I'm reading an ebook I purchased online and the author made the following claim:

Quote:In fact, the largest promoter of aromatization is itself a carotene and vitamin A deficiency, since they also function as lipid-associated antioxidants, so if you want to restore your erectile function rapidly (and health in general), having orange and yellow fruits (including vegetable fruits like squashes and pumpkin) with every meal for several days, weeks, or months can saturate the body with sufficient nutrients to inhibit aromatization and thus restore normal testosterone production.

What do you guys think? Is this true or false?

(10-20-2021 2:50 PM)metaltree Wrote:  I'm reading an ebook I purchased online and the author made the following claim:


What do you guys think? Is this true or false?

Could be, MT. I started taking a men’s multivitamin this year that is supposed to (and it has) help with men’s hormones.

It stresses Vitamin A, Magnesium, Iodine, and Boron....It also does not include calcium.

So the vitamin a piece is something that I hadn’t heard anywhere else until recently.

I think that there's some merit to it.

Quote: Retinol (ROH) (vitamin A1) and all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) significantly inhibited aromatase activity in a concentration-dependent manner in microsomes isolated from JEG-3 human placental carcinoma cells...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20685100/

I think it's worth asking whether artificial Vitamin A1 is as good as natural Vitamin A1.

Imagine that you need a right handed glove.

Taking artificial forms of certain vitamins (including retinol) is like being given a pile of gloves that are both 'left handed' and 'right handed' while the natural form of the vitamin is like having a glove that's only right handed. Having too much of a molecule with the 'wrong' handedness might potentially crowd out the gloves you actually want. So if you read a study its often helpful to know whether the source of the vitamin was natural or artificial so you can figure out if a natural mix behaves the same way as an artificial one. And frustratingly, the studies often decline to give this information.

I was following a similar rabbit hole myself, recently. I've started taking lutein and zeaxanthin (both caretinoids) derived from marigolds. Their particular benefit comes, in part, from their ability to pass the blood brain barrier and be concentrated in brain and retinal tissue. There was a recent innovation in diagnostics, apparently, where a person's retina could be scanned to find out their lutein level. Easy testing led to the suggestion that many Americans might not have enough lutein for optimal health.

Lutein protects cognitive health and eye health.

Lutein might have other effects as well. For example, we could speculate that an orange pigment concentrated in retinal tissue might absorb more blue light and could, theoretically, impact the sleep/wake cycle, for better or for worse.

I've been more motivated to exercise since I've started supplementation, and I think my eyes have been a bit more sensitive to light and maybe there's been a subtle shift in mood as well, though it's hard to tell. I didn't notice this kind of effect with other vitamin A supplements.

I'd be curious what other people's experiences are.