DHEA and Pregnenolone

What are everyone’s thoughts on DHEA supplementation? There is no doubt levels decline as we age and lower levels are associated with worse cardiac health outcomes but I also don’t see any overwhelming data that supplementing with it offsets this. I saw a mouse study from 20 years ago showing it doesn’t extend lifespan either, but that could be because mice die less frequently of cardiovascular disease.

Also what’s everyone’s take on pregnenolone? It could also raise DHEA but I don’t know to what extent.

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This is another propping up supplementation rather than fixing things.

Do you think there’s a way to increase levels without supplementing?

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I’ve been taking pregnenolone 100 mg for a couple years. T started out at 4 something and is now 750. I thought the rise was from something else, but this makes more sense. I really didn’t know it would do that.

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Interesting anecdote.

I’m on TRT. My DHEA-S level is around 200-220 fasted in the morning. Seems like I might want to up that a little but I worry it’ll convert to estradiol and DHT, two things I definitely don’t need more of right now.

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Many of the major hormones decline with age.
How do you propose to fix it? There isn’t anything available to my knowledge that reverses aging.
In the meantime, I will be using supplements to increase my hormone levels to that of a younger person.

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Tretinoin partially reverses aging though it comes at the cost of increasing cell divisions.

I had been taking DHEA before bed for a long time (at least maybe 1.5 years). I didn’t realize this, but following a Google search, I found that one side effect of DHEA people have complained about is that it causes nasal congestion. After finding that out, I have decided to stop taking it (at least before bed).

I happen to have had occasional sleeping difficulties due to nasal congestion – resulting in breathing through my mouth periodically (instead of nose, that is stopped-up). I am suspicious that DHEA is the culprit.

Before realizing that DHEA might be the culprit, I had been doing things like lowering the room temperature, adjusting the humidity, NAC, Tylenol, and even occasionally taking a Benadryl pill. Of these, Tylenol and Benadryl seem to work ok, but they’re bad for health; so I only take them very sparingly. Tylenol is bad for the liver – and it inhibits REM sleep – and Benadryl is anticholinergic, which is not good for the brain.

I also have done small amounts of Vicks nasal spray (like a tiny dose of Afrin), but want to stop taking it, since it creates a dependency, whereby after the effects wear off, it causes even worse congestion, requiring another Vicks spray dose to return to normal.

In order to break out of this Vicks cycle, I got some Sudafed 12 hour, and will take that for a few days. It works wonders, but raises metabolism and heart rate (and a nice side-effect is that it gives me a significant boost in energy and strength when at the gym; but it’s bad to keep taking it for more than a week or two).

Could it be a dosage issue? How much are you taking?

I take 25mg both with breakfast and dinner (50mg daily) and like blood DHEA-S level was 409 which is the top of the range. I have no nasal congestion or any other side effects.

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I took 100 mg. These are the Life Extension pills.

That’s a high dose. Your DHEA-S levels will be very supraphysiological at that amount. Maybe try cutting it to 25mg?

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