Lavender, Tea Tree both found to BLOCK the androgen receptor

[el_duterino]

does anyone know the serum half life of lavender ? if is is short, this could be a potienally good candidate for topical anti-androgen application.

If it builds up in blood too much, we might as well use flutamide instead.

 

[blaze]

Has anybody tried out Lavender Oil in any sort of topical yet?

 

[michael barry]

Hi guys,


Since this is a "lavender/tea tree oil" thread, I thought it a good place to share my little self-experiement with a lavendar/cedarwood/rosemary topical I made myself.


I mixed about 2 ml of lavender, 2 ml of cedarwood, and 2 ml of rosemary in roughly 50 mls of springwater (about 4/5 of an old minoxidil-sized spray bottle). I used no alcohol.


I'd spray one fingertip with the solution and rub it on my right forehead, above the right eyebrow over about a 2 square inch area. I done this for two weeks.


I have some sebutape strips. I put four strips on my forehead. One at the application site, one above the left (other) eyebrow area at roughly the same corresponding spot over there, and two up high on my forehead just beneath my hairline roughly above the lower two strips. The sebutape strip comes with a card you can use to compare the sebum spots on the strip with that gives a rating as to how much sebum an area produces. It goes from 1 through 5 (lots of sebum).

My results were that right under the hairline I got a reading that would correspond with roughly a 5 on both the higher-placed strips at 35 minutes.
The reading for the lower placed strips would be about 2-to-3 for the right eye, and about 3 above the left eye.

The application site is quite dry and pretty devoid of oil throughout the day. One of the components (lavender, cedarwood, rosemary) definitely has reduced sebum in this area.

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Im now going to put the solution for a couple of weeks right under the hairline for about 2 weeks on the LEFT side, and not put it above either eyebrow. I'll be interested to see how oily the four sebutape squares are at about half-an-hour two weeks from now. You can tell about a week or so "in" if the application area is a little dryer by running your finger over it. I could tell that the application area was pretty dry several days back. Obviously the stuff must spread some under the skin, but its not like flutamide or something and has an equal effect everywhere. The area above my eyebrows was not all that much less oily before the experiment than the area beneath the hairline, so I really think something in the concoction is anti-androgenic. Im eager to see what happens in the next two weeks.

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Furthermore concerning hair. Im pretty much maintaining well with just finasteride and nizoral as my regimine. Ive been using a few other shampoos---with it with possible hair benefits, but the two of them seem to have me really hanging on to what I have. I was using dutasteride, but ran out of it, and figured I'd finish off my finasteride (quite a bit left) before ordering anything else. For any newbies that have looked into the threads: if you tolerate finasteride well, in my opinion just doing finasteride and using nizoral should really-really retard your androgenic alopecia if you catch it when you first start receeding. I think it would buy you at least a decade myself.

 

[blaze]

Always like reading your posts MB.

Thanks for the update. It was very interesting.

I too am eager to see what happens with your results in around 2 weeks time at the hairline area of skin.

One question, does this topical irritate your skin in any any way? 2mls of each essential oil is quite strong.

Wonder if this stuff would work in a shampoo?

Anyway be sure to keep us updated. All the best.

 

[michael barry]

Blaze,

Ive not noticed any inflammation at the application site. Rosemary is supposedly pretty anti-inflammatory. Thats one of the oils in my little mix: Rosemary, Lavender, Cedarwood. Those are 3 of the 4 "classic" essential oils for hair (although other essential oils like chamomile have been used in the past).



The reason I didn't include thyme was that (from what Ive read) thyme has a suppressive effect on certain prostaglandins. Nizoral supposedly also has a suppressive effect on prostaglandins. I figured there would be no reason to inlcude it because I already use nizoral. Also, thyme has a pretty stout smell to it. Its used in a buncha' stuff though: mouthwash, insect repellant, etc.


I found something very interesting (to me anyway),
http://carcin.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/re ... h106v1.pdf

Black tea appears to inhibit alpha five reductase TYPE 1 pretty strongly. That kinda sucks because I was hoping that TYPE 2 was what it would inhibit. Rat liver microsomal alpha five reductase and LANcp prostate cancer cell lines were strongly inhibited by a couple of compounds in black tea (theaflavin 3 most strongly if I remember from skimming the article). I guess a guy could drink a glass or two of black tea a day, and sort of "buffer up" his finasteride to more dutasteride-like inhibition of alpha five reductase.

One other "finasteride-boosting" trick is to, according to TAGOHL (a guy who used to post at hairsite and one very well-read fellow) is to drink some grapefruit juice. Apparently the enzyme that metabolizes finasteride (I dont even remember that name....cytocrhome P450 34A or some such), is inhibited by grafefruit juice, making the finas active in the body longer. I understand that ketoconozale has some boosting effect on finasteride also, so the two work well together.


Im still doing finas and nizoral. My hair looks really good btw---especially good for someone getting to be middle age. Im just "nosy" about hair, thats why I pry around a bit when I get some time.

Have a great weekend

 

[blaze]

Thanks for that MB.

So you dont use Prox-N anymore now?

Also i am thinking about checking this herb out called Pueraria Mirifica. Its a phytoestrogen with similar structure to estriol. I am going to get the extract that comes in an oil form. It says you can add it to creams and other topical stuff. It apparently exerts an estrogenic effect. Whether it goes sytemic or not I dont know. But the thai lady boys use it from what Ive heard(they take it orally).

If it works locally for the most part it would make the scalp a more estrogenic envirnoment, which can only be a good thing. It shouldnt be too hard to add a few drops(1-5% worth) to a ethanol/distilled water/PPG vehicle.

 

[qwerty]

Blaze, this concerns me about pueraria:

" It occupies the estrogen receptors more safely. If the estrogen level is high, miroestrol will compete with receptors weakening the effect of the hormones. If the estrogen level is low, miroestrol will exert its estrogenic effect of potentiation."

Miroestrol is an estrogen from the plant Pueraria mirifica. The quote from: http://www.drpasswater.com/nutrition_li ... rdon_1.htm

I definately don't want to weaken my scalp estrogen. What do you think?

 

[Maelstrom]

*bump*

Michael, what were the results of your 2nd test with the mixture? The one you were going to do under the hairline?

 

[waynakyo]

Why this and other readily available oils and "natural" compunds won't work ?
because if they did, someone in China, India, or anywhere else, would have discovered them sometime during men's fight with hairloss. Should I remind everybody that this has been going on for thousands of years ?

propecia, minoxidil, nizoral, RU, none of these could have been made outside a modern lab.

my 2 c