Antibiotics, Soy, and DHT Levels

I’ve heard antibiotics can effect DHT levels i.e. get rid of any gut bacteria that has DHT under control, esp. in the case of soy/equol. Any truth to this?

See a previous blog post about Equol. I don’t have much to add to this reference. The DHT block is about 70% efficient with finasteride and 90% efficient with dutasteride. What the added value of soy is… well, I don’t know if it has any further value. Of course one wonders if there is an effect where it could work instead of the drug approach. My general comment is that someone who might try it with known genetic balding would run the risk of losing hair that could have been saved with a more conventional approach, so I would not recommend soy as a substitute.

Certainly any bacterial impact from antibiotics would be short term.