DHT "useless" and OK to suppress not true says article

[Chris87]

Hi guys,

I've also posted this on another forum, so just incase someone sees it on both..im not a bot..i just think this is really important:

Hi all,

Alright so I've been perscribed propecia but am holding off on getting it yet. Often times when things dont seem logical or right to me...they arent. Now I hear people say (and have been told by a reputable doctor endorsed by Spencer Kobren) that basically..DHT doesnt do much in the adult male so..its ok to suppress it. This doesnt make sense to me...by many descriptions DHT is a very powerful hormone. I dont understand how suppressing it with finasteride could be just no big deal..or how it could be considered "useless"

Check out this article that i thought was pretty good at explaining the function of DHT and then tell me how its just "ok" to suppress it and that DHT is "useless"

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/reform8.htm

let me know your thoughts

 

[cuebald]

Are you "concerned2" from Youtube?

 

[Chris87]

haha no, i've seen that guy's comments...as i said above..i havent begun taking propecia yet..i've been prescribed but...i get an eerie feeling about trusting doctors who have a lot of money to make by writing these prescriptions and try to tell you that certain powerful hormones are "useless" in adult males and that atrophying a healthy prostate is fine and will be of no consequence.

 

[TheGrayMan2001]

It isn't a scientific article that makes some fatal errors:

For instance, let's start with this:

In these tissues, which include the brain (CNS), skin, genitals—practically everything but muscle—the active androgen is actually DHT.

If that was true, I would expect to essentially feel like a woman by now. I'm stronger than I've ever been (lifting weights), my skin is in perfect condition, my brain is operating fine, and my sex drive is 100% normal.

A good case in point is demonstrated in male pseudohermaphroditism due to congenital 5-AR deficiency. This is a relatively rare disorder, however it is actually quite common in the Dominican Republic. In this disorder, males are born with little or no 5-AR enzyme. They have ambiguous genitalia and are often raised as girls. When puberty occurs, their testosterone levels elevate normally although their DHT levels remain very low. Their musculature develops normally like that of other adults, however, they end up with little or no pubic/body hair and underdeveloped prostate and penis. Their libido and sexual function is often disrupted also.

The scientific flaw here is shown in studies about these 5-AR deficient men, I don't want to look them up right now but they're posted fairly often on this board if you want to search for them yourself.

DHT and 5-AR 1/2 matter a lot during fetal development and into puberty. It's after puberty that it doesn't matter much. This guy is right to express the importance of 5-AR2, but he isn't making it clear that it's perfectly OK to decrease it in adult males.

If you look at the warning labels for finasteride, it says DO NOT ALLOW AROUND PREGNANT WOMEN, or something to that effect. This was taken into consideration during the studies on finasteride.

Lastly, his crap about DHT being an anti-estrogen isn't necessarily true. There are other reasons for raised estrogen in some men who are on finasteride. Since I feel perfectly normal on it with no side effects, I have no reason to assume my estrogen is any higher than it was.

 

[Primo]

It isn't a scientific article that makes some fatal errors:

For instance, let's start with this:

In these tissues, which include the brain (CNS), skin, genitals—practically everything but muscle—the active androgen is actually DHT.

If that was true, I would expect to essentially feel like a woman by now. I'm stronger than I've ever been (lifting weights), my skin is in perfect condition, my brain is operating fine, and my sex drive is 100% normal.

[quote:1sh9dzbx]A good case in point is demonstrated in male pseudohermaphroditism due to congenital 5-AR deficiency. This is a relatively rare disorder, however it is actually quite common in the Dominican Republic. In this disorder, males are born with little or no 5-AR enzyme. They have ambiguous genitalia and are often raised as girls. When puberty occurs, their testosterone levels elevate normally although their DHT levels remain very low. Their musculature develops normally like that of other adults, however, they end up with little or no pubic/body hair and underdeveloped prostate and penis. Their libido and sexual function is often disrupted also.

The scientific flaw here is shown in studies about these 5-AR deficient men, I don't want to look them up right now but they're posted fairly often on this board if you want to search for them yourself.

DHT and 5-AR 1/2 matter a lot during fetal development and into puberty. It's after puberty that it doesn't matter much. This guy is right to express the importance of 5-AR2, but he isn't making it clear that it's perfectly OK to decrease it in adult males.

If you look at the warning labels for finasteride, it says DO NOT ALLOW AROUND PREGNANT WOMEN, or something to that effect. This was taken into consideration during the studies on finasteride.

Lastly, his crap about DHT being an anti-estrogen isn't necessarily true. There are other reasons for raised estrogen in some men who are on finasteride. Since I feel perfectly normal on it with no side effects, I have no reason to assume my estrogen is any higher than it was.[/quote:1sh9dzbx]

Being strong in the gym doesn't prove anything as you don't need DHT for muscle, only testosterone. Really, you should be stronger if you're taking finasteride because it boosts testosterone. You could have severe erectile dysfunction and hypogonadism due to 5AR deficiency and low DHT, but at the same time STILL have muscles like Arnold Scharzenegger.

After all, the came up with Finasteride while in the process of trying to create a drug that would mimic these Domincan male abnormalities.

You're right about DHT and 5AR being more important during puberty, but it would be illogical to dismiss the threory that taking Finasteride after puberty could replicate the Dominican male disorder after LONG TERM use in certain SENSITIVE INDIVIDUALS.

Those who naturally have a low level of DHT will inevitably suffer sides from Finasteride. This is illustrated by the fact that studies have reported side effects from as low as 2% to 30% of the sample.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_o ... archtype=a

Also you clearly don't suffer from sides whatsoever because anyone who suffers sexual sides from Finasteride almost always suffers problems with the CNS too, as this is where the signals of arousal are transmitted from.

Bottom line is it's great that you don't have any problems & we'd all like to be in your position, but you can't go dismissing the occurence of side in evryone else in such a blase fashion because this is not a 100% safe drug and should be approached with extreme caution by everyone.

 

[barcafan]

It isn't a scientific article that makes some fatal errors:

For instance, let's start with this:

In these tissues, which include the brain (CNS), skin, genitals—practically everything but muscle—the active androgen is actually DHT.

If that was true, I would expect to essentially feel like a woman by now. I'm stronger than I've ever been (lifting weights), my skin is in perfect condition, my brain is operating fine, and my sex drive is 100% normal.

[quote:3fbr1hcz]A good case in point is demonstrated in male pseudohermaphroditism due to congenital 5-AR deficiency. This is a relatively rare disorder, however it is actually quite common in the Dominican Republic. In this disorder, males are born with little or no 5-AR enzyme. They have ambiguous genitalia and are often raised as girls. When puberty occurs, their testosterone levels elevate normally although their DHT levels remain very low. Their musculature develops normally like that of other adults, however, they end up with little or no pubic/body hair and underdeveloped prostate and penis. Their libido and sexual function is often disrupted also.

The scientific flaw here is shown in studies about these 5-AR deficient men, I don't want to look them up right now but they're posted fairly often on this board if you want to search for them yourself.

DHT and 5-AR 1/2 matter a lot during fetal development and into puberty. It's after puberty that it doesn't matter much. This guy is right to express the importance of 5-AR2, but he isn't making it clear that it's perfectly OK to decrease it in adult males.

If you look at the warning labels for finasteride, it says DO NOT ALLOW AROUND PREGNANT WOMEN, or something to that effect. This was taken into consideration during the studies on finasteride.

Lastly, his crap about DHT being an anti-estrogen isn't necessarily true. There are other reasons for raised estrogen in some men who are on finasteride. Since I feel perfectly normal on it with no side effects, I have no reason to assume my estrogen is any higher than it was.[/quote:3fbr1hcz]

Oh you mean the shitty study where they take people who have been deficient in 5ar2 for their WHOLE LIVES and try to extrapolate the findings onto 'normal' people who *may* break their system with finasteride? I never get tired of that goofball bryan posting it ad nauseum. There was also an interesting quote given by one of the scientists who actually helped create finasteride, i'm paraphrasing "The addition of finasteride is NOT the same as the removal of 5AR2".

Interesting...........

 

[Nene]

It's not the same b/c it's much worse to never have it, then to have it sharply reduced temporarily.

 

[barcafan]

they were BORN with the deficiency, therefore their systems were calibrated differently to ours. our systems were calibrated with 5ar2 being present, and when you kill alot of it it can cause problems. Whats hard to understand

 

[Bryan]

they were BORN with the deficiency, therefore their systems were calibrated differently to ours.

Their systems were "calibrated" differently to ours?? Isn't that just a silly and awfully ad hoc way to try to explain why the pseudohermaphrodites don't have any of the dire problems with "de-myelination" and other things that some posters have tried to say is caused by finasteride?

 

[TheGrayMan2001]

they were BORN with the deficiency, therefore their systems were calibrated differently to ours. our systems were calibrated with 5ar2 being present, and when you kill alot of it it can cause problems. Whats hard to understand

Their systems are just like ours. When you removed DHT from their lives, they ended up as semi hermaphrodites. That's how we would end up too.

DHT is most important during development and into puberty. Once you're past puberty it is not as "vital". The only reason finasteride is perceived as "bad" is because some people's endocrine systems don't handle the hormonal change as well. It isn't because of the lack of DHT, but because their endocrine system can't appropriately respond to the testosterone and estrogen levels changing.