The substantial difference is that Saw Palmetto is a much weaker 5ar-inhibitor with very weak evidence for significantly stopping hair loss, both in studies and anecdotally. Can you show me the studies that show that 320mg of Saw Palmetto has similar results to taking 1mg of finasteride? I'm not well versed enough in the science surrounding Saw Palmetto to say you're wrong without a doubt but this seems very unlikely to me, although I'd be curious to read the studies.
I don't understand the leap of logic you're making here to be honest. You conclude that lower dosages of finasteride can't work, because otherwise Saw Palmetto would work and we would have heard about it by now, but at the same time you also believe that using Saw Palmetto is comparable to taking 1mg of finasteride? Of which the latter has been proven to be highly effective at stopping hair loss?
The majority of users found low dose finasteride to be ineffective? What are you basing this on? The studies show that lower doses (let's say 0.2mg) reduce a comparable level of scalp dht, and improve hair count. Not as well as 1mg daily, but somewhat comparable. And I also know that at least in Japan 0.2mg tablets are available. It may not be effective for everyone but based on the data I see no real basis to conclude that these doses are necessarily ineffective.
And how is the study I cited a 'pro-finasteride' study? You think they forged the results to show that lower doses of finasteride can also be effective? What agenda would that serve? To get people to buy less finasteride? And the findings are questionable because you've personally observed that the 'majority of users' found low doses to be ineffective? I really don't understand how you're arriving at these conclusions.
To cut the long story short, even Merck, the manufacturer of Propecia has recently shut down its website for Propecia:
"Almost all drugs have some side effects. Yet it is unheard of for the manufacturers of these other drugs to just shut down their site one day. Perhaps with all of the pending and upcoming litigation their legal staff has advised them to minimize communication/information about the product until they can vet all of the language written within the warnings and listed side effects."
If Finasteride were even remotely as effective and safe as the Pro-Finasteride studies make it out to be, they obviously wouldn't be in this situation.
Big Pharma has all the money to conduct what seemingly looks like top tier studies to make their treatments look good, but people forget that data/study results can be manipulated, efficacy can be overstated, safety can be overstated. Saw Palmetto does not have this luxury, for obvious reasons, barely anyone would fund a study on a natural supplement.
There have been articles from various big sources including Harvard University, CNN, Drugwatch.com, etc that all speak of the low quality of drugs that have been passed by the FDA, about how Big Pharma keeps in close contact with the FDA whereby such relationship results in the FDA reducing clinical trial requirements and easing the pass rate of drugs.
They also said the 4th Leading cause of death in the US is from FDA approved drugs.
Furthermore, Big Pharma has all the money to easily conduct what seems like gold standard studies to make the their drugs look far better than what they often are. They have the money to fund many of the so-called "independent studies" done on their drugs. Buying off scientists and regulatory members is easily do-able for Big Pharma.
For this reason, thinking that anyone can simply take a study of Finasteride vs Saw Palmetto from the internet and make a direct comparison thinning it's going to be the gospel truth is not going to work. There's way too many reasons why they'd be false Pro-Finasteride information. The financial incentive is there.
Propecia selling for around $100 to $150 per month supply is lot of money when you multiply that by approximately several million users.
And regarding where I got it from that "low doses od Finasteride have been ineffective even though according to those studies that show Finasteride even at low doses inhibits almost the same amount of DHT as in high doses of 1mg", that is mainly from actual people who have used Finasteride from many different forums and hairloss websites. For those that do get benefits from Finasteride, its most often from the higher doses.
