Background, not super important for my main questions
I have some experience with Gaia's holy basil extract, which was absolutely magical for my issues with stress (often brought on by hypoglycemia in the morning where I can't eat much due to high cortisol but feel like my blood sugar is low). It seems much more noticeable in a very brief period than Ashwagandha (which I've never really felt much from)) even though I took the latter much more regularly.
I've been really struggling with the morning cortisol bump lately and have been feeling kinda overwhelmed, anxious, and generally stressed during the day but most of all a few hours after I wake up. I'd love to get more holy basil since it always seems to melt away my stress better than CBD or anything else I've tried, but I'm worried about the potential for HPTA axis shutdown and/or antiandrogenic effect of ursolic acid, a key component of Holy Basil.
The appeal to nature fallacy is crucial to keep in mind here - just because something is natural doesn't make it safe and I always do my best to scrutinize anything I put in my body carefully. One of the areas that I care about most is my male hormones, most of all androgenic ones like DHT. I already feel like I'm a little worse than average in that department and really don't want to lower them at all further. I'm also very wary of anything that could mess with the HPTA axis long term as I believe that my axis is kinda messed up from my bad eating habits, a lot of stress, and other unwise life decisions I made in the past year.
Start here to get to my main concerns about holy basil
The thing I'm most worried about is long-term HPTA shutdown is based on what I read here at anabolic men, which is a great resource that I'm come to generally trust. The author refers to a study on rabbits that were fed 2g of holy basil per day. Their testosterone levels went off the charts, but this was accompanied by a significant reduction in FSH and LH, which seems comparable to a steroid cycle. Admittedly I believe that that would be a high dose in the human equivalent dose, but still, it seems pretty risky given that I'm considering taking a very strong extract like Gaia's, which has a much stronger concentration of the active ingredients in holy basil than the raw leaf dose. There's a little more information about that same study here at ergo-log, another solid and generally reliable website.
My other concern is based on this study - pdf link, which found that DHT and testosterone were reduced in rats dosed with 5mg/kg body weight for a month. These rats were induced to have benign prostate hypertrophy (BPH), so in their case it might have been best to reduce these hormones. However, I've read that ursolic acid is a potent anti-androgen. I can't find too much information beyond that study to back up that claim. but I did find a study - pdf here that found that testosterone was reduced by 38% in rats given a holy basil extract.
Lots of information I know. Just trying to do a sort of cost-benefits analysis here. I know that holy basil helps my energy and stress levels a decent bit but if it's going to lower my testosterone and/or DHT levels significantly, it's def not worth it. More importantly, I def can't afford anymore HPTA axis issues than what I already have.
Edited by jacobjerondin, 13 March 2019 - 09:19 PM.