Why Take DHEA? Is It Necessary?

I’ll have to add DHEA-S to my upcoming labs. I’ve only tested it once several years ago when I was off DHEA for about a year (can’t remember why I was off it). Anyway, I did and my levels were 74.6 ug/dL (normal 48.9-344.2). So it would appear I’m low if I don’t supplement. I’ve been regularly taking 25-30mg daily + 50mg pregnenolone for over 3 years, so I should be at a stable level. I think it’s time that I at least benchmark what this level of supplementation does to my DHEA-S levels.

Just to clarify, Quest adjusts their ranges for age and off the top of my head it is around 38-313 for guys over 50 and 106-495 for those over 30.

Thanks! I’ll take note of that. I really dislike when labs report age-adjusted normal values. They should simply report the value and normal age ranges for all ages. I have no intention of having the hormones of a 63 year old male. I strongly support adjusting hormones to more youthful levels. I personally use 20-30 year old males as my targets for most hormones. The difficulty is finding these normal ranges when the lab doesn’t report them in the lab report.

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From a Quest report:
|DHEA SULFATE |343| 70-495|mcg/dL|
DHEA-S values fall with advancing age. For reference, the reference intervals for 31-40 year old patients are:
Male: 106-464 mcg/dL
Female: 23-266 mcg/dL|

They report a range of 70-495 for this 48 y/o guy.

Interestingly, they use 86-690 for under 30.

Agreed, I think healthy 20 something levels are the goal.

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If you want to be in the 20-30 years old range, upper limits are even higher, given a male range of 280-640. You can easily find reference values for every age for a lot of hormones online.

In this case supplement dose could be started at 20mg daily and then blood tests checked. Generally it is suggested to split the administration (10mg+10mg). I am considering to increase my dosage to that soon, but I’m waiting next blood tests to see how I am doing on 10mg a day and I want to experiment with high values because of my mood disorders, not with the idea of optimizing it.
Also, even if high DHEA levels are considered to be a resiliency factor, I do not know if people that are close to the upper value have some particular condition, given that high DHEA is released with stress and could be a marker of some stress related disease. So, being close to 500 instead of 600 should be the safest bet.

And more, I think DHEA should be checked together with cortisol and that their ratio has to be monitored, instead of looking at DHEA alone. But on cortisol tests I do not have suggestions given that it is not as simple as other hormone to be tracked with a simple blood test.

Dosage? Thanks.

Do you recommend it at night or morning or doesn’t matter?

25-50mg daily for men and 10-25mg for women

Not sure it matters. I take mine in the morning.