09-06-2013, 11:09 PM
(09-06-2013, 08:13 PM)AnnabelP Wrote: Mady,
Please excuse me using your thread to answer AbiDrew. At least the second paragraph below this is marginally on topic and I've been looking for the opportunity to get in the third!
I've not found that anything I have ever taken has done anything to preserve or improve my scalp hair, but then I lost most of it in the five years after I was 18, and not all that much more over the next 50 years. I never had all that much body hair, but much of what I had has now gone, my male parts are much shrunken, even my pubic hair seems to have retreated and thinned my beard growth is noticeably weaker (if I tried to grow a beard now I think it would be one of those feeble wispy affairs) and my eyebrows have become almost invisible
Abi
I knew that I was treading on dangerous ground when I made that last post, but you will note that I did qualify ‘similar’ with ‘somewhat’. Unlike last time when in a senior moment I mis-expanded ARI, which was an inexcusable oversight in view of my having earned my living writing and amending patent specifications, including specs for pharmaceutical and pharmaceutical delivery patents, this time I feel I should come to my own defense. There does seem to be some genuine question as to whether SP acts as a 5ARI, or as a receptor antagonist, or both. It seems to act significantly differently from pharmaceutical 5ARIs such as finasteride ot dutasteride, since unlike those it is reported not to interfere with PSA expression and not to achieve any prostate size reduction in BPH. Recent studies have also queried even its effectiveness in alleviating the symptoms of BPH. All this has caused me to have an on-again/off-again attitude over the value to me of SP, particularly if my body has very low testosterone levels. Beta-sitosterol, which while present in SP in is found there as you say only in very small quantities, is probably not responsible in any significant measure for the benefits of SP. But I definitely have found reports of beta-sitosterol being a 5ARI. In typical plant sterol supplements it is found in much larger quantities than in SP, and has been reported to achieve somewhat comparable effects to SP, as well as providing benefits in controlling blood lipid levels. I’m quite sure that your research has been much more thorough than mine, but I don’t think that my understanding of the situation was unreasonable. I used to be quite adept at rapidly scanning the literature on a subject so as to pick up enough information to persuade my clients that I understood what they were talking about, and so as to be able to ask the right questions or use the right conversational gambit to get them to tell me what I really needed to know rather than what they wanted to tell me: hence the importance of not making the type of mistake that you picked me up on.
Don't get me wrong, I really value your expertise (and you are probably more likely to be right than I am on the present issue), and I find you an inspiring personality. You recently called attention in another thread to the horrific mortality rate among TGs, but I think that you must be at less risk than many. That mortality surely also extends to many others in the LGBT spectrum who suffer from severe dysphoria due to their inability to live with or defend themselves from their social environment, or who get lost somewhere along their road to finding themselves, or feel compelled to indulge in unduly risky lifestyles. In my own experience, and during the time I believed that I was gay, I certainly took some horrible risks, and at one point got myself into a situation in which I only narrowly escaped being thrown out of my college. I think I was given another chance only because there had recently been a gay suicide there and those in authority didn’t want to risk another one. You on the other hand seem to have thrown off any dysphoria: you know with certainty what you are within and where you are going, and plainly have the tenacity to find your way through or around the physical obstacles and fend off at least verbal and written assaults along your way. Put in other words you have the cardinal virtues of faith, hope and caritas (charity, but modern usage of that word no longer conveys the right meaning) exemplified by your attitudes towards and unstinting help to your neighbours here, and what we can see of your religioous commitment). I have hope, which certainly helps keep me alive, but I fall short in faith and caritas. I hope that I haven’t offended or embarrassed you, but I know you will speak your mind if I have Please do, perhaps on one of my threads. because it is so often by mistakes that we learn. I find that gender discussion is a minefield that it is difficult to find one's way through unscathed, and every pointer helps.
My apologies again, Mady, for temporarily hijacking your thread.
It sounds to me as though your hair loss was not in fact male pattern. It actually sounds much more in line with an undiagnosed thyroid problem. Maybe pituitary. But not due to excessive DHT.
And generally once significant loss due to a pituitary or thyroid related problem has occurred, it is irreversible.
Though there are many cases of rather miraculous recoveries after proper treatment for a thyroid problem... I am not familiar with ANY for pituitary related alopecia.
As for the ever endless debate about different kinds of anti-androgens... I can not recall the study, but there was actually a study that did a double-blind comparison between dutasteride, finasteride, and saw palmetto extracts which DID prove that saw palmetto, extracted properly, had exactly identical, but significantly weaker effects. I believe it was finasteride which had the most powerful effect, while dutasteride was somewhere between. It also showed that while per identical dose saw palmetto was weaker than either, that the effects did become significantly improved with higher dosing and at maximum efficacy it was identical to dutasteride, without the same ill effects.
Of course, it does come with its own bundle of side effects... mainly that of fat gain or decreased ability to lose weight which is believed to be related to the comparatively weak in both effect and binding ability phytoestrogens included in the herb.
And for beta-sitosterol... The only research I've seen trying to link the chemical to 5ARI activity has been of the statistical kind. No actual experimentation, only surveys and attempts at correlating the data into meaning what they wish it to mean... The language actually used includes terms such as "may", and on close examination of the actual data, the correlation is quite weak at best...
That doesn't mean that it DOESN'T have 5ARI activity, only that it's not been proven, or even researched properly, and I prefer to not even mention supposed activities of a chemical or a compound of chemicals unless there's at least some real experimental research done on it, and maybe significant anecdotal evidence, not just loose statistical analyses. And presently that's all we have on beta-sitosterol for being a possible 5ARI - loose statistical analyses. Which could mean anything. Since as far as I could tell there wasn't even any attempts made to control for other potential 5ARI's.
What we do have for proven research on beta-sitosterol is that it's a moderately strong receptor antagonist with mild estrogenic effects.
And... thanks for the compliments I guess? LOL. Yeah... I probably really am rather unlikely to become part of the death statistic for TG. At least of the suicide variety. There's no telling if someone may yet kill me for being different though.
I do have a very powerful relationship with my maker, and it's probably the only thing I have to thank for keeping me around this long.
Believe me though, you've only interacted with me long since I'd already won the battle against myself. There was a point when I really was extremely close to suicide-by-inactivity. Not intentionally taking my own life... but allowing myself to waste away due to morbid obesity and extreme depression. You know the expression "died of a broken heart"? Well, what those people actually die from was the same thing I was very very close to allowing myself to die from. Just from different causes. Theirs is caused from losing their close companion of basically their entire life before then, mine was caused by my severe dysphoria and trying so very hard to hide from it.
If it hadn't been for other people "waking" me up to what I was allowing to happen, I probably wouldn't be here to be the person you see now. I got the external wake up call, but then I suppose it's all me from there. I did choose to pursue a path of figuring out what the hell was wrong with me. And then on figuring it out, I did choose to tackle it rather than running away once again.
Again though... I have my relationship with God to thank for all of it. Alone I would NEVER have been strong enough.
