. After he got the check, he called me and argued with me, telling me that he did not care about the money and that I should keep the money. I refused to do so, saying that if he did not care about the money, he should give it to a charity, but that I had not earned it, so it was not mine to keep. He did make a donation of $11,000 to his favorite charity with my name on the donation. Integrity is either in a person or it is not and I was raised to believe that you can often tell the integrity of a man by his business dealings.

You used the term 7,200 hairs, not 7,200 grafts. The average Caucasian has about 8,500 hairs in about 4,500 grafts. I don’t know why the doctor used the term hairs instead of grafts, other than to make you think you got more value. There is a standard nomenclature that is used in this industry, and doctors who go outside of this standard nomenclature often do so to mislead the patient.

No, Diffuse Unpatterned Alopecia (DUPA) is a condition that covers the entire scalp including the donor area (back and sides of the head). Because it is diffuse, the use of donor hair that is impacted for hair transplants causes the surgery to be very disappointing, if not a relative failure. For this reason, it must be diagnosed PRIOR to having a hair transplant. I have seen too many DUPA patients that had hair transplants and they looked worse after the hair transplants because of the poor donor area recovery and often acceleration of the hair loss elsewhere on the scalp.