Florentina Lewis
Fenugreek is one of the hormone plants. Men in particular benefit from the small seeds, as they can increase testosterone levels and promote muscle growth. But fenugreek is also helpful for diabetics because it helps to regulate blood sugar. In lactating women, on the other hand, the plant stimulates the flow of milk.
Fenugreek: A spice with medicinal properties
Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum L.) is an annual plant. It belongs to the legumes (legumes) and is used as an aromatic spice in many parts of the world. For example, ground seeds are an important ingredient in most curry spice mixes.
Due to its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, fenugreek is also used as a medicinal plant, especially in Ayurveda and Chinese medicine – mostly the yellow seeds, more rarely the leaves or the root.
Traditional uses include inducing labor, promoting digestion, and regulating hormonal balance – particularly in men. Fenugreek is often used “only” as a general tonic to stimulate the metabolism and optimize health.
Dietary supplements with fenugreek are used today in particular to improve men’s health (increase testosterone levels), regulate blood sugar levels, and in breastfeeding women to promote milk flow.
How does fenugreek taste?
Fenugreek is sometimes used instead of lovage or celery because it has a similar aroma – but with a distinctly bitter note. However, the bitterness turns into a pleasant nutty flavor when the fenugreek seed is roasted or sautéed in some fat – which is also usually its traditional preparation.
The herb of fenugreek tastes similar to the seeds, only much weaker.
The active ingredients in fenugreek
Like every seed, fenugreek contains many minerals and vitamins. In addition, 28 percent of fenugreek consists of mucilage. It gets its delicate aroma from essential oils.
The secondary plant substances found in fenugreek are primarily flavonoids such as quercetin, apigenin, and luteolin, but also saponins and sapogenins. The latter two are considered the main active ingredients in fenugreek. These are secondary plant substances from the group of triterpenes. The steroid hormones testosterone and estrogens also belong to the triterpenes – a commonality that could already indicate the hormone-like effect of fenugreek.
The most common sapogenins in fenugreek include diosgenin and yamogenin. Diosgenin in particular is an important precursor for the formation of steroid hormones such as testosterone.
Testosterone deficiency: Fenugreek helps
Although both hormones – testosterone and estrogen – are present in both men and women, the distribution of amounts is different. Interestingly, young men’s estrogen levels can be just as high as young women’s, but only if the women are in the early follicular phase, which is the first few days of their cycle. Around ovulation, it then increases up to a factor of 20 before slowly falling again.
Why a man is still a man because his testosterone level is much higher than that of women, so testosterone undermines the female effect of estrogen (and in men, of course, estrogen levels do not increase cyclically).
Since estrogens are not only important for femininity, but u. men also need estrogen for good bone, brain, and cardiovascular health. However, if the testosterone level drops over the course of age or due to illness or stress, a relative excess of estrogen can occur at the same time as the testosterone deficiency, which should be avoided.
Testosterone deficiency: symptoms
Because a falling testosterone level can lead to many undesirable symptoms in men:
- Declining potency and libido
- erectile dysfunction
- Weight gain, especially in the abdomen
- decrease in muscle mass
- Mood swings to depression
- bad sleep
- Tendency to metabolic syndrome (obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, high blood lipid levels)
- Decrease in bone density (not a noticeable symptom, but a possible consequence of testosterone deficiency)
How fenugreek increases testosterone levels
It is known from animal and in-vitro studies that the saponins and sapogenins from fenugreek have androgenic and anabolic effects. Androgen means that the formation of androgens (the male sex hormones) is promoted or their breakdown is prevented. Anabol means that increased protein synthesis, e.g. B. in the form of muscle building is promoted.
Presumably, active ingredients in fenugreek can inhibit aromatase, an enzyme that converts testosterone to estradiol. This way testosterone levels stay high and estradiol levels don’t rise unduly.
Fenugreek as a dietary supplement
As a dietary supplement, fenugreek is available in capsule form. These usually contain ground fenugreek seeds or a fenugreek seed extract. If you take a little more of the ground seeds, it doesn’t necessarily have to be an extract.
An extract, on the other hand, contains the active ingredients in 4 to 10 times higher doses. Particularly high-quality extracts are standardized, which means that they have a guaranteed active ingredient content, which of course is not the case with preparations that only consist of ground seeds.
How much fenugreek do you take daily?
As you can see from the information above, all of the different studies used very different dosages, so there is no one-size-fits-all dosage recommendation when it comes to fenugreek.
In testosterone studies, 500 – 600 mg extract per day was usually used. If fenugreek seed powder (i.e. the ground seed) is used, then one usually takes 2.5 g, although there are also studies with 5, 10, or up to 100 g of fenugreek powder per day. We advise against high doses in the long term due to the hormonal effect, which not everyone needs.
As a dietary supplement, fenugreek is best taken immediately before or with a meal – especially if you want to experience its blood sugar-regulating effects. If your meals vary in carbohydrate content, take the fenugreek with the food with the highest carbohydrate content.
In some studies, the extract was taken after breakfast to increase testosterone levels.
Side effects: Can fenugreek also be harmful?
Fenugreek is generally very well tolerated. Depending on the sensitivity and the amount taken, however, diarrhea or other digestive problems can occur in individual cases.
Since fenugreek can also reduce appetite, those people who already suffer from loss of appetite and who may be trying to correct underweight should be careful with it.
If you already have diabetes and are taking medication, be careful as fenugreek also has a blood sugar-lowering effect and could increase the effects of your medication. One study saw a drop in potassium levels (by 14 percent), dizziness, and frequent urination, so if you experience the latter two, stop taking fenugreek.
Overdoses should of course be avoided. However, their side effects have only been observed in animal studies with excessively high doses that no human would take voluntarily.
If you would like to take fenugreek as a dietary supplement and suffer from a chronic illness and/or are already taking medication, it is best to discuss taking it with your doctor.
Fenugreek has no anticoagulant effect, so taking anticoagulants (blood thinners) should not constitute a contraindication. Of course, you should talk to your doctor first in this case.
Body odor after eating fenugreek
One of the side effects of fenugreek is the fact that the body or sweat odor and also the smell of the urine changes after eating fenugreek. A rather unpleasant smell develops, which is called maple syrup smell because it is reminiscent of the smell of this very syrup.
The smell is also passed on to the infant via breast milk so there have been cases in which it was believed that the child was suffering from the so-called maple syrup disease (MSUD), a very rare hereditary disease in which the urine also smells like maple syrup. However, the disease manifests itself in other symptoms, e.g. B. in poor drinking, vomiting, and comatose states. Therefore, if you are taking fenugreek to increase milk flow, keep this in mind if your pediatrician notices the smell and is concerned.
