(and frankly, the story reminds me of another outlandish tale where some man claimed she was stung by a bee and then turned into a woman. Spontaneously. No surgery or hormone therapy resorted to. Which is obviously not possible.)
Don't be too quick to dismiss what might seem an outlandish story, but under more examination is actually quite reasonable. That person apparently had Klinefelter's syndrome (XXY), and the bee sting shifted his hormonal balance and reinforced a preexisting gender identity issue that ultimately led to sexual reassignment surgery.
So while Klinefelter's syndrome is rare (.1-.2% of males), it might explain some of the poster's extreme reaction to saw palmetto, but Werner syndrome fits them better. And if it's the latter, saw palmetto may have nothing to do with it.
Vitamin C has been found to be a good treatment in a mouse model of Werner syndrome.
CONCLUSIONSThe present study is the first to demonstrate that treatment of a mouse model phenocopying many aspects of the human WS with vitamin C reverses most of the phenotypes associated with this syndrome. We also show that such Wrn-mutant mice exhibit a severe premature defenestration of their liver sinusoidal endothelial cells, a phenotype usually associated with old age in different animal models (18). Long-term (since weaning) and short-term (8 wk) treatments of vitamin C reversed the liver sinusoidal endothelial defenestration phenotype. Notably, the major upstream regulator of lipid metabolism PPARα was increased by both long-and short-term treatments. Finally, vitamin C (or ascorbate) increased the mean life span of our Wrn mutant mice. In contrast, vitamin C had no beneficial effect on the health of WT animals. Our results suggest that long-term vitamin C supplementation could have beneficial effects for patients with WS.
Edited by Turnbuckle, 21 September 2014 - 05:04 PM.