Losing Your Hair?  Minoxidil and Finasteride or Soy Beans?

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Two of the most popular drugs being used to grow hair on men are minoxidil and finasteride (not always successfully.) The latter is also used as treatment for non-carcinogenic prostate enlargement. Now--if we knew how they work perhaps we could find foods that do the same things and even more, with less worry about side effects and at far lower costs.

We do--that is, science does. It turns out, from a recent report in The New England Journal of Medicine, that these two drugs reduce the conversion of testosterone to the more potent dihydrotestosterone, and are called 5a reductase inhibitors. Isn't that nice? For men maybe, but not for the drug companies. Nice because a food ingredient, genistein, is also a reductase inhibitor, and its in soy beans! What's more it also inhibits the growth of tumor cells.

DETAILS: You can eat soy beans, soy burgers, tofu, soy milk, etc., and get the benefits of its ingredient, genistein. For added punch, have a tablet of genistein-rich soy isoflavones, available at health food stores and through mail order vitamin distributors. So, you can have a tablet along with your soy food, which we believe is the best way.

Losing Your Hair?  Minoxidil and Finasteride or Soy Beans? Bibliography

New England Journal of Medicine Volume 341, August 12, l999, Drs. Paus and Cotsasilis of the UofH