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Suck shoes how y’all living hope everything is nova and you’re all having a prime week so i think your homies already know by now that virtually everybody except for batshit crazy conspiracy theorists accept the overwhelming evidence that dihydrotestosterone also known as dht causes hair loss in individuals who are genetically susceptible to androgenic alopecia it
Has become so overwhelmingly obvious that even the most extreme proponents of bizarre hair loss theories like the blue theory or the even worse skull expansion theory have had to reluctantly incorporate the dht factor into their ridiculous bogus theories for example the blue theory started out as just a theory that tense muscles or a tense galia app and erotica was
Cutting off the blue supply to the scalp and subsequently causing hair follicles to die from this lack of blood flow the only problem with that theory was that finasteride which lowers dht but doesn’t have anything to do with blood flow was shown to be a very effective treatment for treating male pattern baldness so therefore the original blood flow theory then
Had to be modified to better explain this and the proponents of the theory came up with the lame explanation that low blood flow increased dht levels and that this is why finasteride was working even though the supposed problem was low blood flow anyways the whole theory is completely bogus and i’ve debunked it several times in many of my videos and i’ll go ahead
And link them below in case you’re not convinced but anyways i’m not here to litigate the whole blood flow theory but rather i’d like to go ahead and just express the point that pretty much everyone other than a few fringe health cult groups like the rape pete forms for instance accept the fact that dht causes hair loss in people who have androgenic alopecia but
The question then comes up if dht can cause hair loss what about testosterone can testosterone also cause hair loss well the short answer to this is no however i have to say that i don’t blame people for believing this it’s something i myself used to believe and it’s understandable why many people may establish a connection between testosterone and hair loss after
All it is called androgenic alopecia so wouldn’t that imply that it could be caused by any androgen including testosterone and not just dht well you’d think so but we really shouldn’t get too carried away by the terminology here i haven’t been able to discover who exactly coined the term androgenic alopecia or the irritating alternate name androgenetic alopecia but
Both terms started appearing in the english literature in the 1960s which you can see in this google engram chart right here and actually the link between engines and male pattern baldness has been known since at least the 1940s long before dht was discovered to be an androgen produced by the body from metabolism and testosterone by the five alpha reductase enzyme
Aka the 5ar enzyme this was established in this paper published in 1942 by dr hamilton from yale university and if that name sounds familiar that is because he is the doctor who established the hamilton norwood scale which is commonly used to track the progression of androgenic alopecia in fact dr hamilton was the first person in the modern era to make a connection
Between sex hormones and baldness although if you go back much further than that back to ancient greece even philosopher socrates made note of the curious fact that eunuchs never went bald of course back then they didn’t have the tools to measure things like hormones dr hamilton on the other hand was able to investigate 104 men with testicular insufficiency of
Which 44 were real castrated eunuchs anyways dr hamilton found that men lacking testosterone or who were castrated before puberty never developed hair loss even though it occurred in other family members of theirs he then made the remarkable observation that men with testicular insufficiency developed baldness after receiving male hormone injections finally he
Noted that castration at an early age is a way to prevent baldness but as he writes here quote the cure is worse than the disease unquote that’s for damn sure but anyways fortunately we have much better cures available today than castration in the forms of things like finasteride and minoxidil which effectively treat hair loss without compromising our virility but
It is kind of amazing that 80 years ago the link between androgens and baldness had already been worked out yet there are still people alive today who deny it remarkably enough but anyways in the 1940s testosterone had already been discovered but dht had not been found to occur in the body so these early investigators could be forgiven for believing that it was
Testosterone itself that was causing baldness however late much later on a few decades later on by the 1970s the metabolism of testosterone had been worked out and was found to be more complicated than originally thought testosterone could be converted into dht via the 5-ar enzyme but could also be converted into estrogen via the aromatase enzyme it was a surprise
To the researchers at the time that testosterone had active metabolites and one of them namely dht was an even more powerful androgen than testosterone itself so in the 1970s researchers were interested in learning whether it was testosterone or dht that was responsible for male pattern baldness so in 1974 investigators from the university of texas looked at levels
Of sex hormones in the plucked hairs of balding and normal men and women in these hairs they found inactive metabolites of testosterone called 17 ketosteroids but they also found dht amazingly even way back in 1974 it was found that in balding hairs the levels of dht were elevated compared with non-balding hairs which is a result that has been confirmed in many more
Recent studies in fact dht levels 5 ar enzyme levels and angioreceptor levels are increased in balding hairs as opposed to non-balding hairs so even these early studies pointed at dht rather than testosterone as being the culprit causing hair loss well coincidentally also in 1974 there was a famous study that was published that identified several families living in
The dominican republic who had very low dht levels the men in these families at birth appeared to be girls in fact but during puberty they had normal masculinization of their sex organs however they had scanty or absent beards small prostate glands and most importantly they had no hairline recession or hair loss whatsoever these men were found to have very low serum
Dht levels but normal testosterone levels and the reason was that they lacked the 5ar enzyme there are backdoor pathways to producing dht outside of the 5-era enzyme and it was later found out these that these men just lacked the 5ar type 2 isoenzyme so none of their dht levels were zero but this study did show that when dht levels are low enough hair loss as caused
By androgenic alopecia is no longer possible even with normal testosterone levels in fact the situation in these men was very similar to what happens with finasteride which blocks the 5 ar type 2 isoenzyme and if testosterone itself caused hair loss then these men would have had it this is reassuring data that blocking the type 2 5 air isoenzyme with finasteride
Should not ever worsen hair loss so anyways this study not only defines some of the different functions of dht versus testosterone in the body but it also clearly showed that dht was the culprit in causing hair loss not testosterone because these men with 5ar deficiency never developed hair loss despite having normal testosterone levels it’s also interesting
That these men lacking dht had normal muscle development at puberty indicating that testosterone is the important male hormone for muscle development not dht in fact there is even an olympic athlete named castor cemenia who has five ar deficiency and so has very low levels of dht but normal levels of testosterone for a male one problem though is she identifies
As a female and given her high testosterone levels she has been disqualified from future events because of these levels politics aside though the underlying point here is that dht is obviously not necessary for athletic development in fact this study and further research indicated that testosterone and dht have very different roles in the body dht it is important
For fetal sexual development as well as developing facial hair during puberty however as far as maturation of sex organs during puberty as well as the deepening of the voice and muscle development goes all you really need is testosterone and that is why it is even common for teenagers to take finasteride and not experience any negative side effects so after early
Adolescent development all dht seems to do is cause problems for the human organism it causes baldness acne and prostate enlargement and this is why i refer to dht as a trash hormone and i’ve done several videos on this subject which i’ll link below an interesting study to further clarify the different roles of testosterone and dht was published in 2012. this study
Enrolled healthy men between 18 and 50 years of age with normal testosterone levels to suppress the participant’s own natural testosterone production the subjects all received different doses of injectable testosterone ranging from 50 to 600 milligrams per week as well as either a placebo or dose of 2.5 milligrams per day of dutasteride the researchers looked at
Fat-free mass which is equivalent to looking at muscle mass as well as muscle strength sexual function and prostate volumes anyways the results showed that increasing doses of testosterone increased muscle mass and strength and this was not affected at all by dutasteride in other words this again is more proof that dht has no effect on muscle development or strength
Whatsoever it is testosterone that is support for muscle strength not dht people who claim that finasteride hurt their gains at the gym are probably just having a no sebo effect because they’re listening to absolute idiots online or lying to them about dht being important when it really isn’t if anything finasteride could be beneficial since it may actually increase
Testosterone levels although although to be fair about that uh the jump in testosterone from a drug like finasteride or testosterone is likely too low to give you any kind of sports performance benefits at the very least though it wouldn’t hurt the point here though in this study is that dht suppression with dutasteride had no negative effect on muscle mass or
Strength or on sexual function and that is because dht is a trash hormone and the good things people associate it with are actually attributable to testosterone and not dht the authors felt that dht amplifies the effects of testosterone in tissues with high 5ar activity like the prostate or hair follicles however muscle and bone have very low five air activity and
Intra-tissue dht levels are low within these tissues though so therefore dht is only active in tissues where it only does bad things like cause hair loss enlarge your prostate and give us acne another interesting finding was that despite blocking dht in the prostate with dutasteride the prostate volume didn’t change indicating that in the absence of dht testosterone
Is enough to maintain prostate volume all this indicates that after puberty dht really is a completely useless trash hormone of course one of the best lines of evidence that it’s dht and not testosterone that causes hair loss is the fact that five ar blockers like finasteride and dutasteride can halt or reverse the progression of hair loss despite the fact that
They can raise testosterone levels finasteride and detasteride have no ancient blocking effects they simply block the conversion of testosterone into dht and thus lower dht levels at the same time testosterone may rise a little bit because it isn’t being converted into dht but some of this increase in testosterone may be blunted by conversion into estrogen via the
Aromatase pathway if testosterone does increase a little with finasteride it’s clear that this doesn’t have any negative effect on finasteride’s effectiveness in treating hair loss so it’s pretty clear that dht and testosterone have different roles in the body but it’s strange that they both achieve their different effects through the exact same engine receptor isn’t
It so could that mean that very elevated levels of testosterone could at least theoretically cause hair loss too if both hormones act through the same receptor then why not right well there is some research that the two androgens interact with the engine receptor in different ways first off if you look at the chemical formulas of testosterone versus dht you can see
They only differ in one spot but that one minor difference is enough to change the affinity of the angioreceptor dht so that dht is twice as likely to bond to the android receptor versus dht and dht is five times less likely to disassociate from the antireceptor relative to testosterone in this review of the antireceptor published in 2015 these effects were felt to
Account for the fact that dht effects are so different from testosterone effects however another study published in 2007 looked at whether testosterone and dht actually changed the function of the android receptor in different ways there is a specific pocket in the end receptor molecule that both testosterone and dht fit into and once this interaction occurs the
Engine receptor moves into the cell nucleus and activates nuclear dna to synthesize numerous proteins it turns out that testosterone and dht fit the pocket differently kind of like two different size feet trying to fit into the same size shoe when testosterone binds with the anti-receptor it is a looser fit and this affects the structure of the receptor weakening
It making it more wobbly so that is not as effective in activating dna as when dht binds with it which is a tighter fit these tinker toy-like diagrams depict this but the chemistry is very complicated and difficult to explain the important thing to understand though is that due to different binding capabilities and alterations of the anti-receptor by dht versus
Testosterone dht causes much more potent androgenic effects than testosterone does so in tissues where dht is the dominant androgen such as the hair follicles or the prostate testosterone has minimal effects so that is another reason not to worry that any increase in testosterone is going to worsen your hair loss so long as you are on finasteride and suppressing
Your dht you have nothing to worry about when it comes to raising your testosterone levels of course it’s another story if you increase testosterone and you are not on a 5ar blocker because increasing testosterone can subsequently increase dht but it’s the dht and not the testosterone itself in this case that will make hair loss worse and this effect can be totally
Blocked by five air inhibitors so even if someone has naturally really high levels or even super physiological levels of testosterone they can still completely stop hair loss with finasteride in fact if you remember the study i referenced earlier some of the subjects were using 600 milligrams of testosterone per week which goes way beyond testosterone replacement
Therapy that is the type of dose more associated with steroid use for bodybuilding as well as athletic performance but even in that case hair loss will not occur with the use of a 5 ar inhibitor so you can have as much testosterone as you want just so long as you stop it from converting it to dht you will not lose your hair so after all this if for some reason
You’re still afraid that finasteride will increase your testosterone levels and cause hair loss then i invite you to check out one more study with me and this one is from our good friend dr trash who if you have been following my channel for a long time you will recognize as a recurring character in the hair cafe cinematic universe along with other such figures
Like dr earwig and dr true of aka the morton solace of hair loss researchers now i don’t always see eye to eye with dr trash because he publishes a lot of articles claiming post finasteride syndrome is a real thing when of course it isn’t but you know what they say about a broken clock right but anyways in this case we’ll go ahead and take a look at a study he
Published in 2019 on whether or not finasteride really does increase testosterone levels it turns out there are a number of studies on this topic and most of these studies do show a minor increase in testosterone levels with finasteride use but some studies don’t show any increase at all well in this trash study dr trash did a meta-analysis of 11 different
Studies that included 1784 subjects and this meta-analysis did not show a definite increase in testosterone levels in patients taking finasteride or detasteride some studies showed increases in testosterone on finasteride intestine when baseline levels of testosterone were low but dr trash hypothesizes that the low dht levels from the drugs opened up more binding
Sites on serum hormone binding globulin aka shbg and this caused more testosterone update by shbg and increased total testosterone levels so what dr trash is saying here is that the increase in testosterone from five arab blockers is just some kind of artifact well i don’t really know if i fully trust dr trash here especially since he included 11 articles in the
Meta-analysis but then threw out 29 other articles from the analyses in his other articles he seems to have an agenda to make finasteride look bad and i think he’s probably even on the pfs network’s payroll and i even made a video which i’ll link below where i reviewed some of his more trashy research but i’m not sure if that is the case here at lace anyways i think
The implication here is that any increase in testosterone on finasteride or dutasteride is very minor if it exists at all so this is yet another reason not to worry about testosterone increases worsening hair loss if you take these five ar blocking drugs so we can easily conclude from all this that testosterone on its own does not cause hair loss high testosterone
Can be correlated with hair loss but that is only if you are not stopping it from converting into dht with a 5 a.r inhibiting drug like finasteride all the blame for hair loss falls on the trash hormone dht not testosterone as long as you can lower dht with a five error blocker or maybe block the android receptors in the scalp using a topical anti-antigen receptor
Blocker like florida or some newer angioreceptor blockers like plascatarone or maybe paralutamide then you shouldn’t worry about normal or high testosterone levels worsening your hair loss so i made this video because oftentimes i hear people say they started dutasteride or finasteride and it made their hairline worse somehow and then they speculated must have been
Because of the increase in testosterone levels this isn’t possible and what is much more likely happening is that they’re misinterpreting a shed as a sign the drug isn’t working and if you haven’t seen my video about shedding make sure you watch it i’ll link it below another possibility is they’re buying expired or counterfeit drugs from the gray market rather than
Getting a prescription and these drugs may not work or it could be possible that their hair loss is so aggressive that even a standard dose of dutasteride will not work in which case the drug can be safely titrated up to 2.5 milligrams per day which should treat hair loss under virtually any circumstance scalp hair follicles and people genetically susceptible to
Androgenic alopecia are saturated in dht and this dht strongly activates android receptors and sets off cascades of reaction that includes suppressing the wnt wind pathway affecting positive and negative growth factors affecting prostaglandin levels and all other sorts of harmful events that lead to shortened antigen growth phases miniaturization of hair follicles
And eventual replacement of hair follicles by scar tissue in which case it’s game over this is something only dht can do testosterone can only sit there and watch the spectacular damage its uglier evil or cousin dht is wrecking on your hair so put the blame where it belongs and take a silver sword to that ridiculous trash hormone dht and kill it before it turns
You into a bald cell slap head for life and with that thank you for watching my fellow hair loss witchers i will see you all next time good luck on the path take care
Transcribed from video
Why testosterone does NOT cause hair loss By Haircafe