Why DHEA is the Most Important Hormone in Your Body for testosterone

Why DHEA is the Most Important Hormone in Your Body

https://www.drhughwegwerth.com/post/dhea-for-men-and-women-how-it-boosts-testosterone

Host: Dr. Hugh Wegwerth

Are you feeling sluggish, struggling with mood swings, or noticing changes in your body as you age? It could be your hormones!

In this episode, Dr. Hugh dives deep into DHEA, the most abundant hormone in your body and a key player in your health. Learn why keeping DHEA at optimal levels is essential and how it affects everything from testosterone to brain function.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• What is DHEA?
  • The #1 most abundant hormone in your body
  • Why DHEA is more important than testosterone and progesterone
• How DHEA Impacts Your Health
  • Converts into testosterone and estrogen
  • Supports brain health, memory, and mood
  • Helps reduce inflammation
• Aging & Hormones
  • How DHEA levels drop as you get older
  • Why maintaining healthy hormone levels improves skin, muscle tone, and energy
• Testing & Supplementing DHEA
  • Why you must test, not guess before taking DHEA
  • How you can get tested easily at LabCorp for as little as $10
  • How to read your results and where your levels should be

DHEA plays a critical role in your body’s overall function—and you might be missing out on its benefits! Tune in to learn how you can optimize your DHEA levels for better energy, mental clarity, and a higher quality of life.

📌 Have questions? Drop them in the comments, and Dr. Hugh will answer them in a future episode!

👉 Ready to take control of your health? Visit Dr. Hugh’s website to get your DHEA levels tested today!

Transcript

0:01

Hey, community. This is Doctor Hugh coming at you. And I've been getting lots and lots of questions on basically this hormone called DHEA. On my last webinar, I went over some of my findings on DHEA. So what I want to do here is I want to go over really an in depth understanding. So you actually understand how important it is to have DHEA, which is the number one hormone in your entire body. So let's get into this. If you have any questions, drop them in the comments and I'll try and answer them the best I can. Okay, so here we are DHEA the hormone you may need. This is what it looks like right here. And DHEA comes in in a variety of different doses in here. So you can see this is a 25 milligram dose. But DHEA comes in five milligrams ten milligrams, 25mg, 50mg and 100mg. So it's a variety of different doses that people can come in. Come in now. I want to spend some time on this because this is really, really significant. So you can see up here. So relative concentration of saliva steroids. So this is a test through saliva. Now what um what the research shows is that DHEA you can see that way here over on the left. Dhea is the most abundant hormone in your entire body. So here we have DHEA. So we have DHEA right here. And then we have. So we have DHEA right here. And then all the way over here we have testosterone. So you can see that's testosterone. So just look at the graph between DHEA and testosterone. So testosterone is very very small compared to the total output of DHEA in your body. So what does this really mean for you. Well what this means for you is that you want to make sure that your DHEA is optimal, because DHEA day turns into testosterone. So you heard this right. So DHEA here will turn into testosterone. It turns into estradiol or estrogens. So this is a very, very important hormone that we have at an optimal level. It's the most important, most, most abundant hormone in your entire body. A lot of people think, oh, testosterone is progesterone is. Well, it's actually turns out that DHEA is the most abundant hormone in your body and the most important hormone in your entire body. Now, I don't want to get into too much biochemistry, but I do want to kind of go over this so you can see exactly where DHEA is and how this actually works. So in here we have DHEA right in here and then DHEA. What this does is this can turn into testosterone. You can see right here we have DHEA. And then that can turn into testosterone and can also turn into estrogen or estradiol. So if you take this hormone and I recommend that people must, must, must get tested, you just don't want to randomly start taking hormones. You don't want to randomly start taking these things if you don't actually know what your body is. So in this webinar here, I'm going to be going over exactly what my labs are. So you can see that. So this is really the important thing is DHEA turns into testosterone and it also turns into estrogen or specifically estradiol. Now as you know is what the current research shows here is as you age, your hormones start to diminish. And youthfulness is the maintaining or maintenance of your hormones in a normal physiological, um, like level in your body. Here, I just want to kind of show you this right here. So this is the adrenal hormone pathway. You can see right here this is progesterone. And up in here we have DHEA. So da turns in testosterone down in here. And then from here, Da can kind of make a curve and go into the different estrogens. So if you're a male, if you're a female, this can support all your hormones in your entire body. And guess what. You can get DHEA over the counter. You don't actually need a prescription by a medical provider. You can actually get this over the counter. Now, I've been kind of going over this a little bit here when I was talking about age and the hormones and this right here you can see DHEA and this is the levels of DHEA in here. And down in here we have the ages. So clearly as you can age. So let's just say around 40. You can see how this level drastically drops as we age. And hormone maintenance in a normal physiological range is really where health and abundance comes in. If you would look at a older Man or an older woman. And if they have hormones that are robust, right, they're just going to have better skin, they're going to have better muscle, they're going to have a higher quality of life. Because hormones, good quality hormones, equals good quality of life. Now here's some research. Is does DHEA turn into testosterone. And exactly it says here yes, DHEA can increase testosterone levels. So this is a simple way to increase your testosterone. Now again I want to be very very clear on this. You want to test and not guess. If you have any questions, you want to reach out to my website and we can get you tested. It's very, very simple to get this tested. You can go to LabCorp. Labcorp is the basically, it's the lab draw center that's the most, um, popular in the United States. They have over 2000 locations in the United States. So no matter where you're at in the United States, you probably have a draw center within a 30 minute drive, and most people have them within 5 or 10 minutes. So to get DHEA is very simple and it literally costs like $10. Now here what I, what I want to show you right here is what some of the research here is just showing about DHEA and what it can do. So in here this can the DHEA can actually help memory. It can help mood and it can decrease inflammation. So DHEA is is a very very important hormone to have. Here are some other things just when it comes to the brain and neuroprotection. So DHEA DHEA is neuroprotective. It can help protect the brain cells which is really important. Neurogenesis. What the heck is neurogenesis. That's basically the growth of of new neurons. So DHEA can help you grow new neurons. Dhea helps neurotransmitters. Well, what kind of neurotransmitters? Like dopamine, which is your feel good hormone? Also the norepinephrine. Inflammation. Inflammation. So DHEA actually decreases inflammation as well. Dhea and mood swings. Dhea can help, um, mood swings and anxiety. So this is very, very important when it comes to that. Dhea and memory is critical and DHEA in stress. So why I want to bring this to your attention is DHEA helps every single function in your entire body. This is why it's so critical to make sure that we have optimal DHEA in your body. Now here's just another thing. Dhea may help with depression, skin aging, and infertility. Like there's just it just goes on and on. On what DHEA can actually help you with. Now, what I want to do right now is I want you to. What I'm going to do right now is I'm going to go over my individual labs so you can see what my labs look like when I supplemented with DHEA. So what I like to do right now is I want to kind of go over my labs so you can see what my labs were. So in here, um, so these labs were taken December 5th. Now my DHEA here was 69.6. And you can see the range here was 71 to 375. Now, one of the things that I think is really important when it comes to just hormones is when it comes to hormones. You want to be like in the upper 25th tile. So for example, what does that mean? So let's say the lab is 0 to 100. You'd want to be between 75 and 100. That's basically meaning that you're in the 7070 fifth quartile when it comes to the lab. So that's what we're kind of like shooting for. So right here you can see like I'm really really low. And this right here. So I was 8080 1.9. And that is in 1213 2021. Now right now it's basically February of 2025. These labs here were taken December 5th of 2024. And you can see my DHEA has actually gotten lower. Now one thing I did when I also checked my DHEA, I also checked my testosterone at the same time. So what you're going to be seeing right here is this is my testosterone in 2021, which was 740. You can see the range there. Um, 264 to 916. So my testosterone is pretty good. And in here it's actually 783. So with that being said, four years later my testosterone is actually up, which is really good. Currently at this recording I'm 51 years old, but my testosterone here or excuse me, what? My DHEA was very concerning because it was so low. So I started doing a program, um, which which included a variety of different things. Now here, what I want you to pay attention to is here's my previous labs right here, which is 69.6. And this is what you saw right up in here. Now, I took my labs basically December 12th. So we're talking the fifth. We're talking seven days later. Now what I did here is I started supplementing with 50 50mg of DHEA. So I took that that night. And then I went to get this test in the morning. And you can see here I overshot big time my DHEA. So now it's 475. And that is actually lab high. So this is why it's so critical is you don't want to you don't want to test, you want to guess, you want to test. Right. And then from there then you do a a protocol. And then while you're doing the protocol, you actually want to test to make sure that you're in the accurate range. So then I overshot. So then I'm like, okay, well what do I need to do here? So then I started to cut back. You can see my range. This is the lab here. 1212. And these were done on the 17th. So basically we're talking only five days later. So five days later, instead of taking a 50 milligram DHEA, I started taking a 25 milligram DHA. So that basically brought me down by half. Now look at where my labs are right now. You can see here is there 164. You can see the range here. So I'm pretty happy with that. I'm pretty happy with that range of the 25mg of DHA. And then at the same time I also checked my testosterone. So my testosterone is 783 or was 783 five days later. This is only five days later it went up to 838. Now why is that? Because that has to do with the steroid pathway and how DHEA can turn into testosterone. So when it comes to youthfulness, when it comes to just being, well, there's a lot of things that can be done. And one of the things is to make sure and sure and preserve that you have robust hormones that are in the physiological doses. And they've actually showed is like when women and men have aged and they've supplemented with hormones and maintained a more useful status of hormones, their whole entire body functions and heals much better. So again, when you look at these steroid pathways, here is what we're looking at. Here is the DHEA can create testosterone and then it can also create estrogen. So this is why you want to be measuring. Because as a man you don't want to have all this testosterone going going into the estrogens. Right. And as a woman you don't want to be building up too much testosterone. So this is a very, very powerful hormone that you can implement to get well, maintain well and maintain youthfulness. So at the end of day, if you have any questions, please reach out and let me know. And remember is where there is help. There's hope. Take care. This is Doctor Hugh.