L Dopa + egcg good results

I have been experimenting with mucuna pruriens extract for the past week and I have been having some pretty decent results. I am taking 100mgs of the mucuna along side 100mgs of egcg + 400mgs of Yerba Mate + B6 45 min after ingestion and I'm washing all this down with an amino acid energy drink with 5 grams of amino's including L Tyrosine(dopamine precursor). I have been walking around with a smile on my face and I have not been getting mad in situations that used to get me furious. I am experiencing a moderate calming effect where I almost don't seem to care about important things(work,money). My only concern about this euphoric cocktail is the chance of raising test levels and possibly raising dht. Any one have experience with this stuff?

That's a mighty complicated relationship and I don't think its fully understood. Some directionality is observed, but I'm not sure it works in reverse.

You've gotta consider that testosterone levels respond to social stimuli, or rather your self-perception of those social stimuli. Dopamine is in general both a motivator to seek reward and a result of the reward sensation. So you can intuitively begin to see how these two cross paths.

Testosterone seems to have the effect of promoting sensation seeking behavior as does dopamine, so there is some co-function there. And it would appear that some of the same social/physical stimuli promote both of these, and inhibitors like prolactin (inhibits dopamine) also correlate with low testosterone so that's a big indicator.

For example, testosterone will in general increase your tendency to be aggressive in the sense of dominance behavior, so in the face of a challenge such as a sporting event it will cause you to want to dominate and assert that. Winning that game will increase testosterone and also dopamine.

I believe increasing testosterone will increase dopamine levels, but I am not as sure it works in the opposite direction. If that dopamine increase suppresses prolactin and also promotes dominance seeking behavior, then it could. I would count more on a rise in testosterone leading to behavior that correlates with a dopamine release, and a dopamine increase also correlating with behavior that promotes testosterone. I haven't seen any research that shows a direct relationship between the two. If its out there I'd like to see it. Sex is another good example, both dopamine and testosterone increase the urge to have sex, and both tend to fall for a short period of time afterward (dopamine moreso) with a short term rise in prolactin. There is no doubt some kind of synergy there, just not sure on how strong.

Also, you aren't truly just injecting straight dopamine. You are providing the raw materials to optimize your own production. I wouldn't worry at all about that spiking DHT on you.

Good info Anthony, do you have any info on what peat says about prolactin? I vaguely remember reading somewhere that peat was claiming prolactin was the main culprit in mpb.

Peat exaggerates prolactin's role in hair loss. High prolactin will contribute to hair loss there is no doubt, but my prolactin has been mid-range to low-normal for years and my hair loss has been more rapid than probably 90% of cases out there. Peat seems to think that prolactin is a mediary, downstream of estrogen/low thyroid which promotes hair loss. But its not that simple to establish the causal chain like that, even if there are studies to back up the connection between the two hormones. Again, in my case, my estrogen has been out of control and my thyroid was low, and yet prolactin was low-normal. And to point out the fact that prolactin is a molting hormone in birds and attempt to correlate that to MPB in human primates, thats pretty much ridiculous. The divergence between our respective clades on the tree of life is huge.

There is one study I can remember where prolactin delayed hair growth in mice, i.e. promoted catagen, but the doses were astronomical. This correlates with other research out there that only at very high levels does there seem to be inhibition of hair growth, and that evidence is in vitro so it should be taken with a grain of salt. If anything, I'd think high prolactin levels would have their biggest influence through suppression of thyroid hormone levels. But that only occurs in some people with elevated prolactin, so even that can't be generalized for everyone. Basically, if your prolactin levels are under 30 ng/ml I wouldn't be worrying about it as the cause of your hairloss. Ideally you want your prolactin to stay below 10.

There are some people out there who point to masturbation as a hair loss contributor because of the prolactin spike afterward. I think that is completely ridiculous.

Hi AS54

You said 'testosterone levels respond to social stimuli, or rather your self-perception of those social stimuli' - i'm interested in this, does this mean that you think ones testosterone levels (and perhaps other hormone levels) are influenced by how we percieve our environment, or maybe our social standing within our peer group. It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, and it fits in with what Bruce Lipton says about epigenetics...

So is this a cue to be more 'alpha'? I wonder how much impact your frame of mind and belief systems can have hormone levels and therefore ultimately disease and off course hairloss. Its off topic so i'm sorry OP, I just find it all incredibly interesting.

Can we think our way back to a full head of hair?!  

RKERR9,

Yeah, some of your thoughts are absolutely spot on. Its fascinating stuff. Although I'm not sure we can think our way back to a full head of hair, haha. Hair loss is a highly multi-variate situation, but to say our self-perception doesn't influence hair loss, I think that would be unfair to say.

Its been observed in several species of primates in different contexts, including our close relatives the Bonobos. Its going to be semantic and really up to the inferences of the perceiver how you want to describe the "why" of it, but testosterone does respond to social stimuli and also to your own perception of them. How you come up with the "why" of this is up to you.

To me, it seems to be preparatory, or prepares the individual for a challenge. Anything that is going to increase your social status relative to the ladder really represents an evolutionary challenge. It demands an increase in competitiveness because your dominance will always be challenged by the members of a group who sit beneath you, and also by those above you to stunt your further social climb. So for example, let's say an animal were to engage in a physical battle with another male and win, what would this do for his social standing? More than likely it would increase his dominance position, maybe gather more resources for himself, and probably have more sexual access to females. This results in a rise in testosterone. So did the T rise just because he won? Is it the body saying "Congratulations, you won, here's some T so you can be more dominant?". I don't think so. I think our exposure to social constructs throughout primate evolution has resulted in some very complex psychosocial-hormonal mechanisms. I think the testosterone rises in preparation, or as a response to the challenges that face higher social rank.

Now, its not as if the body recognizes you have a higher social rank. There aren't discrete levels out there that signal the body "You've reached level two". Its more along the lines of how our ancestors adapted to increased social position. Those who produced more testosterone in response to these scenarios were more prepared and capable of assuming and maintaining dominance roles. Hence, why higher testosterone males tend to fill these roles and have the urge to assert them. In an evolutionary sense, the tendency to produce a hormone (testosterone) that makes you more inclined and capable of asserting your dominance position, as a response to achieving a higher position, probably made the individual more successful at survival and reproduction, hence why the mechanism has propagated through the generations. I mean, in general the higher you rank socially (talking strictly in terms of ancestral tribal situations, not today's world) the better your chances of survival and passing on your genes. It makes total sense then that a hormonal motivator to establish and maintain dominance exists, and that your ability to win in challenges of dominance is rewarded. It sets the individual up for a better shot. Now evolution doesn't happen at the individual level, but over the course of generations, you could imagine it playing out. The offspring of the dominant male likely share his same hormonal tendencies, and also have better everything (nurturing, social acceptance and support, resources, opportunities). Over many generations this would tend to result in an evolutionary (even if statistically slight) advantage that would present over many generations.

Its interesting if you also look at the research out there on how our bodies respond hormonally to our posture. Even standing in a dominant position and keeping dominant posture increases testosterone. The body "wants" to be in that power position, its an advantage. The key here being, our own perception of our social standing can influence this. In some sense we can almost artificially cheat the system. The old "fake it till you make it" mantra has a lot more meaning than we think.

To add to AS54,

Here is a documentary about stress, social status, alphaness, and its connection with health and the brain

Especially check out 28 min

Awesome content catcat, really. This stuff is absolutely fascinating.

For me, its about beginning to realize that our physiological adaptations were literally influenced by our social organization. Effectively, socially unsuccessful individuals have lower life expectancy. What's interesting to think about though is how successful these same individuals are at reproduction. Obviously I don't know the figures, but if they weren't mating you'd kind of expect to see this type of behavior wiped out pretty quickly. Something must be perpetuating it, and maybe there is some greater social order at work here, that the survival of the group somehow benefits by having the various social strata.

But I do wonder if the effects are cumulative over generations such that the children of these high-stress individuals are in a deeper hole, their children are in an even deeper hole, so on and so forth. Its a pretty effective mechanism for producing more and more fit organisms though. Think about it, as the socially unsuccessful are suppressed you'd begin to see more and more of a population shift in favor of dominant individuals. But social order must be maintained so even these individuals will fall into different ranks, meaning the dominant male must be that much more superior. We'd then expect to see a higher success at reproduction for these males and higher survival for his offspring. Over time that would be a pretty incredible machine for making superior organisms.

Its interesting that there must be other variables working to stop this from functioning perfectly because we don't see that kind of mechanism happening in humanity. Perhaps its that social currency has changed???? No longer is it a larger or more physically dominant presence or intellect, its more to do with financial resources and social intelligence (how to play the game).

here's some more studies about dopamine & social dominance/masculinity:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10818161

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11802171

More Sapolsky:

http://www.openculture.com/2011/03/science_of_pleasure.html