Does Horny Goat Weed Work?

[Paul_Chance]

Approved in Europe

I have no idea if Horny Goat Weed works, but the whole problem with the "tested in Europe" line is it becomes very hard to verify - which is why the FDA insists on carefully controlled tests. If you say "validated in double-blind control studies at the Sorbonne, peer-reviewed and published in "Journal de Pharmacie Clinique" November, 2011 it becomes something a layman can actually look up and verify with a little bit of work. If it says "Approved in Europe" its just kind of a toss out. But at the end of the day, if it works for you - more power to you! (And may you not grow hair on the soles of your feet).

 

[njlauren]

I can't speak to the price of Viagra but $180 for six tabs seems high. You have me curious and I may call around to some pharmacies just to learn. I never thought that stuff would be that expesive. No wonder the pharm companies make big profits. I suppose it may depend on the strength and I know the low dose Cialis is something like 5 mg and it goes up to maybe 20 mg. I also read where Cialis stays in your bloodstream for something like 24-36 hours so a tab should work for two days in a row. Have you talked to your doctor about some "free samples"? Maybe he'd be a nice guy, but that wouldn't help in the long term. I see ads in magazines saying "see your doctor for samples."

If the horny goat weed you have has enough icarin in it and it works for you, then you're good to go. If not, maybe a combination of the horny goat weed and lower dose of Viagra or Cialis might be cheaper. I've heard that buying drugs online from Canada can be cheaper but you need to verify that the source you're using for any drug is legit and not some guy in a trailer selling capsules full of floor sweepings. I'd think a call to a pharmacy in Canada or a check with the equivalent of the Canadian Better Business Bureau wouldn't be that tough or that expensive if it gives peace of mind.

Good luck and let us know how it works out.

I took a look at several prescription websites, and they were averaging about 30 bucks/pill for viagra and cialis, the daily cialis was around 240 bucks. Yeah, canadian pharmacies can be cheaper, if you find legitimate ones, although the US government has been cracking down on people getting stuff from canada (and yeah, make sure it is legitimate, I get spam from a so called "Canadian" pharmacy that is from India and I guarantee you they are selling fakes.

 

[njlauren]

Hey,

I have tried the horny goat weed but it wasnt until I started using, pepitos, green oats, damiana and saw palmetto before I went from JUST getting a proper hard-on to actually getting hot and needing sex. A side note here, as proportions I just used equal amounts of all the ingredients and it worked extremely well.


later

The stuff I take isn't pure horny goat weed, it has other herbs in it (gingko is in in, which increases blood flow) and some other herbs.

I will add that a lot of this depends on someone's physiology, my body, for example, is very, very sensitive to certain compounds, including hormones as I found out during HRT (I was taking a 'beginners' dose and my levels were really, really high..other people took twice as much and had trouble getting their levels to the right place). Even with viagra and cialis some men don't do well with one or the other.

 

[njlauren]

The FDA, especially in recent decades, has often become more a trade association for the pharm industry then a serious regulator trying to decide if drugs should be approved, and when it comes to non traditional medicine their primary mission seems to be to protect the pharm companies. Recently a case went to to the Supreme Court on issues with being able to claim something is effective in preventing a disease. The case in question was a green tea supplier claiming that drinking green tea can help reduce the risk of certain cancers. There have been serious studies done that show people who drink several cups of green tea a day can have as much as a 35% reduction in risk of developing certain cancers. The FDA insisted they put on the package labels saying that there is no proof of it doing so, even there there have been large scale studies indicating just that, scientific studies, large scale, that have shown that effectiveness, but because it didn't meet the FDA's requirements for large scale double blind studies (which is not the only way to measure effectiveness), they basically wanted something on the packaging saying it was not proven. The court rules that the FDA had no basis to do that, that there were serious studies and they were arbitrarily limiting free speech.

As far as the safety of products with the FDA it is a mixed bag. Anyone remember the miracle weight loss drug Fen-Phen, that ended up killing people? Or Viox? Or Celebrex? The FDA approved all of them, only to have them pulled out of circulation when serious problems arose, and it turned out the FDA allowed these to be rushed through the approval process even though serious questions were raised in those trials.
Not to mention the FDA has been pretty quiet about a serious issue that is being reported in such "liberal' rags as the wall street journal, that many of the components of drugs are being sourced from India and China, and they are finding (big surprise) that what is being sent is often mixed with bogus crap, but apparently the FDA is letting manufacturers 'self check', and there are serious questions being raised.

As far as anyone claiming an herbal thing works or not, no one on here, especially myself, said that HGW or anything else 'works', what I said was simply is that the stuff I was taking worked from me and other people have reported positive results. We aren't talking eating apricot pits for curing cancer or taking something to cure strep throat, we are talking something where the intended results are known and there may be alternatives to pharm products. After all, Cialis and Viagra don't cure anything, they simply treat the symptoms. It is kind like someone is having trouble sleeping and you recommend taking low dose melatonin and a glass of warm milk rather then taking Ambien or whatever.

In terms of who to buy from, best bet is to try and find people who have some sort of backing. For stuff I take regularly, like Coq10 and red rice yeast, I tend to buy it from Whole Foods since there is someone I can complain to if I find their stuff doesn't work and the HGW product I get from a place that I get my heart health vitamins from that my doctor recommended I use. Not perfect but it is a way to try and go forward.

The other part of the problem is that many doctors and such are firmly tied in with the drug companies, read sometime about the cozy relationship they have with doctors, the kinds of perks and kickbacks doctors get for prescribing certain meds (it is why doctors will have, for example, samples of viagra and not have cialis).

I have used viagra and it did work, though quite frankly I found the herbal stuff worked better for me and was more convenient, since I take them every day, plus I think they have other benefits as well.

One of the things that is ironic is that for years mainstream medicine has pooh poohed naturopathic or herbal remedies, yet if you look what they often come out with, it is repackaged herbal stuff and a larger cost. I just saw an ad for something promoting it lowers levels of triglycerides in the blood, and guess what, it is basically concentrated omega 3 fish oil.........

I tend to agree with Satinlady about something, it would be a foolish person who when faced with illness relies totally on herbal products or whatever to self med, and I would be the last person to do that, if I have something serious, like an infection or whatever, I might take echnicea to help boost my immune response but I also get checked out and take anti biotics off appropriate, it is playing russian roulette with 4 bullets in the gun otherwise. I tried red rice yeast as a natural statin after reading what Dr. Andrew Weil wrote about it and have had my blood levels monitored by my doctor, and it brought my cholesterol and HDL/LDL levels into acceptable range. If it hadn't work or stops working, I would switch to commercial anti statins.

 

[His_pet_slut]

The FDA approves drugs that large corporations can make money off of. There is little of anything else to do with it. If it were all about safety, they wouldn't approve drugs that within a decade are withdrawn from the market because of all the people that die from them or suffer irreversible side effects.

 

[Yourneighbor]

It's kind of cute to me when the "homeopathic" crowd starts arguing with the "FDA is a shill for Pharma" crowd...

Bottom line: they have a name for homeopathic cures that actually work. Know what it is?


Medicine.

 

[amofiga]

Has anyone had any experience with Horny Goat Weed? I would be interested in hearing from ladies and gentlemen as to the effectiveness of this supplement. I've read different reviews but afraid to believe everything on the internet. Thanks!

I wouldn't say that most people are "anti FDA". I think that the reason it was created had a valid purpose and still does. There are a lot of crooks who would just as soon make a buck by selling people ground up drywall as real meds. However, I think that the FDA, as well as doctors in general, should have an open mind about similar agencies and doctors in other "modern" countries. They should be willing to take into account the work and experiences of research in Europe, Canada, Australia, etc in reviewing and accepting meds.

I'm fortunate that one of my doctors has an open mind about supplementing prescription meds with certain homeopathic approaches, foods, or supplements that have some basis in clinical trials. He truly believes that anything that makes you well should be considered whether it comes from Big Pharma or the rain forest. After all, many of the modern meds we use had their origin in nature, be it aspirin from willow bark or penicillin from bread mold. The important thing should be patient health and not pharma profits.

Getting back to the OP's original question, there is indeed significant evidence that the operative element in horny goat weed (icarin) can have benefits for ED by supressing PED-5 enzyme. Unfortunately, the quantity in most horny goat weed on the market is very small. If there were a good concentrated form that was regulated so we knew that we were getting what we paid for, perhaps it could really give Viagra a run for its money. However, the difference is like drinking a gallon of willow bark tea versus one aspirin tablet to stop a headache. Then again, if there were a really concentrated regulated form, it too might cost $30 per pill. Who knows. I'd love to know how much of that is really manufacturing and distribution cost and how much is just greedy profit because they know they have a lot of people by the balls.....no pun intended.

 

[njlauren]

It's kind of cute to me when the "homeopathic" crowd starts arguing with the "FDA is a shill for Pharma" crowd...

Bottom line: they have a name for homeopathic cures that actually work. Know what it is?


Medicine.

If you are going to make snide remarks, at least understand the differences with alternative medicine, that quote is like something a shill for the pharmaceutical industry and the mainstream medical profession might say.

Homeopathy is a concept that you take small amounts of what is basically a poison to cure ailments. Naturopathic medicine is not homeopathy, it is using herbal and other remedies that aren't poisons but rather traditionally seem to have been effective at helping with certain ailments and over time have become somewhat standardized. There are medical doctors and researchers who have worked on this, who routinely use these kinds of treatments, usually they are what are called 'integrative specialists' or complimentary medicine specialists, where they use the best of both forms of medicine. For example, standard medicine can do well against bacteriological infections with antibiotics, but still basically can do little against viruses (the treatments for AIDS, for example, don't cure it, they simply keep it from killing the person). On the other hand, there are things like Echinacea (made from the cone flower) that have been shown clinically to boost immune system response, which is a big thing when dealing with viruses. Ironically doctors often prescribe anti biopics for viral diseases, which besides being ineffective, also wipe out the immune system and also kill off symbiotic bacteria and the like.

In Europe, doctors working with patients with low level depression often put their patients on a regimen of St. John' Wort which has proven effective at helping with the symptoms of low level depression. In this country they automatically are putting you on Welburin or celexa or other anti depressants, that on top of everything else can have horrible side effects, including causing suicidal feelings.

Things once thought to be 'quack medicine', like using Folic acid to prevent heart disease or fish oil as being heart healthy, are suddenly part of traditional medicine (guys in their 40's with a history of heart disease in the family are told to take folic acid and fish oil regimens).

It isn't that Europe is perfect but they don't have the concentration of huge pharma companies we do in the US, and their medical structure for whatever reasons doesn't seem to be as controlled by 'standard' medicine (in part I suspect it is because Europe has a lot stronger firewalls with pharm companies and doctors, in the US doctors are not neutral when it comes to treatments, they get quite a few benefits from the pharm industry through their sales force, those samples they have for example, are generally from one brand of a type of medicine, and doctors get all kinds of junkets, ostensibly seminars to learn about a company's products, that are de facto pleasure junkets, since it seems like these are always held at nice resorts, the doctor gets a full paid trip, often with a guest, etc...).

There are real concerns with alternative medicine, the big problem is that there are no real standards for quality, and that is problematic. The reason is part of the problem we are talking about, that we don't have reasonable standards for those things. Basically what it boils down to is thanks to the influence of the Pharm industry and the fact that the government often sees the FDA as a cheerleader for the US pharm industry. It would be relatively easy for there to be standards in terms of herbal and vitamin treatments that they demonstrate quality control for their products, that their content is tested and so forth, but what the FDA basically has stated time and again is that if they regulate those products it would need to be under the aegis of the pharm companies, and they immediately start doing things like talking about making them prescription only (which means your local MD gets a piece of the action) and exclusive patents and such, which would make them basically as expensive of prescription meds.

About 15 years ago such an attempt was made, they were going to in effect do exactly that and it got beaten back, because people realized it would mean paying 100 bucks a month to simply take a vitamin regimen, and it would also mean if you wanted to try alternatives to viagra or whatever it could cost you just as much.

So basically with supplements they regulated as food products, which means there is no control over quality, and this was done by lawmakers to stop the grab that the pharm industry tried to make. Basically if the FDA has found the product to be generally safe to use (like it would with let's say food coloring), then it can be sold as long as they don't make health claims about it (they can if there is proof of effectiveness, another story). In answer to those who complain about safety, the answer is stuff does get pulled off the shelves if there are found to be safety issues with it, remember that the alternative medicines we are talking about have been sold for many years, which is how they get the 'assumed safe' label, which is quite different then pharm based meds, that by their very nature are totally new and unproven. Aspirin is a good example, it has been out there a long, long time, and is assumed safe because of that. A number of years ago, the FDA banned the amino acid L-Tryptophan, which was used for weight loss, because of a number of deaths (turned out to be bad QC of a particular brand), and they banned over the counter sales of Androsterone that GNC and such used to sell).

The FDA is basically insisting that they run the same trials on herbals they do on new medicines, which is needlessly costly for products that have been used for many generations. Not to mention, that FDA approved trials have often laid an egg in terms of safety, how many prescriptions drugs have been pulled when major health problems happened in a relatively short time?

And then the FDA also has standards that I can only think are designed to reward the pharm companies, the FDA insists on huge trials using double blind test to prove efficacy. While that can separate out what works from the placebo effect and it makes sense with items that are brand new (since they are not in widespread use), where products are out there and being used in relatively large numbers, like Aspirin let's say or St. John's worth, the effectiveness can be statistically tested because the sample is so large, it becomes evident if for example Vitamin C does anything to prevent colds or the like (they use the same methodology when trying to isolate cause of something like a 'cancer cluster' and the like). As I mentioned in a different post,the FDA just got bitch slapped by the courts when it basically tried to say that green tea drinking wasn't effective in helping to prevent certain cancers, when large scale statistical scientific studies have shown just that, and again it was because they insist on large scale trials with double blind participation and so forth, as if that is the only method of checking stuff out, which isn't true when it is already out there being used.

There is a reason why pharm developer products are expensive, in all fairness to them it takes a lot of years of research to develop a new product, to get them through trials, and then get them out there. For every successful thing they develop they have 10 that don't make it, so they need to make as much as they can out of products that do work given the length of the patent they have and so forth. I know people who work in research pharm and they laughed at those adds showing really neat 3d modeling and so forth in developing new meds, 97% of it is trial and error like the old days.

What I do object to is the idea that somehow they have the right to control competition with their prod
cts, that you can use regulation to stop alternatives from being used. Yeah, it might mean, for example, if someone can show that HGW products are as effective as prescription things like viagra that Pfizer might take a hit, but so what, that is known as free markets........what the FDA often is is something when talking about regulation, that it often is done, not to protect consumers, but rather to favor certain market participants, and the FDA regs seem weighted towards protecting the big pharm players from competition from alternatives.