Does oral DHEA work?

YoungThor

YoungThor

Well-known member
I’ve heard people claim the bioavailability of oral DHEA is so low that you’d have to take astronomical amounts to get an effective dose in your blood stream. Is this true? What would be an effective “feel good” test base type of dose if you were to use oral DHEA for this purpose? I’ve used transdermal and it worked like a charm but I’m curious as to whether oral is effective at all. Thanks.
 
It’s going to turn into estrogen. 50mg 2x a day is the most you’d want. 200mg+ puts on a dianabol amount of water.
 
Yeah brother, both Old Witch and I keep a bottle of oral DHEA.... just in case our Estrogen levels get too low (which rarely happens to me).
 
Renew1 said:
Yeah brother, both Old Witch and I keep a bottle of oral DHEA.... just in case our Estrogen levels get too low (which rarely happens to me).
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Yeah I try never to crash any of my hormones anymore.
 
For anti-aging purposes, 25-50mg daily is recommended. In no way would I personally add dhea to my regimen if I ever use/used AAS or prohormones of any kind. If I was all natural, I would take it for the positive benefits. Natrol brand on Amazon is a good choice.
 
I tried oral dhea as a test base while on lgd and it didnt work, by week 8 my boss commented “damn your drinking a ton of coffee”.... so the lethargy was real
 
Well if it’s not strong enough to use as a test base for a sarm cycle then I probably have no use for it. That’s fine, I don’t mind using dermacrine.
 
YoungThor said:
Well if it’s not strong enough to use as a test base for a sarm cycle then I probably have no use for it. That’s fine, I don’t mind using dermacrine.
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I haven't used it in years, but I liked Dermacrine.
 
Yet that’s just dhea, how about buying some dhea at Walmart for 5 bucks and then taking an AI with it...? I’m sure that’s going to change it. It’s the basic idea behind dermacrine, I just do not believe for one minute the herbal AIs in it are any good whatsoever.
 
I could have been slightly different years ago. Forma stanzol was. I caught my moms second husband using that stuff long time ago hahaha
 
Old Witch said:
I could have been slightly different years ago. Forma stanzol was. I caught my moms second husband using that stuff long time ago hahaha
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It helped me a lot with lethargy and such when I was taking SD and other "OTC" steroids years ago, and wasn't pinning at the time.
 
Yeah dermacrine for sure works. I can feel it kick in almost instantly. Like I get some kind of boost from it. It’s pretty much just good for all around well-being but won’t do much in terms of gains.

mase1 yeah women can and do take DHEA for a number of reasons.
 
YoungThor said:
Yeah dermacrine for sure works. I can feel it kick in almost instantly. Like I get some kind of boost from it. It’s pretty much just good for all around well-being but won’t do much in terms of gains.

mase1 yeah women can and do take DHEA for a number of reasons.
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What worked for you for gains?
 
I said it didn’t produce gains. It won’t improve strength or muscle mass but it’ll enhance well-being. You’ll feel a bit of a an energy increase and a sense of positivity in a minor way. It’s good for maintaining libido and drive. But it won’t help you pack on pounds of lean muscle.
 
For some odd reason a lot of these lesser known andro companies are putting in dhea in their stacks and acting like they are doing ya a favor ? ...garbage! Here’s one: genetix by breakthrough labs

Invalid Link Removed
 
Rad83 said:
For some odd reason a lot of these lesser known andro companies are putting in dhea in their stacks and acting like they are doing ya a favor ? ...garbage! Here’s one: genetix by breakthrough labs

Invalid Link Removed
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Ick. That looks poopy.
 
I should start a damn supp company. Almost everything out there that isn’t toxic is ridiculously weak sauce.
 
Everyone is going to be different but the whole no oral availability and estrogen thing is all overblown. Try 25 mgs or so and see how it works for you.
 
Oral DHEA can give you serious bone pain after a while. Doesn't happen in everyone, I've heard 50%+ of users experience bone/joint pain taking DHEA, including myself
 
LMuscle said:
Oral DHEA can give you serious bone pain after a while. Doesn't happen in everyone, I've heard 50%+ of users experience bone/joint pain taking DHEA, including myself
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That’s strange. I figured it would help joints if anything since some of the DHEA likely converts to estrogen. It’s not typically considered “dry.”
 
My off cycle cycle is dhea, 7k dhea, and arimistane. Lots of joint pain there. But it works as anticatabolic and quite nonsuppressive. You would have to be taking a lot of all that stuff for quite awhile since 7 keto and arimistane are liver metabolites of dhea, not part of the A/E negative feedback loop. The only thing to worry about would be dhea and that’s a non issue.
 
Old Witch said:
Yet that’s just dhea, how about buying some dhea at Walmart for 5 bucks and then taking an AI with it...? I’m sure that’s going to change it. It’s the basic idea behind dermacrine, I just do not believe for one minute the herbal AIs in it are any good whatsoever.
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lol...you got to be kidding right?

1. pregnenolone
2. google 7,8 benzoflavone
3.trans resveratrol

you need to do some research, lol....dermacrine has been around for a long time for a good reason.
 
Dhea is a waste. Don't bother with it as a test base. If it was remotely effective, there would be some logs of guys running it as such but theres not.

There are much more available bases to be used.
 
I’m gonna start running s4 soon. I have a little dermacrine left but I’m gonna pick up some oral DHEA when it runs out and see if 50mg a day keeps me feeling good. S4 might not be suppressive enough to make me feel ****tty in the first place though. I was gonna stack anavar with the s4 but I think it’d be smarter to do that for a summer run. Anyway, we’ll see if I feel anything from the oral DHEA, but I know for sure the TD version has a positive effect on well-being.
 
“Serum levels of estrone (E1) and estradiol (E2) did not change following DHEA administration by any of the three formulations, while serum androstenedione (4-dione), testosterone, DHEA sulfate (DHEA-S), E(1)-S, androsterone glucuronide (ADT-G) and 3alpha-androstanediol-G (3alpha-diol-G), increased in all cases, the effect on these parameters being more important after oral than percutaneous administration due to the metabolism of DHEA into these metabolites in the gastrointestinal tract and liver.“

Well there you have it. The study goes on to say that DHEA is absorbed equally well as a transdermal drug or an oral drug but it converts more successfully into androgens through oral consumption. It also states that it converts more readily into androgens then into estrogens. That’s good news for us.

But here’s the bad news:

“Most importantly, the present data show that changes in serum DHEA following oral or percutaneous DHEA administration are not a valid parameter of DHEA action since the increase in serum DHEA is at least 100% greater than the increase in the formation of active androgens and estrogens and thus much higher than the potential physiological effects.”

So basically what I’m getting out of that is that the vast majority of the DHEA absorbed doesn’t convert into anything but remains DHEA and is therefore potentially useless. But even so, science still doesn’t understand all the functions of DHEA. Maybe it’s good to have high DHEA even if a lot of it isn’t converting.
 
YoungThor said:
“Serum levels of estrone (E1) and estradiol (E2) did not change following DHEA administration by any of the three formulations, while serum androstenedione (4-dione), testosterone, DHEA sulfate (DHEA-S), E(1)-S, androsterone glucuronide (ADT-G) and 3alpha-androstanediol-G (3alpha-diol-G), increased in all cases, the effect on these parameters being more important after oral than percutaneous administration due to the metabolism of DHEA into these metabolites in the gastrointestinal tract and liver.“

Well there you have it. The study goes on to say that DHEA is absorbed equally well as a transdermal drug or an oral drug but it converts more successfully into androgens through oral consumption. It also states that it converts more readily into androgens then into estrogens. That’s good news for us.

But here’s the bad news:

“Most importantly, the present data show that changes in serum DHEA following oral or percutaneous DHEA administration are not a valid parameter of DHEA action since the increase in serum DHEA is at least 100% greater than the increase in the formation of active androgens and estrogens and thus much higher than the potential physiological effects.”

So basically what I’m getting out of that is that the vast majority of the DHEA absorbed doesn’t convert into anything but remains DHEA and is therefore potentially useless. But even so, science still doesn’t understand all the functions of DHEA. Maybe it’s good to have high DHEA even if a lot of it isn’t converting.
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You fed into one of their lies a little bit. They are saying that oral and transdermal absorption are NOT in fact equal. They are merely stating that DHEA is absorbed in an oral and transdermal route. That oral and transdermal are increased, but not increased equally and that oral trumps transdermal. This is just a tactic in published articles to boost their data a little bit.
 
YoungThor said:
“Serum levels of estrone (E1) and estradiol (E2) did not change following DHEA administration by any of the three formulations, while serum androstenedione (4-dione), testosterone, DHEA sulfate (DHEA-S), E(1)-S, androsterone glucuronide (ADT-G) and 3alpha-androstanediol-G (3alpha-diol-G), increased in all cases, the effect on these parameters being more important after oral than percutaneous administration due to the metabolism of DHEA into these metabolites in the gastrointestinal tract and liver.“

Well there you have it. The study goes on to say that DHEA is absorbed equally well as a transdermal drug or an oral drug but it converts more successfully into androgens through oral consumption. It also states that it converts more readily into androgens then into estrogens. That’s good news for us.

But here’s the bad news:

“Most importantly, the present data show that changes in serum DHEA following oral or percutaneous DHEA administration are not a valid parameter of DHEA action since the increase in serum DHEA is at least 100% greater than the increase in the formation of active androgens and estrogens and thus much higher than the potential physiological effects.”

So basically what I’m getting out of that is that the vast majority of the DHEA absorbed doesn’t convert into anything but remains DHEA and is therefore potentially useless. But even so, science still doesn’t understand all the functions of DHEA. Maybe it’s good to have high DHEA even if a lot of it isn’t converting.
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I call total HOGWASH on this study. My personal experience was the opposite.
I don't have any numbers to cite, but I know when my Estrogen is high. And when I take oral DHEA, it shoots up.
 
YoungThor said:
“Serum levels of estrone (E1) and estradiol (E2) did not change following DHEA administration by any of the three formulations, while serum androstenedione (4-dione), testosterone, DHEA sulfate (DHEA-S), E(1)-S, androsterone glucuronide (ADT-G) and 3alpha-androstanediol-G (3alpha-diol-G), increased in all cases, the effect on these parameters being more important after oral than percutaneous administration due to the metabolism of DHEA into these metabolites in the gastrointestinal tract and liver.“

Well there you have it. The study goes on to say that DHEA is absorbed equally well as a transdermal drug or an oral drug but it converts more successfully into androgens through oral consumption. It also states that it converts more readily into androgens then into estrogens. That’s good news for us.

But here’s the bad news:

“Most importantly, the present data show that changes in serum DHEA following oral or percutaneous DHEA administration are not a valid parameter of DHEA action since the increase in serum DHEA is at least 100% greater than the increase in the formation of active androgens and estrogens and thus much higher than the potential physiological effects.”

So basically what I’m getting out of that is that the vast majority of the DHEA absorbed doesn’t convert into anything but remains DHEA and is therefore potentially useless. But even so, science still doesn’t understand all the functions of DHEA. Maybe it’s good to have high DHEA even if a lot of it isn’t converting.
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My guess:

It may work in persons with a DHEA deficiency -but not when DHEA blood serum levels are in range. Meaning, it could benefit old farts, like me -or menopausal women, like Old Witch
 
hairygrandpa said:
My guess:

It may work in persons with a DHEA deficiency -but not when DHEA blood serum levels are in range. Meaning, it could benefit old farts, like me -or menopausal women, like Old Witch
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The thing about dhea is theres no telling which pathway its going to slide down and what it will create. Personally after about a week of backfilling my dhea pathways (in which it worked effectively and I felt great) it began to just convert to estrogen estrogen and more estrogen. For a lot of people I think this is the case. And its hard to get rid of the problem even with an ai and you stopped using it. It seems to create a cascade of estrogen.

Pregnenolone, now thats a different story for me personally. Best thing ive added to my trt test dose.

The thing about pregnenolone and dhea is there's now way to know how it will react or which hormones they will create once in the body. They are known as "parent" hormones responsible for the production of other hormones in the body including cortisol and estrogen which in high doses is no bueno.

But to answer the original question, yes most studies indicate oral is almost identical to transdermal dhea. I think the td is slightly more effective according to data ive read.
 
Godstrength said:
The thing about dhea is theres no telling which pathway its going to slide down and what it will create. Personally after about a week of backfilling my dhea pathways (in which it worked effectively and I felt great) it began to just convert to estrogen estrogen and more estrogen. For a lot of people I think this is the case. And its hard to get rid of the problem even with an ai and you stopped using it. It seems to create a cascade of estrogen.

Pregnenolone, now thats a different story for me personally. Best thing ive added to my trt test dose.

The thing about pregnenolone and dhea is there's now way to know how it will react or which hormones they will create once in the body. They are known as "parent" hormones responsible for the production of other hormones in the body including cortisol and estrogen which in high doses is no bueno.
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That would support my guessing. The "extra" DHEA in people with sufficient DHEA in blood serum (over the threshold), converts more readily to e2.
Fiddled with Preg and DHEA myself and came to the same conclusion as you. Preg makes me feel good, at a conservative dose. Did not feel anything from DHEA -if e2 got up from it, my AI may have controlled it. So no idea if it upped my e2.
 
Here's a chart of how the hormones work.... You can see all the different possibilities of hormones created by adding either dhea, pregnenolone or even progesterone.Invalid Link Removed
 
Sorry guys, the estrogen comment that was made in the study likely doesn’t apply to us. I was pretty tired when I read that and missed a very valuable fact in the title and first sentence. That study was on POSTMENOPAUSAL WOMEN hahaha. So obviously the conversion rates for them will be far different from ours. However the bioavailability statement should be applicable to us, considering drugs typically have a similar bioavailability among all people. Based on what everyone is saying here it seems that DHEA converts heavily into estrogen for most of you. I didn’t have that problem with dermacrine.
 
I’ve never looked at the data myself, but I remember reading a long time ago about oral vs. TD DHEA. The idea I recall is that because most body tissue in males rely on DHT as the primary androgen, a lot of them will have a decent local expression of 5 alpha reductase. Therefore, if applied to the skin, the DHEA should have more interaction with 5AR and therefore be more androgenic. If true, then TD should definitely be a better idea. I’ve never played with DHEA personally, and I haven’t researched it really, so I couldn’t tell you any more than that.
 
according to examine website both oral and transdermal DHEA have same bioavailability. Conversion to androgens seems to be higher with transdermal though. Here is an extract:

Topical administration appears to have comparable overall bioavailability (percent hitting the bloodstream) when compared to oral ingestion. Topical seems to influence androgens like testosterone more than oral ingestion, and although there are no differences in the short term DHEA cream appears to be better than DHEA gel
 
The women in the study I referenced were taking 100mg a day. That makes me wonder if I should start higher than 50mg a day.
 
I take pregnenolone with my TRT and it works very well to keep my preg levels at the high normal range and DHEA mid range. If I take DHEA on it's own, even at 25mg, I will breakout in a matter of days and retain water.
 
Damn some of you guys are making DHEA sound like the most androgenic compound known to man. I sure hope I can handle 50mg a day because I just picked up some caps of that. I’m pretty sure my dermacrine dose during my dose last cycle was around 75-100mg a day. The one issue I had with that was excessive shedding. I was also on yk11 and lgd but I’m pretty sure the dermacrine is what caused me to shed a little more than usual. It wasn’t too crazy though but it definitely concerned me a bit.
 
So this goes a little bit off topic but it pertains to this thread.

I am planning on using AH which contains DHEA and plan to introduce it mid cycle. My primary compound does not aromatize so I will not be running an AI (but I have on hand). The questions 1) when is FREE test at its peak? 2) when would it be the lowest?
If one was to introduce DHEA (or another test PH) at the time of peak free test levels, we could easily run into gyno and E problems I'm afraid.
If this is too off topic, I'll start a new thread.
 
YoungThor said:
Damn some of you guys are making DHEA sound like the most androgenic compound known to man. I sure hope I can handle 50mg a day because I just picked up some caps of that. I’m pretty sure my dermacrine dose during my dose last cycle was around 75-100mg a day. The one issue I had with that was excessive shedding. I was also on yk11 and lgd but I’m pretty sure the dermacrine is what caused me to shed a little more than usual. It wasn’t too crazy though but it definitely concerned me a bit.
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You sure it wasn't the YK11 that was causing the excessive shedding? I'm just curious as someone else who uses dermacrine and like my hair.
 
danielvp said:
You sure it wasn't the YK11 that was causing the excessive shedding? I'm just curious as someone else who uses dermacrine and like my hair.
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I took the yk11 out midway through the cycle to check and the shedding continued. But it’s really hard to say because I don’t think the shedding would just suddenly stop when you remove the drug causing it. It might take a couple weeks until that side effect reverses. I only left yk11 out for about 2-3 weeks and then added it back in. Maybe it did cause it but my suspicion was that it was dermacrine. I just started an S4, MK677, DHEA cycle about an hour ago so I should know in the next couple weeks whether DHEA does cause me to shed.
 
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