Italianangel
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© The Colgan Institute Updated 17 October 2007
DHEA
Essential for Body Repair and Maintenance Dr. Michael Colgan
Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) is considered a restricted drug in Canada. 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.
Canadian regulations confine DHEA to “special prescription status” with almost zero indications for use in medical treatment. Such senseless restriction deprives the Canadian public of a most important biochemical, non-toxic in any sensible dose, and essential for the prevention of degenerative disease.
I should note that, since submissions to the Canadian government by medical scientists, to remove restrictions on DHEA, it has become widely available in Canada “under the counter.” Law enforcement seems to be turning a blind eye, except for occasional media-invited, high-publicity, bully-boy raids, in which some unfortunate shopkeeper is arrested and fined. The majority of Joe Public, however, is rightly wary of buying a nutrition supplement that it is a crime to possess without a prescription.
It’s high time the science of DHEA became widely known, so that public pressure may restore a little more of what we vote and pay taxes for, that is, government of the people, for the people, by the people. In this articles I will present a little of the science, both to disseminate the information, and in the hope that someone in government may be listening.
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 adrenocorticotrophic hormone from your pituitary. DHEA is the base material used to manufacture all your steroid hormones, including testosterone and estrogen.1
Equally important, DHEA is also your most powerful maintenance signaling 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 until degenerative disease 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 is a primary, health promoting, disease preventing, natural compound.
DHEA Declines with Aging DHEA declines with aging, likely because of slowly accumulating damage to the brain, which causes a consequent decline in the hormone cascade from the pituitary.4 In women, DHEA is the first hormone to decline significantly with perimenopause, at about age 35, thereby starting the downward spiral into the degenerative condition of menopause.5 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. 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.3
For most people, supplementation with 10 – 50 mg of DHEA daily will maintain their DHEA sulfate level within or near the 30-year-old range. At the Colgan Institute, we have used this level of supplementation with our US clientele for the last two decades, with no side-effects and very few contraindications. (DHEA is an over-the-counter supplement in the US.)
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 control of body fat, because overweight is by far the largest single cause of disease in Canada today.6
DHEA and Fat Loss Six people out of every ten in Canada 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 Canadians 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 Canadians would love to know, and will pay handsomely for the merest chance to know.
Health Canada is no help. Despite their general acknowledgement that 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. We teach it in our seminars on Saltspring Island in BC. It works every time. Here I can cover only the role of DHEA in the process.
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 (above 100 mg/dl). Long before that stage, your body is losing control of sugar and fat. For the last 25 years we have used 95 mg/dl as the cutoff for normal fasting blood sugar, though many physicians still allow up to 110 mg/dl. The majority of folk we test show fasting blood sugar above 100 mg/dl and are well on the way to diabetes and overweight. In September 2003, the US Centers for Disease Control finally adopted 100 mg/dl as the official cutoff. That puts the majority of Canadians 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.3 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 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.9 Remember, muscle is the engine that consumes most of your fat. The greater your lean mass the more fat you use as fuel.
To summarize: unless DHEAS levels are kept within the range of an average 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 10-50mg will maintain DHEAS within or near the 30-year-old range in the majority of aging men and women. DHEA supplementation therefore, provides a simple, inexpensive, non-toxic strategy for prevention of disease. In cynical moments, I sometimes think that DHEA is restricted in Canada, because Canadian health policy is more concerned to keep us powerless and controlled than to empower us to control our health.
References:
Stryer L. Biochemistry, 4th Edition. New York. WH Freeman, 1995.van den Beld AW, Lamberts SW. The male climaterium. Prostate Suppl, 2000;10:2-8.Cherniske S. The Metabolic Plan. New York. Ballantine Books, 2003.Colgan M. Save Your Brain. Vancouver: Science Books, 2007.Colgan M. Hormonal Health. Vancouver, BC: Apple Publishing,1996.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. Chiu KM, et al. Correlation of serum L-carnitine and dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate levels with age and sex in healthy adults. Age Ageing, 1999;28:211-216.Yen SS, et al. Replacement of DHEA in aging men and women. Ann NY Acad Sci, 1995;774:128-142.
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