Raw Forest Foods B-Sitosterol (Nettle Root) Caps

Nettle Root is the root, the rhizome, of the common stinging nettle plant, Urtica dioica. Nettle Root has the unique ability to optimize functions of the endocrine system related to reproductive health, maximizing and protecting simultaneously.

Nettle Root can be used as a standalone herb, and Nettle Root should always be used side-by-side when using any herbs, nutritional supplements, or drugs which increase levels of androgen (male sex) hormones, or when there is an issue of an overabundance of estrogen in the body or an underabundance of testosterone. Additionally, for anyone symptoms of estrogen toxicity, Nettle Root is a must.

Nettle Root and Free Testosterone

As a standalone herb, Nettle Root work intelligently to optimize sex hormones. For men, Nettle Root works primarily to keep testosterone active in the body for longer. On average, only 2% of total serum testosterone is free, and only free testosterone is active. The other 98% is bound testosterone and is no longer active. The glycoprotein sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) binds to free testosterone rendering it useless (and setting the stage for a dangerous series of chemical processes). Nettle root works to bind to SHBG, so that testosterone does not. This dramatically increases levels of free testosterone, the kind of testosterone that works positively on the body, the mind, the soul. As Lee Myer, the popular men's health author, states, free testosterone is the type of testosterone "that will supercharge our brains, blood, muscles, sex lives and all the other things we associate with testosterone."

Shbg has an affinity for all sex hormones, and keeping balanced levels of free estrogen is just as important in women as is keeping levels of free testosterone in men. For most healthy individuals, high levels of estrogen and testosterone are damaging only after they have become bound to SHBG,  Once they bind they begin the process of being converted into harmful estrogen metabolites. By keeping these sex hormones unbound, the rates of conversion to harmful metabolites are decreased for men, nettle root even works to unbind testosterone which has already become bound by SHBG, further increasing levels of important free testosterone and further decreasing the conversion to estrogen metabolites.

Nettle root and DMT (and hormonal hair loss)

Unlike the common herb Saw Palmetto, which is usually prescribed both for prostate issues and for hormonal hair loss in men and women, Nettle Root is effective in treating both, without preventing the important conversion of testosterone to DMT. Many researchers view DMT as the active form of testosterone, and testosterone as only a prohormone to DMT. In fact it is 15-30 times more potent than testosterone. Furthermore, unlike testosterone, DMT cannot be converted to the harmful estrogenic metabolite esterdiol. A you will see, DMT actually protects this conversion from happening.

DHT has many functions throughout the body, and to perform these functions, it binds to testosterone and DHT receptor sites, which are found throughout the body, including the brain and the sex organs. In the prostate and in the scalp, nettle root competes with DHT and attaches to the receptor sites, this means that DHT is still available for its important functions, but is not able to aggravate the prostate or interfere with hair growth. Nettle Root directly blocks the enzyme which causes hair loss in cases of androgenic allopecia. Nettle Root can be used as a stand alone herb for treating male pattern baldness.

Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) and Prostate Cancer

Throughout Europe, which has shown a much greater understanding of male physiology and has a much greater track record of treating bhp and prostate cancer than the U.S., nettle root has been used widely to treat BPH. Clinical research in Europe has shown that Nettle Root may be effective at relieving symptoms of BPH, such as reduced urinary flow, incomplete emptying of the bladder, post urination dripping, and the constant urge to urinate.

The symptoms of BPH are caused by the enlarged prostate pressing on the urethra (the tube that empties urine from the bladder). Interestingly, laboratory studies have demonstrated Nettle Root to be as effective as Finasteride (a medication commonly prescribed for BPH) in slowing the growth of certain prostate cells.

Nettle Root has benefits beyond Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH), and has been shown clinically to reduce cancerous cell proliferation in the prostate. A study published in the February 2000 issue of "Planta Medica" found that Urtica dioica root (Nettle Root) extract inhibited proliferation of human prostate cancer cells in the laboratory. This study confirms the many findings that testosterone and DHT are not the causes of prostate issues, but that prostate issues can actually be resolved when testosterone and DHT are brought back to healthy levels, and conversions of male sex hormones into estrogen metabolites is blocked.