Study: Saw Palmetto May Work Best Separately From Pumpkin Seed Oil

Shopping at my local Costco the other day, I saw an interesting product - an all-natural remedy for some symptoms of enlarged prostate. Having heard about the positive benefits of Saw Palmetto on hair loss previously, I picked it up, and decided to give it a try.

Now, you could buy this fine product at Amazon (though, I found it at Costco for $19.99, which may be a better bargain.) However - and this is the true focus of today's post - I want to explore some interesting things about whether Pumpkin Seed Oil and Saw Palmetto work well together, or whether you should try them separately.

This is an important issue because I noticed a large number of "combo-treatments" for enlarged prostate condition (Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia, or BPH) often have the two items together in the same pill.

Let's get down to the facts:

While there haven't been a great deal of studies done about alternative treatments and BPH in general, I did find a very interesting one, which you can find here. Titled "Effects of pumpkin seed oil and saw palmetto oil in Korean men with symptomatic benign prostatic hyperplasia" (yes, a very thorough name), it explored results among the following groups:

Subjects received either sweet potato starch (group A, placebo, 320 mg/day), pumpkin seed oil (group B, 320 mg/day), saw palmetto oil (group C, 320 mg/day) or pumpkin seed oil plus saw palmetto oil (group D, each 320 mg/day).

Since you can of course simply see the study itself by following the link above, I won't repeat all of it, of course. But long story short: from this one study, it seems that not only is taking both treatments at once not more effective than Saw Palmetto alone, combination treatment might actually slow the powers of the Saw Palmetto:

Quality of life score was improved after 6 months in group D, while those of groups B and C were improved after 3 months, compared to the baseline value.

And furthermore,

The MFR [maximum urine flow rate] score of group D, however, was not changed significantly during the treatment period. [Compare, Group A - 14.9%, Group B - a whopping 50%+ improvement]

Keep in mind, this is by no means the final word on the matter of using Saw Palmetto and Pumpkin Seed Oil together at the same time. Group D was, in a small victory, the only group to show lowered PSA scores. Additionally, The subjects of the study were all men who were overweight, elderly, and perhaps most notably, the men in Group D were (on average) all at least 6 years older than the men in the other groups.

However, given the limited data on these types of treatments, this study does seem to provide some important, or at least interesting, insight in regards to one's personal choices in choosing their own supplementation routine. 

Because prostate issues do seem to have a relation to hair loss - Propecia, Avodart, and Proscar are all used to treat both prostate issues and hair loss to some degree - this issue and study should be of at least cursory interest to anyone suffering from either of these problems. Consumers should decide, given the limited data, and this being one of the only studies done in this particular area, whether they want to avoid products that contain both Pumpkin Seed Oil and Saw Palmetto.