[janedoe420]

Santorini,

Despite carlaa's unfortunate style of communication, I think she is right. I too read the WebMD article which primarily talks about P. lobata, not P. mirifica. Additionally, I searched out some of the references they used for that article and indeed the studies they cited primarily looked at P. lobata and an isoflavone extract called puerarin. Apparently there is contradictory evidence that isoflavones are mamogenic (promote growth of breast tissue; evidence does not support this action), so it is doubtful that the puerarin actually caused increased growth. My understanding is that the active ingredients we are most interested in are deoxymiroestrol and secondarily miroestrol, which are chromenes. Other bioactive (but not necessarily mamogenic) compounds in P. mirifica include phytosterols, various glycosides and a host of other isoflavones. However, not all species of kudzu have significant amounts of desoxymiroestrol and miroestrol, which occur in the highest concentrations in the species P. mirifica. Deoxymiroestrol and miroestrol are reported to have the strongest estrogenic effect of any known phytoestrogens. These are the ones you want and not all kudzu has them at the same (or even useful) levels.

Kudzu is a kind of umbrella, non-botanical name referring to the entire Pueraria genus which includes numerous species (P. lobata, P. mirifica, P. phaseoloides, P. peduncularis etc.) Calling P. mirifica, kudzu, is technically correct, but then so are all the other species. Claiming that ALL kudzu increases breast growth without specifying the species is to my mind misleading, but probably still technically correct (referring to the kudzu for breast enlargement link.) But, the most efficacious is P. mirifica, which is NOT the same thing as P. lobata or the other kudzu species. For best results, you really need to make sure you are taking P. mirifica. If carlaa is to be believed (no reason not to other than her obnoxious posts; but being obnoxious doesn't necessarily make one incorrect), it also matters whether the PM is farmed or wild, with the farmed cultivars yielding higher amounts of deoxymiroestrol and miroestrol than plants gathered from the wild. This makes sense, as humans have long used agricultural techniques to select for various desirable plant characteristics and creating new cultivars that do not occur in the wild without human intervention.

Of course, your mileage will vary, and you can take whatever herbs you choose. Now you can make a more informed decision about the kudzu available at your local Chinese market.

Hope this helps clear up the PM/kudzu issue.

Did you happen to come across any literature on P. lobata which indicated if it contains, deoxymiroestrol and miroestrol, if so, were the concentrations listed?

I got plenty of hits on pubmed for p. lobata; however, there is nothing mentioning deoxymiroestrol or miroestrol. Searches on just deoxymiroestrol or miroestrol yield a few hits but nothing with p. lobata. If p. Lobata and p. Mirifica are closely related the former might have those active elements in it but with out any literature on the matter it's hard to say. It's also possible that lobata might have different estrogen enhancing components which haven't been identified yet. I might do some more searches after physical therapy.