Theaflavins from Black Tea Extract and the Ability to Reduce Serum DHT?

Hi dr

I really like your site as you seem very genuine and take a considered approach. I am 26 and have been losing my hair for a few years now and am probably a Norwood 2 with a slight thinning all over. I have been hesitant about taking propecia due to the side effects and even freaked out after taking one pill as I thought my member was going to turn black and fall off (or something awful).

Luckily it didn’t but before embarking on a course of propecia I would like your opinion on the study regarding theaflavins from black tea extract and soy isoflavens and their ability to reduce serum dht by an amount equivalent to propecia. Granted the study was done on mice but as probably most of the readers on here are, I am rather desperate for a natural solution to hairloss. The study was done in 2003 which makes me think there’s nothing to it but would like to hear your opinion in any case. If a reduction in dht is the mechanism by which propecia works, couldn’t this work in theory?

Sorry for the rather long post but one other interesting study looked at a combination of capsicum and soy isoflavens and their ability to increase hair growth. I am reluctant to give citations or links to the website I found them on as it looks like a bazaar for snake oils and im sure your team are fully aware.

Many thanks, and if I do end up taking propecia I am confident that your honest appraisal of the incidence of side effects will go along way to reducing the placebo effect.

I hate to project what was reported in mice as transferable to humans, but our readership can draw their own conclusions that there may be value in theaflavins for reducing DHT. More research needs to be done to prove it would actually be effective in humans for treating hair loss, of course. The studies I’ve seen about this have continued to be limited to just mice and rats.

It does sound like if there was something to it from a decade’s worth of research, we’d be seeing more in the news about black tea extract being the hair loss treatment we’ve all been waiting for. Alas, that doesn’t appear to be the case at this point.

We’ve actually written a little about this before here, where I pointed out that black tea is extremely common in the UK, where hair loss is still seen just like in other parts of the world.