Shop

Nettle Root Beside Saw Palmetto: Two Androgen Papers, Two Targets

Saw palmetto and nettle root both show up in conversations about androgens. They do not show up in the same assay. Folli-Activ includes both. This essay is about that difference. Saw palmetto's papers measure 5-alpha-reductase. Nettle root's papers measure sex hormone-binding globulin and urinary scores in benign prostatic hyperplasia. No paper opened here gave the two plants together and counted scalp hairs.

Saw palmetto: the enzyme that makes DHT

Iehlé and colleagues expressed human 5-alpha-reductase type 1 and type 2 separately. A lipido-sterol extract of Serenoa repens inhibited both. The inhibition constants were 7.2 micrograms per millilitre for type 1 and 4.9 micrograms per millilitre for type 2. Kinetics were non-competitive on type 1 and uncompetitive on type 2, unlike finasteride, which was selective for type 2 in the same study. Bayne and colleagues then put Permixon at 10 micrograms per millilitre into a prostate coculture and reported inhibition of both isoforms without a loss of PSA secretion. Habib's later work in prostate cancer cell lines found the same split: enzyme activity down, PSA expression maintained.

Rossi compared open-label Serenoa repens 320 milligrams a day with finasteride 1 milligram a day for 24 months in 100 men with mild to moderate androgenetic alopecia. Photographs showed increased hair growth in 38 percent of the Serenoa group and 68 percent of the finasteride group. The Serenoa change was mainly at the vertex. That is the hair endpoint for saw palmetto in this essay. It is an open-label comparison, not a placebo trial, and it is not a nettle trial.

Prager's pilot mixed liposterolic saw palmetto extract with beta-sitosterol and rated 6 of 10 men on the active arm improved. Beta-sitosterol is not a Folli-Activ ingredient. The pilot stays out of any sentence that claims pure saw palmetto, and it stays out of any sentence about nettle.

Nettle root: the carrier protein, and a urinary trial

Hryb, Khan, Romas, and Rosner found that an aqueous extract of Urtica dioica root inhibited binding of SHBG to its receptor on human prostatic membranes. Inhibition started near 0.6 milligrams per millilitre and was complete at 10 milligrams per millilitre. The alcoholic extract and the lectin did not do this. Schöttner isolated root lignans and showed that they bind human SHBG itself, with (−)-3,4-divanillyltetrahydrofuran the strongest of the set, and (−)-pinoresinol the exception that did not bind. SHBG binding is not 5-alpha-reductase inhibition. A formulator who wants both actions needs both literatures.

Safarinejad's double-blind trial in 620 men with lower urinary tract symptoms from benign prostatic hyperplasia is the human nettle dataset. At six months, 81 percent of nettle patients (232 of 287) reported improved symptoms, against 16 percent on placebo (43 of 271). The symptom score fell from 19.8 to 11.8 on nettle and from 19.2 to 17.7 on placebo. Peak flow rose 8.2 versus 3.4 millilitres per second. Residual urine fell from 73 to 36 millilitres. Prostate volume fell from 40.1 to 36.3 cubic centimetres. PSA and testosterone did not change. Hair was not measured. Testosterone staying flat is worth stating next to saw palmetto's enzyme story: one plant's best human trial did not move serum testosterone, and the other plant's best enzyme paper is about conversion of testosterone to DHT.

Nahata and Dixit, in rats, gave petroleum ether and ethanolic nettle extracts against testosterone-induced prostatic hyperplasia and concluded that the plant fitted management of that model. That is a third nettle dataset, animal, prostate, not scalp.

Why the bottle holds both

Peterson, Imperato-McGinley, and colleagues described men with inherited 5-alpha-reductase deficiency: high testosterone-to-DHT ratios, a small prostate, and no temporal hairline recession. The enzyme that saw palmetto extracts inhibit in Iehlé's assay is the enzyme missing in that pedigree. The binding protein that nettle lignans engage in Schöttner's assay is a different molecule in the same androgen economy. Folli-Activ puts the two plants in one oral capsule because the targets differ. Hong's 12-month study of saw palmetto oil plus pumpkin seed oil, not nettle, already showed that a combination can move symptoms from baseline without separating statistically from each oil alone. This page does not claim a saw-palmetto-plus-nettle synergy trial. It claims two documented targets.

Packs

Both ingredients are in Folli-Activ, 90 capsules, brand MY NPM FOLLI-ACTIV. On this site, 1 bottle is RM169, 3 bottles are RM447, and 6 bottles are RM699 with free shipping. Checkout is by card. The enzyme constants and the SHBG binding curve stay attached to the papers that measured them.

Sources