How is Equol not the ultimate anti androgen?

It is a natural thing and binds only to DHT, why do people even bother messing about with fin etc?

Has anyone ever tried to raise their equol levels by supplementing or through food? If so what happened?

erm, problem is it's follicular DHT that affects hair not DHT in the blood. So the equol would have to actually snatch the DHT away from the receptors. And then... couldn't that give side effects too due to the decreased effect of DHT on the body?

hoppipolla wrote:erm, problem is it's follicular DHT that affects hair not DHT in the blood. So the equol would have to actually snatch the DHT away from the receptors. And then... couldn't that give side effects too due to the decreased effect of DHT on the body?

It has shown effect in reducing prostate size from oral supplementation -- S-equol is a small molecule, ergo it pass from the blood to the tissues. Half life of equol is about 6-8 hrs. So you just take it 3x daily to ensure a stable level of low DHT. Equol is believed safe even in hundreds of miligrams daily and showed no side effect in any of the studies, though I do believe that those sensitive to DHT changes could see some side effects, but they would not be as severe as with 5aR inhibition.

I will outline it's limitations, at least in comparison to the most commonly used antiandrogens, finasteride and dutasteride. Part of the effectiveness of the 5aR inhibitors is after they irreversibly destroy the isoforms of 5-alpha reductase, your body takes ample time to regenerate the enzyme and restore it's level to the pre-inhibition concentration. Finasteride has a half life of something 8 hours. Despite this low half life, the fact about the body needing to regenerate the enzyme keeps the DHT level suppressed for far longer than 8 hours. Dutasteride has this, plus the added effect that its half life is around 240 hours or 14 days. This yields flexible dosing and stable low level DHT obviously means less DHT is likely to bind your AR and active the androgen sensitive genes that trigger miniaturization of terminal hair. Equol completely lacks this "lasting" mode of action. It is only effective while its in serum. It does not have a "lasting effect" on DHT like 5aR inhibitors. This means inflexible dosing, and fluctuating DHT. Presumably there would be a high enough dose where this limitation could be overcome. We don't know what that dose is. From pharmacokinetics dose response is speculated linear, but the slope of the response is not currently known.

The benefits would be: less side effects. As I have said before, and as CS has said in some posts, and as the most recent medical reviews of the side effects of 5aR inhibition therapy have argued: all the fin/dut sides are not do to their absolute reduction in DHT concentrations. The 5-alpha reductases have other effects in the body, and in the central nervous system. This is likely where low energy, tiredness, anxiety, depression, worsened sleep, etc come from in those who report those sides on fin. S-equol should not have such sides. Furthermore fin and dut raise testosterone from the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis feedback, and raised testosterone with blocked DHT means raised estradiol which is likely where the gynecomastia comes from. Though it could also explain some of their positive effect on the hair as well. I'd suspect S-equol would raise testosterone through the brain seeing less androgenic stiumuls as fin and dut raise it, but s-equol isn't blocking the formation of DHT, thus it shouldn't be raising estradiol to the same level as fin and dut. S-equol also selectively binds to estrogen receptor beta, which at least in the prostate, is believed to account for a downregulation of the androgen receptor. Estrogen receptor beta is found in the human scalp.

The doses of s-equol people got through trying to become converters, using supplements such as EquolSlim or the now non-existent folexen, were likely not high enough where they could appreciably impact androgenetic alopecia. The best I can hope for is the Ausio pharmaceuticals clinical trials on benign prostatic hyperplasia to yield some kind of dose response relationship with regards to binding DHT. If you could find a group buy for it you could get equol very cheaply but getting to be food grade is another issue. Someone who knows more medicine and chemistry than I suspect that even sub food grade from a chemical synthesis company would very likely not be endotoxic so if you were brave you could give it a try. If not comfortable consuming a non-food grade chemical you could always mix it into some ethanol / dmso and just put it onto your scalp.