BoilerRoom said:
Dr. Proctor,
Didn't you develop pyridine-N-Oxide as Minoxidil-type stimulant based on the assumption that Minoxidil is a vasodilator?? I believe you stated that in the past.
However, recent studies have shown that Minoxidil's effects have nothing to do with vasodilation.
So, now your saying you developed pyridine-N-Oxide with no idea how it works? That seems a little suspicious.
For the record, I purchase prox-n but not for the P-N-O. I have the feeling it's a cheap ingredient to manufacture. I wish you'd base Prox-n more so on Cu/Zn peptides, which have been shown to reverse fibrosis.
You are preaching to the choir. In fact, you are quoting things at me that I discovered and published in the first place. How soon people forget...
BTW, we do not use PNO per se. PROX-N includes NANO, a derivative.
Actually, I have never thought that minoxidil works because it is a vasodialator. In fact, nobody has thought this for a long time. For one thing, there are many vasodialators that don't grow hair. And NO-containing hair growth stimulators that do not dialate blood vessels.
Rather, minoxidil (or perhaps a metabolite) stimulates hair growth and dialates blood vessels because it is a "nitric oxide agonist". That is , it acts like NO, probably on "K-channels".
Nitric oxide ("NO") does a lot of things. Two of these happen to be 1) directly modulating the hair cycle and 2) dialating blood vessels. So minoxidil does both too. But these actions are independent of one another.
BTW, I published a paper on all of this in Archives of Dermatology roughly 20 years ago. The same with the antifibrotic effects of SOD's and SOD-mimetics such as the blue copper peptides, TEMPOL, etc. In fact, I hold the original patents on all of this stuff.
Interestingly, we were using SOD itself to prevent interocular fibrosis in experimental animals in the mid-1970's. Works pretty well too.
Part at least of the antifibrotic effect of SOD's appears to involve the reversion of mature scar cells (myofibroblasts) to their precurser cells (fibroblasts).
As for copper peptides-- I own the primary patents. So I don't need to be reminded of their efficacy. Yes they do work.
However, more recently, I have come to beleive that another class of SOD-mimetics, the nitroxide spin labels such as TEMPOL may work somewhat better. So we are now adding more of these, while still retaining the copper peptides. Every bit helps here.
As for NANO--- like minoxidil, TEMPOL, and PBN, it is technically also an N-Oxide, though the arrangement of electrons around the NO-group is a little different in all these compounds. Its mechanism of action may be like any of these or none of them. One thing does seem to be clear-- NANO is not a vasodiatator, or at least not much of one.
Peter H. Proctor, PhD,MD