The Fact and Fancy of Fenugreek: Part One

"Announcing a new wonder-herb for the enhancement of bust size;" I have to admit, when I saw this advertisement, I was very intrigued (not for myself, mind you, but for the sake of science). I wondered, how could an herb do this and can women actually see results?

My quest for answers led me to the study of fenugreek, a not-exactly-new herb used by the ancient Greeks, East Indians and Chinese for thousands of years for the treatment of a variety of ailments. In Western cultures, it has revived itself as a breast-enhancer, where it is taken internally or applied as a poultice to the breasts. Its proponents claim it can improve the look of sagging breasts by promoting the growth of breast cells.

Not one to take such statements at face value, I dug deeper into the literature in an attempt to follow the rationale of such claims. Before long, I found myself bogged down in familiar territory: whether herbs containing estrogen-like compounds really work and how.

The usable parts of fenugreek are the seeds and the sprouts which are mashed into a poultice or simmered in water to make tea. The active components of fenugreek are diosgenin (a precursor chemical to estrogen and progesterone) and phytoestrogens (plant chemicals that mimic human estrogen). My last two articles discussed these chemicals in detail and so I'll just summarize their actions here as they relate to breast tissue.

Diosgenin is a known precursor to human progesterone and estrogen. A chemist is able to transform diosgenin into its active form in a laboratory. Our bodies cannot do this on our own. Proponents of fenugreek state it enhances breast size because it contains diosgenin which has estrogenic properties. It doesn't, at least not until a chemist gets hold of it. In its natural form, diosgenin hasn't been shown to impart any estrogenic activity to breast tissue. So how is it supposed to work?

Fenugreek also contains phytoestrogens which mimic human estrogen in the body. The research in this area is even messier. Nobody can seem to agree on how phytoestrogens really function on a cellular level. For the sake of this article, let's pretend that phytoestrogens really do act on breast tissue like estrogen and stimulate the growth of breast tissue when we use it. Isn't that dangerous? When I was in medical school, we were taught that anything that stimulates the growth of breast tissue also increases breast cancer risk. I'm not sure I'd want to take that risk just for a bigger cup size.

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