My apologies for the length of this post. I hope I can add something to this and other threads, based on quite a bit of research on the topic. I do disagree with some comments on this site that Solar or Nature’s Answer PM supplements provide clearly less efficacious supplementation than Ainterol, and it is reasonably likely that they have similar efficacity per tablet. The fact of the matter is that until Ainterol deigns to provide its analyses, which is does do (but declines to post online on a pretext that there is no standard methodology) of miroesterol and dioxymiroesterol, we all have no idea how to compare apples to apples. This makes me suspicious of Ainterol, despite good blog posts in support. The problem there is that it is really easy to create fake posts, as some commenters appear to believe.
Please always bear in mind that there is money to be make in giving people promises and hope, I am one of those. Caveat emptor.
About me.
No, I don’t work for Solgar, Nature’s Answer, Smiths, Ainterol or anybody else. I am like most of you on this thread, I was born a male but wish I had been born female. Bluntly, unless I can develop even bee-sting tits, despite a wonderful sense of fashion, I have a hard time calling myself a girl. I know that is crude, and I don’t want implants. What I want is what think I should have had in the first place. Even A cup is fine. I am older and know that my odds of even this, with standard pharma, are not so good. But it is what I want, and I will pursue it as best I can. I am a real person, and welcome feedback and contact. I am going the NBE route for now, to stay below the spouse’s radar screen. If it fails, I have lost nothing other than time and a few hundred dollars. If it succeeds, then I can finally force a choice. So far, after 2.5 weeks, nothing other than making ED even more apparent. Not that that is a bad thing, something is working on the androgen side-probably licorice, to knock out free Testosterone . Now I need the estrogen part-I am not concerned about the effects on being “male.“
I am not a doctor or trained in health, but I do have a science background and can read and understand papers and distinguish substantiated research from hype. I can also understand when a conclusion is speculative, or based on poor evidence. Overall, in this area, most of the information on PM is weak, but not so weak that you cannot draw some conclusions.
I could, if I have to, provide citations for my statements below. That is a major pain, if you want to do it in a scientific or legal format. If you think I am way off base, I will be glad to send you some references, just don’t expect it overnight, and if you work for a PM company, don’t expect a reply at all.
Clinical Backrground on PM
PM is a natural plant, a variety of Kudzu many of you are familiar with. It grows in a limited area in SE Asia, but in some different climatic regimes. It grows as an invasive in its environments, covering host plants with foliage. It is a VERY LARGE plant, and creates roots that are multiple pounds in size—I saw 70 lbs someplace. It is from this root that your capsules appear. Some sources appear to conclude that middle age PM has the most It takes years to grow this big, so I do express concern about “new strains.” Still, harvesting tubers this size is not such a bad business.
Almost any paper on PM will focus on miroesterol (MR) or deoxymiroesterol (DMR). The plant is unusual for having these substances, and almost any reference will note that the substance is remarkably similar to a prescription HRT, Progynova, whose active ingredient is estradiol valerate. Some commentary believes that it is the DMR that is far more active. I am not sure I believe this reference, but one source believes that MR/DMR is 4 to 8 times more powerful a feminizing agent than EV.
There are other compounds in PM, but many of these are isoflavones, whose estrogenic capacity is a fraction of MR or DMR. That is not entirely decided, but you should, as a consumer, assume that the more MR/DMR you get, the more effective it will be on feminization.
Most of you think that this is natural supplement, and FDA does not regulate it. That is true, and not true. A manufacturer needs to submit a notice of intent to distribute a supplement, and at least provide some information to document that the supplement is not deadly. Anybody remember FenFen? The information submitted by the applicants (I cannot find Ainterol application so far, might not have searched as well as I should) is available from FDA and reputable companies will comply with this notice requirement, even if the lawyers for the company tell them they might not have to do so. The information they send it is interesting, but not definitive.
This Marketplace.
It should come as no surprise that a marketplace not subject to requirements to prove efficacy will make extravagant inferences about efficacy. This is a big, very profitable, poorly regulated industry, and the almighty dollar rules. Some established companies probably have some standards, and believe in fair disclosure about their products. They are here for the longer haul. But others don’t-if you can sell sex or health for a buck, do it.
Ainterol has made a novel decision, which is to put a significanct emphasis on marketing to the TS/TV community. The other makers so far think that they should market to women, as best I can tell. It does not mean Ainterol is bad or good, just be wary.
I do find the entire market upsetting—you should always try to convey accurate and clear information to consumers. But if you did that, many supplements would disappear overnight. That is ethically correct, but not the best way to make the most money.
Variability in PM
All of the literature I reviewed indicates that there is wide variability in the chemical composition of PM. The ranges of active MR and DMR are much lower than you might expect- my references say .002% to .004%. That is not, by itself, an issue-this stuff is pretty powerful as an estrogen complex (no doubt about that in the literature) and it does not take much to turn a man into a woman (that is a longer discussion for this board). Progynova, a Bayer pharma marketed to the TG and HRT community requires 2 mcg to turn you into a girl. It is this that makes me reject the standard “all of this natural crap is too weak to make a difference.” The level of change needed is clearly pretty small.
The issue in PM is what does your PM contain? Do you care about the other stuff in PM beyond MR and DMR? The issues here are many. It is possible, as several posters have stated, to quantify MR and DMR. Not exact, but close enough. You can see the peaks on GCMS. And, the FDA agrees, they regularly look at this kind of data even though Ainterol complains about lack of a standard. That is a dodge, for sure.
If you care about the dose of the apparently effective agents, you should not take Ainterol, because they deciine to provide you with analytical information that THEY HAVE. It is a pretext. They don’t want you to know, but are happy to put on the label “new, stronger strain.” How can you make this claim without data to back it up?
Other manufacturers and, more importantly, the FDA, don’t agree with this dodge.
Every submittal to FDA will discuss the fact that PM efficacy varies depending on where, when and how it was grown. The high number on MR/DMR of .004% was not a fluke, but reflects natural variation in a natural plant. Ainterol has gone on record that it take 10 or so years to grow a root (If you have ever seen Kudzu or other invasives, I don’t believe them). So take some of their statements about new strain etc with a shaker of salt. One commenter on this board correctly noted, GC/MS analysis relies on peaks that correspond to known analyates. There is some issue in how to convert a GC/MS peak into a concentration, but it is not that huge and you can readily compare peak size to get some idea of concentration across brands, if they chose to give you that information.
At risk of having the FBI investigate me, think about this in terms of how pot heads think of marijuana. You can grow stuff that has zero THC and give it a catchy name, or you can grow stuff that might maximize it. But unless somebody analyzes and checks it, the buyer won’t know for a while. So a fair label for PM supplements would be “how much of the magic MR and DMR is there?
Standardization of PM extract
That is exactly the point of many of the more honorable herbal purveyors. If you cannot tell your customers what you are selling them, what is the point? You could be selling them bubblegum and they would not know it. So several PM distributors (not Ainterol, significantly) have made attempts to standardized PM extracts, so you have some clue what you are buying. One of these efforts has actually received a US patent- see the patent for Purestorol. This is significant, it is not easy to get a patent, and you have to put a lot of info out there to get one
This has led to several companies trying to create a standardized extract that has a guaranteed minimum level of MR and DMR. This is a good thing, it allows you to compare brands as long as you believe in the standardization method. On that point, it might be off by some, but not so much to change the end result. Ainterol is not on board, and you all can speculate as to the reasons why. Are those that are on board honest? No way to know, without seeing the data. That is the benefit of an FDA. Plus, even those sort of on board are not really playing straight. You have to diligently research the term “Purestorol” to have some idea what they are talking about. And they don’t make it easy. No surprise that.
The objective of standardization is not to concentrate the extract or make it more powerful, it is to allow comparison across vendors
Dosages.
One commenter on this board suggested that Solgar and Nature’s Answer were weak in comparison to Ainterol. That appears to me not to be correct, but I may be wrong.. The commenter looked at the “Puresterol” dosage of 100 mcg per pill in Nature’s Answer and opined that this was weak compared with Ainterols dosage of 500 mg per tabet. That is NOT the correct analysis.
Ainterol sells a pill of not guaranteed analysis that is 500 mg of PM root. But that is only the first part of the story. An extract is designed to standardized the root, and avoid variability in season, variety and location of the plant, and will be expressed as MR or DMR combined.
Let’s look at the math for a minute-again I might have it wrong so I solicit comment.
Ainterol
• An Ainterol tab is 500 mg of PM root. Ainterol reports a bunch of other info, but declines to report MR and DMR. So we must use the best available info, which is that the root contains .002 to .004 MR/DMR. At best, Ainterol should have 10 mg to 20 mcg active MR/DMR per tab.
• They market to the TG/TS market and the Thai Lady Bois.
• The adjusted MR/DMR intake from a 3000 ppm PM would be 60 to 120 mg MR/DMR
Solgar PM PhytoGen Complex
• Solgar is well established, with pretty strong QA/QC resources. They are subject to US law, and could easily be sued here so they have to be careful.
• Solgar represents that each tablet will have at least 16 mcg of MR/DMR.
• Third parties affirmatively comment on the QA of Solgar, to the extent I read.
• This complex is marketed to women exclusively. But it is rated very high on Amazon, far ahead of its competitors 4.5 Stars.
• Each Solgar tablet is similar to 1 tablet of Ainteral, on a chemical analysis basis. Each will yield 10 to 20 mcgs of of MR/DMR
Nature’s Answer
• They licensed a patented process to create a standardized PM extract, not to concentrate but to provide a uniform standard
• Patent was granted, an impressive feat.
• Standard is not transparent. You have to search to find that the standard means each Tab contains not less that 20 mg MR/DMR. But it is patented and somebody must believe you CAN measure MR/DMR, as does the FDA.
What this should tell you is that Ainterol, Solgar and Nature’s Answer are likely to have similar efficacy, because the dosages are very close in MR/DMR, at least until Ainterol tells us that the new, stronger strain is much higher than has been recorded previously in nature. One caveat is that Nature’s Answer adds DIM. If you believe DIM is an anti androgen, great. But that is in doubt, as one thread on this board discusses in detail. DIM’s anti androgenicity is based on one 2003 paper that gets cited over and over again, but without a review of subsequent research showing a more nuanced effect. Several other commenters noted the very high B-12 level, which could be a concern
Efficacity of Dosage
Many commenters dismiss NBE as a scam or ridiculous notion. Of course, people have been selling fraudulent breast enhancement products for generations, filling a desperate need for hope for the needy.
The problem (or commercial opportunity) is that there are no real clinical trials on PM, comparing dosage and effect on bust size. You can read blog posts until you drop, but you can’t really know without good study. The best I saw was a Japanese paper provided to the FDA which provided a table showing what PM accomplished over about 200 women (I think). It did show that PM had, in a non scientific trial some effect. Probably 2/3rds of users saw some improvement. some dramatic. There may be more out there-I will research it further, but I bet it is around MR/DMR and not PM.
So let us assume that MR/DMR are as effective as Progynova in triggering secondary female characteristics, whose active ingredient is estradiol valerate. One standard dose is 2mg of EV. That means that if MR/DMR is equally effective, you would need 100 tablets of the marketed supplements (20 mcg *100=2mg). This would tend to cause you to believe the NBE non-believers, who assert that natural products are too weak to help.
There are a couple of wholly unsubstantiated references that assert that MR/DMR are 4 to 8 times more effective than EV, though one can only hope they are correct. In that case, we are at a more realistic dosage level, you can see that 6 or 8 tabs might not be as effective as prescription EV, but it should have some effect at the 100 mcg MR/DMR dose. For Nature’s Answer and Solgar, you should expect the recommended dosage not to be in the range a TG might need-they market to women needing help in menopause or other issues, and they need a tweak, not a sledgehammer.
Again, however, the key science is missing. You can only hope for the best. It might work, and it might not, and it is likely to depend on the individual and age (older is worse, always, in this area).
