Doctor Believes DHT Is Produced by Estrogen?
Dr. Rassman & associates,
What is your professional, unbiased, opinion and/or facts, as to the use of a DIM product, such as Myomin from Dr. Chi, which definitely is a known estrogen metabolizer in addition to a known aromatase inhibitor.Dr. Wong had stated that he believes DHT is produced by excess estrogens, most notably the bad ones, as in Estradiol, in males, and further that DHT is not directly produced by testosterone but by these bad excess estrogens? Myomin and/or DIM is said to metabolize these bad estrogens and act as an aromatase inhibitor?
thanks
To put it politely, I think this Dr. Wong needs to go back and review college biochemistry if he really believes DHT is produced by excess estrogen. There are no such thing as bad estrogens, etc. DHT is NOT a byproduct of estogen or estrodiol. DHT is a byproduct of testosterone as it is metabolized. If you do not have your testicles, you will not produce enough DHT to cause balding.
It is a much more complicated process (see this chart), but here is an analogy that hopefully won’t make things too confusing:
Think of it as a one way street with a fork in the road. If you start with testosterone, you have the option of (a) going down the path of DHT or (b) going down the path of estradiol. Now it is a one way street, so you can not backtrack and go back from estradiol to testosterone to DHT. However, if there is a block in the road to estradiol, you can theoretically get a back-up in traffic and have a slight increase in testosterone, thus traffic is forced to go down the DHT pathway. Similarly, if you block the road to DHT (with finasteride) you can get a back-up and have more testosterone go down the estradiol pathway. There are other pathways, but we can ignore them for now for the sake of simplicity (if you’re not lost yet… keep up with me just a bit longer).
Now, aromatase inhibitors will do just that and block testosterone from forming into estradiol, the way finasteride blocks testosterone from forming into DHT. Thus in effect aromatase inhibitors will (theoretically) back-up traffic to divert more testosterone to go down the path of producing more DHT. In short, aromatase inhibitors can cause more DHT production (again, theoretically), which can cause more hair loss! In fact, I saw a female patient in my office not too long ago who was taking an aromatase inhibitor for her breast cancer treatment and she had what appeared to be androgenic alopecia.
Biochemistry is more complicated than this, especially when it is related to actual human beings. Theoretical things do not always work out in real clinical scenarios, but I believe that aromatase inhibitors can in theory make your androgenic alopecia worse! As for Myomin and DIM, both are herbal supplements that I’m honestly not too familiar with and don’t know enough about the claims attributed to each… but for those curious, this page has a lot of info.
I am guessing this is not dr jerry wong?
Is there any truth in that article Doc? Or is it all bullshit?
I think Dr Wong is providing very wong information
thanks dr rassman
Maybe the Doc could be right in some way, he’s wrong that Estrogens convert to DHT, but High Estrogen levels in men are known to cause High DHT, dht raises in order to fight the high level of estrogen and because sensitivity of androgen receptors of the prostate decreases. Dht is actually good for prostate, but it’s not good when there is both more dht and estrogen around so dht production is increased.
I’ve found more than one study who liks more estrogen = more dht = less testoesterone = older men who are losing hair and have prostate problems.
Healthy males have high testosterone, moderate dht and low estrogen.
Tomorrow I will have my results of the blood test with thyroid panel and total test/estradiol.