Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Does DHEA Boost Testosterone Levels?

Episode Date: July 12, 2021

Today we’re talking about DHEA supplements. This is a popular supplement because DHEA can influence your hormones. Many people believe if you can enhance your hormones, you can look better, perform better, feel better, and more. That’s true because healthy living can help optimize your hormones, which has beneficial downstream effects. You can also affect your hormonal profile through medications, synthetic hormones, and supplements, but most of the stuff that actually works is only available through a prescription. As far as supplements go, most “testosterone boosters” are junk. However, DHEA can raise your testosterone in certain conditions, which is what I’m going to talk about in this podcast. Timestamps: 7:00 - What is DHEA? 10:29 - What are the benefits of DHEA? 15:16 - What are the side effects of DHEA? 16:23 - What is the effective dose of DHEA? Mentioned on the Show: Books by Mike Matthews: https://legionathletics.com/products/books/ Want free workout and meal plans? Download my science-based diet and training templates for men and women: https://legionathletics.com/text-sign-up/

Hey there, and welcome to a new episode of Muscle for Life. I'm Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today to hear me talk to you from a new location. Because last week, my family and I said so long to the state of Virginia, and thanks for all the fish. And we returned to the nation's moist, dangly bits. We returned to Florida, where I'm from, although we didn't go back to the Tampa's moist, dangly bits. We returned to Florida where I'm from, although we didn't go back to the Tampa Bay area. That's where I grew up. At least most of my childhood went from

California to Florida. Well, went from Florida to California, back to Florida. But we are now in Ocala, Florida, in the middle of the state, horse country. And I'm not a big fan of florida in general i don't like the climate and most of the state is pretty grubby now it has great beaches but i grew up with beaches i lived on the beach when i was younger so the beach just doesn't really do it for me i don't care about the beach at this point now ocala is unlike most of Florida in that it is pretty. There are a lot of farms around here. This is horse country, as they say. So a lot of farms, a lot of green, not too many people, not a lot of traffic, high speed limits. I appreciate that. I can drive like 80 miles an hour to the gym, for example, which is pretty cool. And it has some undulation. It is not just

the flat swamp Everglades, Florida feel. So anyway, I am officially now a rural bumpkin and I love it. I much prefer this setup over the DC suburbs that I lived in. And so what are we talking about today? We're going to talk about a supplement that I am often asked about, and that is DHEA. Now this one is popular because it influences hormones. And everybody knows that if you can positively influence, if you can optimize, or if you can enhance your hormones, you can look better, you can feel better, you can perform better, you can be healthier, and so on. And that is true. There is certainly a kernel of truth there because healthy living helps improve your hormones and that has beneficial downstream

effects. So lifting weights, eating the right amount of calories so you can maintain a healthy body composition, eating a lot of nutritious foods, getting enough sleep. All of these things positively affect your hormones. Of course, they do many other things as well, but the hormonal effects are significant. Now, another way to optimize your hormones or to improve your hormonal profile is to take supplements or take medications or synthetic hormones. And most of the stuff that works is only available with a prescription from a doctor. So for example, if you're going to take testosterone, if you are older and you have low testosterone levels and you have symptoms of low testosterone and you have done everything you can to address it naturally and you just can't get your testosterone production

up to where it needs to be so you can have a good quality of life and you want to start taking synthetic testosterone if you want to get on testosterone replacement therapy trt and that is something that i understand i would say that those are the circumstances where I would look into it myself. Otherwise I would not, I would try to avoid it for as long as I could. But again, if I had done everything I can naturally to bring my testosterone up to a healthy range and it is just not happening, it is probably worse to leave testosterone in a low range than it is to get on TRT because there are a number of negative health effects associated with low testosterone. But anyway, the point is to

get synthetic testosterone, you should work with a doctor. You should work with an endocrinologist, ideally. Of course, you can just buy the stuff online, but I would not recommend doing that because you don't know what you're getting. Now, as far as supplements go, supplements that you can legally buy anywhere online, in supplement stores, in big box retailers, and so forth, most of them don't work. Tribulus Terrestris, for example, which is the most popular, the most best selling testosterone booster, put that one in scare quotes. It does not work. Multiple studies show that while it has promise in rats, it does not have the same

effects in humans. It does not raise testosterone levels in men. And a diaspartic acid is another one that you've probably heard of. And research shows that that actually can work for a couple of weeks. It can significantly improve testosterone production for a couple of weeks and then it stops working. So that's not very useful. And then you have DHEA. That is another one that is often sold as a testosterone booster. And that's not an honest way to characterize it. For example, I have DHEA in one of my supplements called Vitality, one of Legion's supplements, if you don't know that I have a sports nutrition company, but I do not sell it as a testosterone booster. That said, it can raise testosterone levels under certain conditions. And that's what I'm going to be talking about

in this podcast. Also, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my health and fitness books, including the number one bestselling weightlifting books for men and women in the world, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, and Thinner, Leaner, Stronger, as well as the leading flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best body ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes & Noble stores. And I should also mention that you can

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favorite fitness-friendly recipes. So what is DHEA? Let's start there. Well, it's an acronym, of course, and it stands for, this is a mouthful, dehydroepiandrosterone. Dehydroepiandrosterone. And that is a steroid hormone that's mainly produced by our adrenal glands. There are small amounts also produced by our digestive organs, our reproductive organs, and our brain, but most of it's produced by our adrenal glands. And as with other steroid hormones like testosterone and estrogen, DHEA's natural production peaks in our young adulthood. So it's going to be in our 20s and then starts to decline by about 10% each decade until we reach about 70.

And at that point, our DHEA production has bottomed out. Now, synthetic forms of DHEA are created from chemicals found in wild yam and soy. And then those molecules are sold as dietary supplements. And when you take those supplements regularly, they raise your body's levels of DHEA. And scientists have known about DHEA for a while now. It was discovered back in 1934, but they still don't fully understand its role in the body, mostly because it is something that can't be patented. So that means that pharmaceutical giants are not interested in looking into it. They don't want to support research into its potential uses if they can't make a bunch

of money from it. And it's also something that is mostly unique to humans. And so that makes it difficult to study in other animals, which is an important step when scientists are researching new substances. But enough research has been done on DHEA to show that it is a precursor to testosterone and estrogen. So the body uses DHEA as raw material for making testosterone and estrogen. And that's why many people on the internet rave about many of its purported health benefits and why it is often sold as a hormone enhancer or a testosterone booster or an estrogen booster. That would be to women. And that's why many bodybuilders and athletes who are not just on drugs, the stuff that really works, will supplement with DHEA. Now, if you look into the research that is available on DHEA,

it can be kind of confusing because you can find studies that would indicate that it can help with many different types of health conditions, stuff ranging from obesity to coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, lupus, osteoporosis, anorexia, vaginal atrophy. Yep, there is a study that shows that DHEA can help combat vaginal atrophy, as well as erectile dysfunction, depression, Alzheimer's, HIV, and that when you supplement with DHEA, it can also improve your well-being. It can improve your sexual function. It can have anti-aging effects. And all that stuff sounds pretty great. And if I were to just leave the conversation at that, and you were to take my word on the face of it, you would be rushing over to legionathletics.com to buy your vitality. But the problem is, for every study that

supports one of those claims, there's another one that shoots it full of holes, and that can make it hard to know what's true and what's not. So DHEA really is a great example of that scientific axiom, that you can find a study to prove just about anything. That said, when you scrutinize the research, you can winnow out at least a few useful bits of information. For example, studies do consistently show that DHEA does have one valid benefit. It boosts the production of other steroid hormones in the body. Now, that does not mean that DHEA is basically a steroid. I mean, it kind of is if we're talking about the technical definition, but when people hear steroids, they think of the drugs used by bodybuilders and Hollywood actors and fitness influencers,

including some of your favorites. If they look just a little bit too good, they are almost certainly on steroids because those drugs are very powerful. Their effects are very marked in the body, whereas a steroid hormone like DHEA is not nearly as impactful as testosterone, for example, and many of the other drugs used to enhance body composition and performance and so forth. And additionally, if you're young enough to have high levels of DHEA, supplementing with it is not going to have any sort of additive effects. It's not going to produce any meaningful benefits. So it is not a supplement for guys who are in their 20s or 30s, for example, certainly not 20s when they are

in their hormonal prime. And the same thing would go for women. That said, it's a different story in older people. That's where DHEA can shine because as we get older, we have naturally lower levels of DHEA and research shows that when somebody with naturally lower levels supplements with DHEA, it does increase the production of testosterone in men and estrogen in women. Those things can have many health benefits. They can improve bone density. They can lessen cognitive impairment. They can improve strength and muscle gain and body composition. For example, in one meta-analysis that was conducted by scientists at Majori Baleria Hospital, researchers parsed through 25 studies involving almost 1,400 participants between the ages of 23 and 84, and they concluded that supplementing with DHEA

has a significant positive effect on body composition for those of us who are slightly longer in the tooth. That is, while DHEA doesn't seem to do much to help younger people, 20s, 30s, possibly 40s, now we are reaching the age range where supplementation would be appropriate. So it doesn't seem to do much for those people. It clearly helps people who are in their 50s and 60s and beyond. And it helps them gain muscle and lose fat faster, which is great. DHEA is not just for men either. In a study that was conducted by scientists at the University of Connecticut Health Center, the researchers took 99 women in their 70s and early 80s who had low levels of DHEA,, and they also had low bone mass, and they were classified as frail, and they split them into four groups. They had a couple of groups who were taking 50

milligrams of DHEA per day, and one group was doing yoga, the other group was doing chair aerobic sessions, and then you had a couple of placebo groups doing the same types of workouts. And after six months, this was a pretty lengthy study. The researchers found that the women who were supplementing with DHEA gained more muscle, they gained more lower leg strength, and those things helped them perform better on balance and mobility tests than the other groups. And of course, lower body strength, lower body muscularity, lower body mobility, lower body balanceity, lower body mobility, lower body balance.

Those are all very important things as you get older to prevent falls. What you really do not want to happen when you're in your 70s and beyond is you don't want to fall and break something, particularly your hip. Another useful benefit of supplementing with DHEA that has been observed in several studies is it can help improve insulin sensitivity levels. And that's very important because the more sensitive your cells are to insulin, the less likely you are to develop symptoms related to diabetes or develop diabetes itself, type 2 diabetes. And the more insulin sensitive you are, the better your body is going to be able

to process the food that you eat. And that means that you are going to get more from your training. You are going to gain muscle faster. You are probably going to lose fat faster. There is research that shows that higher levels of insulin sensitivity may aid the fat loss process. Of course, fat loss is still driven by a calorie deficit and that will never change, but there is a point of efficiency in terms of your body's fat burning machinery. And it definitely seems to run best when insulin sensitivity levels are high. Now, what about side effects? Many people ask me about potential side effects of DHEA because they hear that it's a steroid hormone. And of course, they just associate that with steroids that bodybuilders use. And we all know

that those drugs have pretty harsh side effects. And on the whole, most research has found that moderate doses of DHEA, the amounts that you would take if you were going to supplement with it, are safe and they produce few to no side effects, which is great. That said, studies do show that large doses can cause some side effects. They can cause oily skin, acne, increased body hair growth, particularly on the face and in the armpits and the pubic region. The merkin can grow, fun word. But those side effects do tend to be rare and temporary and again are associated with large doses, larger doses than you would generally take. One other point of note though with DHEA supplementation is it is not recommended if you are also being treated for a form of cancer that

is made worse by higher levels of sex hormones such as prostate, ovarian, breast, or endometrial cancers. So what is an appropriate dose then? What is the clinically effective dose of DHEA, the amount used in studies that have shown benefits? Well, it's in the range of 500 to 200 milligrams per day. I know that's a wide range, but that's what we have from the research. And so anything between 50 and 200 milligrams per day is appropriate. Between 50 and 100 is probably where most of the benefits are going to occur. It is not likely that going from 100 to 200 milligrams per day is going to double the effectiveness, for example, but that's it. That's the range. And again, age matters. If you're in your 20s or 30s, you don't have any reason to supplement with

DHEA unless you have low testosterone or low estrogen levels, then it may be able to help you. But the vast majority of people in their 20s and 30s do not have such issues. However, if you're in your 40s or beyond, then you should consider it because it is basically all reward and no risk. Now, if you're going to take it, you got to make sure that you get DHEA and not 7-keto-DHEA. That's a totally different substance that does not produce any of the benefits of DHEA. And as far as brands or individual products, you can get it as a standalone supplement. I would recommend checking out Now Foods or Gero. Those are my two go-to brands for standalone ingredients, single ingredients that are not in my Legion supplements. Or you can get DHEA in my Legion supplement, which is called Vitality.

You can check that out over at legionathletics.com. It has DHEA, 100 milligrams per serving, along with clinically effective doses of several other ingredients that make you feel fitter and livelier and calmer, including rhodiola rosea, bilberry extract, and vitamin B12. And again, you can learn about that over at legionathletics.com. Now, one final caveat is if you are a professional athlete and you have to abide by the World Anti-Doping Agency or the United States Anti-Doping Agency protocols, then you don't want to take DHEA. It is classified as an anabolic agent. All right, well, that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you

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