Pine pollen. Androgenic, superfood and energy boost

[Hexagon Sun]

I have been looking at doing some anabolic cycle on myself during ages, but reading in deep about that I got some kind of dangerous/alert feelings that prevent me for doing that.

Until 6 weeks ago, when I discovered the pine pollen tincture. It makes everything I wanted and more, with no secondary effects.

Im using it three weeks and I have completely fall in love with pines. Im feeling more confindent, energetic, but serene than ever. I have even lost some weight and define my abdomen and pectorals... That´s something that I was pursuieng years ago and thought it was impossible...

I paste you some info about the pine pollen tincture preperties:

Pine Pollen For Anti-Aging

The benefits of this substance are seemingly endless, as it appears to positively affect all bodily systems, the immune system included. Specifically, the antioxidant-related properties of pine pollen that contribute to graceful aging include:

Increasing SOD levels (superoxide dismutase, perhaps the most powerful and crucial antioxidant the body makes) in the blood.

Increasing glutathione transferees, which help break down and remove xenobiotics (environmental pollutants) and metabolites of oxidative stress (pollutants made by the body) from the body.

Pine pollen benefits overall skin health and smoothness. Androgens are the promoters of youth.
Collagen and elastin (which make up the underlying matrix of the skin) are stabilized and kept from degrading, thereby reducing the cause of wrinkles.
Pine pollen reduces lipofuscin deposits (a brown pigment responsible for age spots, also known as liver spots) in the heart, brain and liver.

Sexual Vigor and Natural Steroids

Pine pollen’s claim to fame is the compelling androgenic effect it has on the body. It contains bioavailable forms of androstenedione, testosterone, DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone), androsterone and a wide variety of other steroidal-type substances (which, unlike synthetic steroids, are perfectly natural)!

These anabolic compounds not only help build muscle mass, they also:

Keep the skin smooth and tight
Maintain a healthy libido
Improve tissue regeneration
Aid in the excretion of excess estrogens and speed up the metabolism to help burn off excess fat

Pine Pollen For Hormone Balance

The phyto-androgens in pine pollen help to counter the effects of estrogen-mimicking substances that we are exposed to more and more in the world. Many modern chemicals found in plastic bottles and food containers, body care products, household cleaners, pesticides and herbicides, pharmaceutical medications, plastics and more can mimic estrogens in our bodies and cause disruptions.

People also get a hefty dose of estrogen from dairy products with added hormones and many phyto-estrogen-containing plants such as soy, hops, yams, nuts and seeds, and other fruits and vegetables. It is easy to see how estrogen can overtake a person’s system these days.

Pine pollen’s estrogen-balancing effect can work for people dealing with hormone- and estrogen-dominance related weight issues, skin eruptions or inflammation, mood disorders, sexual or fertility issues, and for women and men going through hormonal changes as they age.

Women can definitely get the benefits of pine pollen without waking up the next morning with a beard. Excess body hair growth in women (and hair loss in men) is caused by elevated DHT levels (which can be controlled with Saw Palmetto, Licorice and Nettle Root) rather than free testosterone.

If men are exhibiting the outward effects of high estrogen (excess breast tissue, “beer” belly, lowered sperm counts and/or erectile dysfunction), pine pollen has the power to balance these levels.

Pine pollen is not a stimulating drug, and contains no stimulants, though it is more energizing than caffeine. Pine pollen aids in recovery time from exercise and in building lean muscle. You will need less sleep and wake up feeling more refreshed.

Keeping the adrenals in good shape by reducing stimulates and improving energy in a holistic way is a great way to avoid the damaging effects of AGEs and elevated cortisol.

The Many Benefits Of Pine Pollen

Additionally, as a food and supplement, it acts as a:

Lung tonic (boosts the immune system and beautifies the skin)
Kidney tonic (very rejuvenative to the brain, hair, bones and endocrine system)
Liver tonic (stimulates liver regeneration and regulates bile secretion)
Heart tonic (increases cardiovascular endurance, raises blood levels of Superoxide Dismutase and lowers cholesterol)
Spleen tonic (nourishes the muscles and increases metabolism which are both governed by the Spleen organ system in Asian medicine)
Improves your vitality and stamina
Increases energy unlike any other food or supplement can.
Improves muscle tone
Raises low testosterone in men
Combats and reverses the effects of Andropause (male menopause)
Eliminates sexual dysfunction due to low androgen levels
Balances the estrogen-to-testosterone ratio in women and men
Prevents prostate disease
Enhances the metabolic function of the skin and nourishes the hair at its roots
Aids in weight management and promotes weight loss
Improves overall health, greatly promoting immune function
Burns off brain fog and increases attention span and brain function
Nourishes the brain
Dissolves and removes age spots on skin and in the body
Protects the cardiovascular system by improving the heart, blood, and the blood vessels. (Rutin, one of the components of pine pollen, increases the strength of the capillary vessels and helps protect the cardiovascular system).
Is 99% digestible, much more digestible than bee pollen.
(2 , 3)

What Is The Best Way To Take Pine Pollen?

Taking a pine pollen tincture (mixed with alcohol) is said to be the most effective way to get the aforementioned anabolic constituents into the bloodstream without any degradation possibly caused by digestion.

To what degree digestion may damage some of the hormones is hard to say, but holding the tincture in your mouth allows the active compounds to be absorbed sublingually. DHEA certainly does make it through normal digestion without damage, but testosterone and some of the other steroidal type substances seem to be more effective in tincture form.

Pine pollen powder makes a great food that can be eaten in higher quantities than you can normally take in the tincture form. This way you get more of the proteins, vitamins and minerals, but there is still a fairly potent androgenic effect.

What About Side Effects?

There are no known side effects from taking pine pollen, but adolescents (under 20) should avoid using pine pollen powder due to their budding hormone levels. Some people are allergic to pollen (a sign the liver needs cleaning and adrenals need rebuilding), so for those in question, take a tiny bit first and see how you react.

 

[GrymReefer]

Is there any studies to back up these claims?

 

[Hexagon Sun]

I don´t think pharma is interested in rasing consciousness about pine pollen benefits, so I think there won´t be studies.

I concede that the list is a bit too much impressive and probably exagerated. But the trace minerals, the enzimes and the androgens are there without doubth.

For example, the Pinus Sylverstis variete contains 80 ng/g of testosterone, 110 ng/g epitesosterone, and 590 ng/g androstenedione (study).

In my experience it works... could be placebo?. Well, could be... but placebo has defined my abdominals for first time in 15 years, so... more research and anecdotal evidence seems necessary

 

[GrymReefer]

It's oral. I highly doubt the minuscule amount of hormones that are consumed even survive first pass digestion. Nothing has any additional groups attached to increase it's resistance to degradation.

 

[polymath]

To me, this looks like a really naive idea that something associated with plant reproduction would "logically" also affect the human/animal circulating sex hormone levels. Orally active testosterone supplements are usually some kind of esters of natural androgens with long-chain fatty acids.

 

[Hexagon Sun]

No. The way to take the pine pollen is in tincture, sublingual, to avoid the stomach degradation of the androgens. I thought I specified that. My mystake.

 

[Hexagon Sun]

To me, this looks like a really naive idea that something associated with plant reproduction would "logically" also affect the human/animal circulating sex hormone levels. Orally active testosterone supplements are usually some kind of esters of natural androgens with long-chain fatty acids.

In this case, the testo, epitesosterone and androstenedione are identical and the same to human ones. I repost the study:

For example, the Pinus Sylverstis variete contains 80 ng/g of testosterone, 110 ng/g epitesosterone, and 590 ng/g androstenedione (study).
https://www.researchgate.net/public...e_in_the_pollen_of_Scotch_pine_P_silvestris_L

And another related study:

Sublingual testosterone replacement improves muscle mass and strength, decreases bone resorption, and increases bone formation markers in hypogonadal men--a clinical research center study.
http://press.endocrine.org/doi/abs/10.1210/jcem.81.10.8855818

 

[belligerent drunk]

Typically, if in medicine/nutrition something sounds too good to be true, it is. Now, the list of benefits may not be wrong, but they don't include the extent of each. Is it enough if 5% of test subjects experience minor "improved spleen function" to put it on the list?

and a wide variety of other steroidal-type substances (which, unlike synthetic steroids, are perfectly natural)

If something's synthetic, then it can't also be natural. It's like saying "he's dead, which also means he's not alive!". Duh. And anyway, so what? Take your all-natural testosterone daily in gram doses and see how natural you will feel. Natural/synthetic has nothing to do with the compounds' biological properties. The way this reads is your typical "we have a natural cure for everything. It cures AIDS, cancer, homosexuality, and death; of course our product's efficacy has not been thoroughly tested, but it's natural!" - a little exaggerated, but the point remains.

In any case, even if it's placebo, it seems to be doing you some good. My lady is also a sucker for ingestible pine material. I never noticed anything from trying it out, but then again that goes for most miracle cures. As long as it doesn't harm you, keep it up.

 

[Hexagon Sun]

Yeah, I don´t get that natural/synthetic debate too. Well, in fact I prefer synthetic in most of the cases. I didn´t wrote the quoted text, is there just to give an overall view

I don´t know how does your lady take the pine stuff, if it´s edible pollen won´t do mostly anything unless you process it to break the cell wall, so the nutrients can be assimilated. You get it by freeze it first in the fridge.

But, as I said, in tincture/sublingual is where the mojo is

 

[belligerent drunk]

I know you didn't write that yourself, it's just a typical advertisement-type text for the gullible in my opinion, which I'm a little tired of seeing.

She chews some parts of the plant, mostly the young growing thingies (I don't know what they're called, but the pollen you're talking about should be there I think), so technically it's sublingual ingestion.

 

[Foreigner]

I'm a licensed practicing herbalist and there's loads of research on the endocrine supporting aspects of pine pollen.

I've taken it before myself and I found that it made me too horny / aggressive, and had difficulty sleeping. I didn't like it so I had to stop.

I generally give pine pollen combined with other androgenic herbs for people who genuinely have low hormone levels, like middle aged men. It's not really indicated for younger guys. It does have some immune boosting properties but it's hard to justify that as a stand-alone given the hormone altering properties. There are better herbs for immune system anyway.

In a nutshell you don't just go taking androgenics because you want to feel more pumped up. You may not have a testosterone problem. Maybe you're just fatigued, or stressed, or lacking in nutrients, or need a different kind of workout, etc. Why assume it's hormone related. I personally would not fuck with the endocrine system. If you damage it, it's hard to recover. And why assume pine pollen will just magically balance you out. That's not how it works. There are herbs that mimic progesterone and estrogen which can be used to help women in menopause. I won't even GIVE those without blood work showing me the ratio of their hormone imbalance.

This is why herbal medicine gets a bad name. Companies pimp out herbal products, and ignorant consumers take them based on the readups they do. Then it either doesn't work or it goes wrong, and they blame herbal medicine as being bullshit. Know what's missing? An actual herbal practitioner with clinical experience. Not an MD, not some armchair scientist, not a hobbiest -- a practitioner of herbal medicine. If you haven't been diagnosed by someone in herbal medicine and have that herb indicated to you, then you are flying blind. I had to go to school for 6 years to learn proper uses, including 2000 clinical hours. I am still learning every day. Which is why it baffles me that when someone is confused about an herb they go ask people who have no training in herbalism??

I used to live in an area where people gathered pine pollen like crazy and some people used it every day of the year to boost their stamina. These were people living at high altitude, but they had no herbal training to speak of. Then once they stopped they had severe burnout. Such is the risk of overusing tonics -- a principle that herbalists know about, but lay people don't. I think constantly taking one thing non-stop without taking a break or switching it up is asking for trouble. Plant medicines are not pharmaceuticals. They have complex synergistic impacts that vary from person to person, unlike pharmaceuticals which typically target only one or two pathways. Once balance is achieved you're supposed to stop the plant medicine, re-examine the imbalance (if there still is one), and then prescribe something else. Using one herb forever is tantamount to abuse. You end up pushing your system into another kind of imbalance, as evidenced by suddenly stopping an endocrine herb after pushing it on your body for a long time.

A lot of the other claims made in the OP I've never heard of before. Who cares about SOD and glutathione, you can get those from a diet rich in veggies. A salad with beets and kale probably has more of both than a dose of pine pollen. I don't get why people go for the exotic when the every-day thing is just as good or better. I guess whatever sells.

[/rant]