Our goal at KEY Nutrition to is provide as much nutritional and other health information as possible to slow down the aging process. We know that diet alone, although a huge factor in the aging process, will not be enough to reach the full benefits of longevity.
Below is a piece written about the hormone DHEA. Dr H Rensburg is a hormone and bariatric specialist who delves in to the medical details of what DHEA does and how we can use this hormone to prolong our youth.
It is essential that you consult your own physician first before making any medical changes.
Essential for Body Repair and Maintenance
Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) is considered a restricted “drug” in Canada. In Australia the TGA treats it as a prohibited import, while anyone can get it through the Pharmacy act prescribed by a qualified medical doctor. (Our eager bureaucrats seem to have 2 different laws for the same thing). This essential natural hormone is contemptuously labeled a “steroid” by some medical bureaucrats. With vague references to its abuse by athletes in vain attempts to improve performance; health officials dismiss DHEA as akin to anabolic steroids. These officials seem unaware that their bodies make DHEA in their adrenal glands every day. It is the most abundant hormone circulating in their blood.
What does DHEA do?
The average human adult replaces over 300 billion cells every day, for growth, maintenance and repair. In order to replace these cells successfully, the body must acquire or make sufficient of each biochemical required to grow them. High on the list is DHEA, made continuously in your adrenal glands, from cholesterol, under the influence of adreno-corticotrophic hormone (ACTH) from your pituitary. DHEA is the base material used to manufacture most of your steroid hormones, including testosterone and oestrogen.
Equally important, DHEA is also your most powerful maintenance signalling system. Without sufficient DHEA, numerous scientists now attest it is impossible for the human body to complete essential daily maintenance. Without sufficient DHEA, damage slowly accumulates degenerative disease until can gain a foothold. 2,3 Remember, no one dies of old age. No one becomes a doddering geriatric because of the passage of time. We age and die from disease or accumulated damage. By inhibiting that accumulation, DHEA a primary health promoting, and disease preventing, natural compound.
DHEA also strengthens the immune system and protects against osteoporosis. In most people is also has a mood enhancing effect.
DHEA declines with ageing
DHEA declines with ageing, likely because of slowly accumulating damage to the brain, which causes a consequent decline in the hormone cascade from the pituitary. In women, DHEA is: the first hormone to decline significantly with peri- menopause. At about age 35, thereby starting the downward spiral into the degenerative condition of menopause. The first obvious indication of DHEA decline is increasing difficulty in controlling body fat.
By age 30, the average blood level of DHEA, measured as the sulfate DHEAS, the form it takes in your blood, falls dramatically by more than 50% from its peak at about age 20 to 25. By age 40 it falls by 50% again. Research suggests that the 30- year-old level is likely the minimum DHEA required for adequate maintenance signaling. For most people, supplementation with 10-70 mg of DHEA daily will maintain their DHEA sulfate level within or near the 25-30-year-old range.
DHEA and Fat Loss
Recent research confirms again and again that this completely non-toxic level of supplementation can ward off numerous diseases.3 Here I will discuss only DHEA’s multiple roles in the control of body fat, because overweight is by far the largest single cause of disease in the Western world today.
Seven people out of every ten in Australia and the USA have allowed themselves to become overweight to the point of disease. The evidence is now overwhelming that even moderate overweight is linked to insulin resistance, adult-onset diabetes, heart disease, stroke, numerous forms of cancer, premature senility and Alzheimer’s disease. 4 Clearly, most Australians and Americans do not have the necessary knowledge to remain slim for life. Yet the immense popularity of low-fat foods,. low-carbohydrate foods, aerobic sweat shops, chub clubs, fat camps, diet fads and fat-loss fancies, is telling evidence that millions of Australians would love to know, and will pay handsomely for the merest chance to know.
Despite their general acknowledgement that excess body fat is the most serious cause of illness today. it is almost ignored by medicine. The field of fat control is left mostly to modern-day carpetbaggers, who fleece the public with fat-loss schemes so blatantly false they would raise a blush on PT Barnum. Despite this deplorable situation. the science of healthy fat loss is well established. (See “Polar Bears and Humming bird a Medical Guide to Weight loss maintenance and Health”)
As we age, almost all of us suffer brain and other organ damage, which reduces the efficiency of insulin in controlling blood sugar. Consequently the pancreas has to put out even more insulin to try to keep fasting blood sugar levels below the diabetic range. Long before that stage, your body is losing control of sugar and fat. For the last 25 years we have used 5.2 as the cut-off for normal fasting blood sugar, though many physicians still allow up to 7.1. The majority of folk we test show fasting blood sugar above 5.4 and are well on the way to diabetes and overweight. That puts the majority of Australians and Americans into pre- diabetes.
It is now well documented, that raising DHEA levels by low-dose supplementation, repairs insulin metabolism, improves insulin efficiency, reduces insulin requirements and lowers blood sugar levels.
And it is well established in human biochemistry that the lower your insulin requirement, the higher the ratio of lipolytic (fat disposing) hormones to insulin, and the greater the efficiency of lipolysis (disposal of body fat).7
Raising DHEA levels also helps to transport body fat from storage in the adipose cells to the muscles for disposal. It does this trick by improving the efficiency of carnitine as the fat transporter.8
DHEA supplementation also works to increase testosterone levels in older men and women, whose DHEA is below that of a 30-year-old. (I should mention here that it has no such effect on young athletes whose DHEA is already at a normal level.) The net result in older people, especially in women, is an increase in lean muscle mass and muscle strength. Among many other benefits, this increase in lean mass enables more fat to be used as fuel in order to maintain the new metabolically active tissue. Remember, muscle is the engine that consumes most of your fat. The greater your lean mass the more fat you use as fuel.
To summarise
Unless DHEAs levels are kept within the range of an average 25 to 30-year-old, all the usual fat loss schemes that manipulate food and exercise, can achieve only short-term results. All are doomed to repeated failure. Repeated failure to control body fat makes fat loss progressively more difficult, and progressively increases body fat levels. Even moderate excess fat is the proven cause of numerous diseases.
Daily low-dose DHEA, in the range of 10-70mg will maintain DHEAS within or near the 30-year-old range in the majority of ageing men and women. DHEA supplementation therefore, provides a simple, inexpensive, non-toxic strategy for prevention of disease.
Fortunately, DHEA is only available on prescription in Australia unlike the USA where it can be bought over the counter for self-treatment. It should be administered under experienced medical supervision and follow up. A person’s hormone levels, age, health and medical condition should every time be considered medically before DHEA is prescribed to any person. It should, in the majority of cases, be accompanied by melatonin. Periodic tests also need to be done to determine if the levels are in the 20–30-year range. At prolonged periods above these ranges, health may be compromised even though it is a very safe substance.
Hormones have a mystique about them and CHT (Corrective Hormonal Therapy) is controversial in certain circles, and you will come across this. The main criticisms are usually from people who did not study, have not been trained in it or have other agendas. In many ways it is political rather than scientific. You will often be told that a certain hormone can cause this or that side effect. All hormones have side effects if it’s too low or too high. CHT (Corrective Hormonal Therapies) only brings hormones to their normal youthful levels and there should be no negative side effects other than beneficial if done properly.
Here are some great reasons to add DHEA to your protocol:
DHEA is a hormone secreted primarily by the adrenal glands. It results in a shift of a catabolic state to an anabolic or protein building state.
1. It reduces cardiovascular risks by increasing lipolyses (decrease visceral fat).
2. It stimulates the immune system, restores sexual vitality, improves moods, decreases cholesterol and body fat.
3. It improves memory, increases energy, and has anti-cancer properties by enhancing the immune system.
4. It is an endocrine precursor to other hormones, prevents immuno-senescence, loss of sleep, osteoporosis, atherosclerosis.
5. DHEA reduces insulin requirement
6. Adrenal hormone anabolic vs. catabolic metabolism 7. Restores immunity
8. Prevents osteoporosis, increases bone density
9. Prevents cancer in lab animals
10. Prevents diabetes & heart disease
11. Decreases visceral fat
12. Improves mood & well-being 13. Improves energy & memory
14. Slows aging process in lab animals
15. Prevents lipid peroxidation antioxidant
16. Endocrine precursor to T.P.E
17. 7-keto DHEA is not a precursor to other HRT = avoid
18. Neurotransmitter (recently discovered)
19. FDA approval for Lupus (Prasterone)
20. Increases muscle mass and decreases percentage of body fat
21. Is a precursor that is converted to testosterone (a male hormone), and is a precursor to oestrogen (a female anabolic hormone)
22. Stimulates bone deposition and re-modelling to prevent osteoporosis
Clinically substantiated uses of DHEA include replacement for:
1. Low DHEA levels
2. Chronic disease
3. Adrenal exhaustion or corticosteroid therapy
4. SLE (Lupus)
5. Improving bone density 6. Improving depression & mood disorders
7. Enhancing immune response by activating T-cells
8. Improving well-being
9. Decreasing cardiovascular risk. Improves cardiovascular status by lowering total
cholesterol and LDL levels, thereby lessening incidences of heart attack
10. Improving erectile dysfunction
11. Anyone over 40
12. DHEA has never been shown to reverse the aging process
13. Nevertheless DHEA is important for preventive medicine
14. DHEA inhibits synthesis of thromboxane A2, reduces plasminogen activator inhibitor, and tissue plasminogen activator – all decreasing platelet aggregation and ischemia.
15. Increases muscle mass and decreases percentage of body fat
16. Accelerates recovery from any kind of acute stress (e.g. insufficient sleep, excessive exercise, mental strain, etc.)
17. Reverses immune suppression caused by excess cortisol levels, thereby improving resistance against viruses, bacteria and Candida albicans, parasites, allergies, and cancer allergies, and cancer.
Dr. Hendrik v Rensburg MD MA. MB.Bch, BAO. (TCD) M.R.C.S. (Eng) LR.C.P. (Lond) Faculty Member of the International Hormone Society (IHS)
Member Endocrine Society and ESA Rensburg Medical Clinic
The +61 8 9444 1766
References:
1. Stryer L Biochemistry, 4th Edition. New York. WH Freeman, 1995.
2. van den Beld AW, Lamberts SW. The male climatenum. Prostate Suppl 2000:10:2-8
3
Chemiske S. The Metabolic Plan. New York. Ballantine Books, 2003
4. 5. Colgan M. Save Your Brain. Vancouver Science Books, 2007 Colgan M. Hormonal Health Vancouver, BC: Apple Publishing.1996
6 7. Colgan M. You Can Prevent Cancer Vancouver, BC. Apple Publishing, 2007. De Pergola G. The adipose tissue metabolism role of testosterone and DHEA. Int J Obesity, 2000,24:Suppl 2:859-863
8. Chiu KM, et al. Correlation of serum L-carnitine and dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate levels with age and sex in healthy adults. Age Aging, 1999,28:211-216. Yen SS, et al. Replacement of DHEA in aging men and women. Ann NY Acad Sci. 1995 774:128-142 9.
10. “Polar Bears and Humming bird a Medical Guide to Weight loss maintenance and health Dr HV Rensburg 2007
11. Dr Michael Colgan 2006
