Well Woman Podcast - What is DHEA

DHEA should be used more but is not, because it's not taught. 
DHEA has massive effects on all ages and protects all the organs. It helps prevent the diseases of ageing as well as giving mental and physical resilience and quality of life.
I give details in my book - Well Woman 
What is DHEA?  It is short for dehydroepiandrosterone. 
I call it the quality of life hormone because it is 10-20 times more abundant in the body than any other hormone including vitamin D, progesterone, oestrogen, and testosterone.  DHEA has associated with it a lot of important factors which include less depression and better psychological profiles;  Also, there is lower perceived stress at work.

So, how does this all happen?  As people get older their DHEA declines but also what drains it more is stress and disease. DHEA specifically has many effects on helping to prevent heart disease   We also know that DHEA stimulates bone formation and that is because it turns into progesterone, oestrogen and testosterone which further helps bone. 

When it comes to women, it helps their sexual satisfaction, fertility because it improves the egg, and it also improves vaginal tissue function.  It is particularly good in post-menopausal women who don’t want to have oestrogen.  In fact I will often in older people, just use some DHEA and melatonin to help quality of life. 
  DHEA also helps to prevent, improve and reduce autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.  It also helps in allergy. 
DHEA has a lot of work that it does in the brain DHEA reduces metabolic syndrome, diabetes and helps you lose weight. DHEA helps chronic kidney disease, reduces inflammation and oxidation, and reduces mortality.
DHEA needs to be prescribed carefully by an experienced doctor. 

REFERENCES
1. DHEA Monograph. Alt Med Rev. Vol 6, Number 3, 2001
2. Krzysztof Rutkowski et al. Review Article. Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA): Hypes and Hopes Drugs (2014) 74:1195–1207 
3. Fernand Labrie. Chapter 4 – DHEA, Important Source of Sex Steroids in Men and Even More in Women. Progress in Brain Research. Volume 182, 2010, Pages 97–148
4. Abdulmaged M. Traish et al. Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)—A Precursor Steroid or an Active Hormone in Human Physiology. The Journal of Sexual Medicine. Volume 8, Issue 11, pages 2960–2982, November 2011
5. N. Pluchino, et al., Neurobiology of DHEA and effects on sexuality, mood and cognition, J. Steroid Biochem. Mol. Biol. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsbmb.2014.04.012 
6. Rebecca K Sripada et al. DHEA Enhances Emotion Regulation Neurocircuits and Modulates Memory for Emotional Stimuli. Neuropsychopharmacology (2013) 38, 1798–1807; doi:10.1038/npp.2013.79; published online 24 April 2013 

7. Lennartsson A-K, Theorell T, Rockwood AL, Kushnir MM, Jonsdottir IH (2013) Perceived Stress at Work Is Associated with Lower Levels of DHEA-S. PLoS ONE 8(8): e72460. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0072460 
8. Jean-Pierre Savineau et al. Role of DHEA in cardiovascular diseases Biochemical Pharmacology 85 (2013) 718–726 
9. Edward P. Weiss et al. Dehydroepiandrosterone ( DHEA) replacement decreases insulin resistance and lowers inflammatory cytokines in aging humans. Aging, May 2011, Vol3. No 5
10. Christiaan Lucas Meuwese and Juan Jesus Carrero REVIEW ARTICLE 
11. Chronic Kidney Disease and HypothalamicePituitary Axis Dysfunction: The Chicken or the Egg? Archives of Medical Research 44 (2013) 591e600 
12. Moise ́s E. Bauer et al. Psychoneuroendocrine interventions aimed at attenuating immunosenescence: a review. Biogerontology DOI 10.1007/s10522-012-9412-5 

13. Nikolaos Samaras et al. A Review of Age-Related Dehydroepiandrosterone Decline and Its Association with Well-Known Geriatric Syndromes: Is Treatment Beneficial? REJUVENATION RESEARCH Volume 16, Number 4, 2013&nbs

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, I'm Dr. Francis Pitsillis. What is DHEA? Well it's short for dehydroepiandrosterone. Well that's a mouthful, isn't it? Well dehydroepiandrosterone is a couple of steps away from the mother hormone that comes from cholesterol called pregnenolone. So pregnenolone can go across to DHEA and then across to progesterone. And DHEA then goes off to the male hormones and estrogen, but it can also be turned into progesterone. So I call it the quality of life hormone because it is 10 to 20 times more abundant in the body than any other hormone, including vitamin D, progesterone, estrogen, testosterone. And DHEA has associated with it a lot of important factors which include less depression and better psychological profiles, more enjoyment of life and of leisure activities, better sexual desire arousal and function, less vulnerability to stress when your cortisol levels go up in response to stress, reduced anxiety and fear, reduced post-traumatic stress disorder, better cognition, improved executive function, that's rational thinking that occurs at the front of your brain, better attention, concentration, and working memory. Processes like learning and memory are much better with a better level of DHEA. And it seems to have a stress buffering effect by buffering the cortisol that goes up when you're stressed. And also there's lower perceived stress at work. So how does this all happen? Well, as people get older, their DHEA declines, but also what drains it more is stress and disease. We know that DHEA specifically has many effects on helping to prevent heart disease and atherosclerosis because it's anti-inflammatory, reduces blood vessel tension, reduces atherosclerosis and ischemic heart disease, improves coronary angiograms, and it's been measured that damaging messengers like NF kappa B are reduced. We also know that DHEA stimulates bone formation, and that's because it turns into progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone, which further helps bone. When it comes to women, it helps their sexual satisfaction fertility because it improves the egg and it also improves vaginal tissue function. It's particularly good in postmenopausal women who don't want to have estrogen. In fact, I will often in older people just use some DHEA and melatonin to help quality of life. Indeed, it's better in older women to use DHEA because there is a phenomenon called intracrinology as opposed to endocrinology, whereby the tissues themselves know what they want and they will convert DHEA exactly into what they want, not just the DHEA converting into something else. The benefit of this intracronology is that there's far less risk of getting excessive estrogen or excessive anything that might be damaging to the tissues, and we also know that there are no DHEA receptors in the female uterus. So what else does DHEA do? Well we know that people get older, they lose their DHEA, and they become more immune incompetent and more inflamed. Well, DHEA prevents that. So it prevents the diseases of aging and it prevents the increase of inflammatory messengers from the immune cells, like IL6 and TNF alpha, and it prevents something called lipid peroxidation, which means it stops the fats in your body from going rancid. Now that's a good thing, isn't it? DHA also helps to improve, prevent, and reduce autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. It also helps in allergy. DHGA has a lot of work that it does in the brain. It protects nerves and encourages nerve growth and survival. It helps in the production of neurotransmitters like dopamine, adrenaline, and noradrenaline. It's an antioxidant and an anti-inflammatory in the brain. It has an effect on endorphin release, that's the happy type of natural morphine that you have. It works on several neurotransmitters, including GABA, which calms you, dopamine, which is the pleasure chemical, and glutamine, which helps with energy and excitation. It increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is food for the brain, and it helps to grow the nerves. And it also works on the emotional circuitry in parts of the brain where fear and anxiety cause a lot of influence and then propagate the fear and anxiety. And these areas include the hippocampus and also the frontal part of the brain, which then gives you better emotional control. DHEA reduces metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and helps you lose weight. Now, how do I prescribe DHEA? Well, it's not the first thing I'll prescribe. I need to be careful that that person may not be at risk of breast cancer or prostate cancer because DHEA can turn into estrogen. We have to be very careful. Having said that, there are quite a few studies that have shown that it's safe and effective. I do a blood test and I look at that blood test as a guide and also look at that patient's symptoms. And then if we've tried other things and then we're interested in optimizing the DHEA because the person hasn't improved well enough, then I will use that. And then I can follow it according to their symptoms and how the blood test is going as a guide. So as you can see, something that you may not have heard of has been around a long time, has been used for so many things and has so many benefits, and is relatively safe in the right hands in a person who has knowledge and experience in its use.