Every supplement brand loves a headline statistic. We use one ourselves: "40% increase in hair count."
So let's do something unusual for a company that sells the ingredient, and actually open up the study behind the number. What was done, what was found, and where the honest limitations sit. If you're the sort who reads methodology sections before believing anything, this one's for you.
The study
Cho, Y.H. et al. (2014). "Effect of Pumpkin Seed Oil on Hair Growth in Men with Androgenetic Alopecia: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial." Published in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
The design matters more than the headline. Randomised means participants were allocated by chance rather than by choice. Double-blind means neither the participants nor the people assessing the results knew who got the real thing. Placebo-controlled means there was a comparison group taking an identical-looking dummy.
That's the gold-standard structure, and it's rare in the natural supplement space, where most "evidence" is an open-label study of twelve people run by someone with a commercial interest.
The setup
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Participants: 76 men with mild to moderate androgenetic alopecia completed the trial.
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Intervention: 400mg of pumpkin seed oil daily, in capsule form, for 24 weeks.
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Control: matched placebo.
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Outcomes: standardised scalp photography rated by blinded investigators, plus phototrichographic hair count measurement (photographing and counting hairs in a defined scalp area). Self-reported satisfaction was also recorded.
Note the outcome measures. They counted hairs. They didn't ask men whether they felt their hair seemed better, which is what a lot of supplement "studies" amount to.
The results
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Mean hair count increased by 40% in the pumpkin seed oil group, versus 10% in the placebo group.
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Blinded photographic assessment rated significantly more of the treatment group as improved.
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Self-reported satisfaction was higher in the treatment group.
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The supplement was well tolerated, with no significant adverse effects reported.
The 10% placebo figure is worth pausing on, because it tells you the trial was measuring something real. Placebo groups in hair studies frequently show small improvements, partly through regression to the mean, partly because men enrolled in a hair study start treating their hair better. The gap between 40% and 10% is the signal.
Why would pumpkin seed oil do this?
The proposed mechanism is 5-alpha reductase inhibition. Pumpkin seed oil contains phytosterols, notably beta-sitosterol, thought to reduce the conversion of testosterone into DHT: the hormone that miniaturises genetically sensitive follicles.
In other words, it plays in the same mechanistic space as finasteride and saw palmetto, at natural-extract strength. It isn't a mysterious folk remedy that inexplicably works. It's a mild inhibitor of the exact enzyme the pharmaceutical inhibits hard.
The study didn't measure DHT levels directly, so the mechanism is inferred rather than demonstrated in this particular trial. Worth being precise about that.
The honest limitations
Here's where most brands stop reading. We won't.
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It's one trial, with 76 completers. That's solid for a natural ingredient and small by pharmaceutical standards, where finasteride's evidence base runs to thousands of men across many trials. One good study is a strong signal, not a settled fact.
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Population specifics. Korean men with mild-to-moderate loss. Results in other populations, and in advanced loss, aren't guaranteed by this data.
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24 weeks tells you about six months. Not six years. Long-term maintenance data doesn't exist for this ingredient the way it does for finasteride.
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Hair count isn't the same as coverage. Counting more hairs in a defined area is meaningful, and it's not identical to the visual density change you'd photograph.
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It's evidence about an ingredient at a dose. Not about any branded product, including ours. Anyone claiming their finished supplement is "clinically proven" on the back of an ingredient study is overreaching, and it's the single most common piece of dishonesty in this category.
What can be said accurately: a well-designed trial found a meaningful effect at a specific dose over a specific period. That's genuinely worth something. It isn't a guarantee, and it isn't nothing.
What we did with this study
We formulated our Hair Growth Softgels with 400mg of pumpkin seed oil: the exact study dose, not a sprinkle to justify the ingredient appearing on the label. Then we paired it with 300mg of saw palmetto, which research shows can help reduce DHT levels by up to 30%, hitting the same pathway from a second angle.
And because the study ran 24 weeks, our 100-day guarantee exists to give the ingredient something close to the timeframe the research says it needs. Judging this at four weeks isn't a fair test of anything. The study didn't measure at four weeks either.
Read the study yourself if you want. It's open access. That's rather the point of citing it properly.