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San Francisco, CA --
For you American men that have been taking daily dosages of saw palmetto with the hope of sleeping through the night without those frequent calls to urinate, only to have your sleep interrupted for a mere trickle…save your money, it's recently been found to be ineffective.
Saw palmetto is estimated to be used by over 2 million men in the U.S. for the treatment of enlarged prostates and is commonly recommended as an alternative to drugs approved by the FDA.
However, a recent study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine , citing a double-blind study of 225 men found that, "over a 12-month period, saw palmetto was no better than placebo in changing symptoms for this condition," said lead researcher Dr. Stephen Bent, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
Enlarge Prostate is a Natural Occurrence to Men over 50
Most men over the age of 50 begin to develop a benign enlargement of the prostate, a walnut-sized gland that surrounds the urethra at the neck of the bladder. Medically, it's called benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). This enlargement is influenced by hormonal metabolism and is not necessarily a precursor to a malignancy.
The burdensome effect is that enlarged prostates decrease the force of the urinary stream and lead to increased urinary frequency and those dreaded frequent visits to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Until this most recent study, many naturopaths have been recommending daily intake of saw palmetto, an extract from the fruit of a small palm tree which grow naturally on the coastlines of the Carolinas to Florida.
Double Blind Study
Researchers said the methods in this most recent double-blind trial, we randomly assigned to 225 men over the age of 49 years who had moderate-to-severe symptoms of BPH to one year of treatment with saw palmetto extract or placebo. The researchers then measured several outcomes which included urinary flow and changes in prostate size.
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