(07-02-2013, 04:05 AM)Misty0732 Wrote: I do have high cholesterol (I have all my life) but I have none of the other symptoms you list (other than some gynecomastia ). The more likely culprit is the Saw Palmetto (which I have been taking for some 8 months).
SO what do you all think? Should I lay of the SP? Chances are I don't really need it as I have low to none DHT (I have very little body hair and all the hair on my head).
Misty
You're lucky your doc checked estradiol. I've been to 4 different medical professionals, and none have seen fit to check it, yet. All I get are excuses about insurance not liking to pay for it in males unless there are other symptoms. I've had moobs since I began to gain weight at age 7. In jr. high and high school, I had larger breasts than many of the girls in my class, but that's not enough. I've always been at odds with my chest because boys/men shouldn't have boobs, but as a CD, I kind of like them. I've finally decided to just make them official and try to enlarge them.
My new doc just ran a whole bunch of tests this past Monday. It will be interesting to see what my results are. I've been taking 1280 mg of SP extract since August. Then again, I look like Chewbacca under my clothes, and I've been losing hair on top of my head for 34 years and have a hair style like Larry David at this point. If my free T has dropped substantially, that would give some credence to your suspicion it is SP.
Some here say PM is enough of an anti-androgen that nothing else is needed. It still could be PM or the combination of both. Unfortunately, since PM hasn't really been studied (most other herbals also have not) nobody really knows. We are each in our own personal drug trial, and nobody is collecting all the data to study it. Laying off the SP certainly can't hurt.
I've said this in other posts, but most doctors don't like to see high cholesterol as a symptom, preferring instead to treat it as a discrete condition. However, it is a symptom of some sort of hormone imbalance. The trick is to find the hormone(s) that is/are (typically) low. The body uses cholesterol to make hormones. Low sex hormones, low thyroid, low insulin levels, and various other hormone issues can all cause high cholesterol. They've even found low sex hormones might be involved in macular degeneration, finding evidence the eyes are trying to manufacture sex hormones to compensate for low levels in the body.