DHEA Decoded!

Welcome to the Balanced Body Podcast, where Sherri Griggs, owner of Balanced Body Health and Wellness in Omaha, talks to us about health, wellness, and balancing hormones. We are talking with Sherri Griggs, Balanced Body Health and Wellness in Omaha, Nebraska, hormone replacement extraordinaire, and we are going through all the different hormones that you need to know about. So that we can talk about really exciting things going forward. And we're, we're almost there. We're leading into one of the least controversial hormones that's out there.

Right, John. And a lot of people don't even realize it's a hormone.

That, you know what, because I agree with you on that. I just found out that you can buy it on the shelf. And I remember seeing it on the shelf, but I didn't even put it, you know, two and two together. when we were talking DHEA earlier. So—

Yeah. So that's one of the 4 wheels of the car. So if you're joining us for the first time, we'll go through the car analogy. If you're not, you can just turn your brain off here for about 15 seconds because you've heard it now for the 8th time probably. So we have our hormones in our car. DHEA would be one of the wheels. The engine of the car is cortisol because if the cortisol isn't running right, the car doesn't go. Not properly or at all. There's thyroid, which is your transmission, need to be going the right speed, fast enough, slow enough. And then we talked about the 4 wheels: estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and DHEA.

I was just gonna say, what, you know, on, on the very basic level, where does DHEA fit in as a hormone? Because it works with the others, right?

It does. And so if you think about— if we think about androgen hormones, like, have you ever heard of andropause? That's the male version of menopause. Andropause, your androgen hormones are testosterone and DHEA.

Okay.

So DHEA really is actually— it's important. It's kind of the forgotten hormone that I even find a lot of hormone experts don't consider. I spent several years working with another practitioner before I was a specialist myself, and it was never brought up in my treatment.

Oh, interesting.

It doesn't tend to have the same side effects or side effects that are as obvious if it is out of whack as you would with the other 3.

Hmm, I think I remember you talking about this earlier, like sometimes DHEA being, you know, out of sync or, you know, not in line could seem like some of the other ones, right?

That's very true. Yes, because it's also an androgen. So interestingly, women, women can convert DHEA into testosterone. The— our adrenal glands make DHEA. So, even if a woman has gone through menopause, meaning the ovaries don't make any hormones anymore, she could still have a good level of testosterone if she's making enough DHEA and it's being converted. There are women out there that don't need testosterone replacement. I specifically know of a 70-year-old. physician that she does hormone training and tells us that. She said, mine's great, don't need it, never have. Now, men, they also have DHEA, but they do not convert. So regardless, men still need that testosterone replaced. But DHEA does a lot of other things too. It also helps our adrenal glands.

Okay.

Our stress levels, um, if our cortisol level is off, DHEA can help it, help those adrenal glands work better.

Interesting. So if your DHEA is running, then like sort of right, can it sort of suppress your other hormones being off balance? Like it's harder to tell if you've got, you know, less testosterone or more Estrogen in that case?

It could potentially make up for some of the symptoms. So if a symptom of— and not for men, but for women, a symptom of low testosterone, DHEA could potentially help suppress some of those symptoms if they're converting enough of it to testosterone.

All right.

Right? So there's still that conversion. One thing about DHEA in most people, It does decrease with age, just like all of the other hormones. But again, we're all different, so there's no guarantee.

So I don't know if this is true or not. I looked it up and, you know, the magic of Google answered. But does DHEA start dropping after 20? Is that right?

Approximately, yeah, about 25. And that's when our testosterone also starts to drop as well for women.

Oh, okay.

It's about 25. They say it peaks right around then, right around 25, and then it starts to go down steadily.

Okay. So, somebody like me almost pushing 40, it started dropping half my life ago.

Isn't that interesting? And that's why we are— a lot of people are in their best shape if they don't work out, if they don't work out hard, if they don't do anything to make changes in their body, that they were in the best shape of their life in their 20s. Because things do start to break down. And back, you know, I like when I say in the olden days, like that term, you know, 25, you were middle-aged.

That's so wild.

Didn't live past much past 50.

I feel like I was not anywhere near sophisticated whatsoever at 25. Well, by then you should have been married 10 years, had, you know, 8 children and Oh, maybe I was, you know, maybe I was doing those things, but I wasn't, you know, I don't feel like I was making a lot of the right choices either.

Right.

If that makes any sense.

Well, and as we're living longer, you know, to kind of, you know, kind of get distracted a little bit to go off the subject, but you do find that in our age groups at that time, you know, you were thinking about getting married in your 20s and doing things like getting a job and being independent. And now people think about that more in their 30s because we're living longer.

It's true. We do have a lot more time to sort of mess things up when we're younger. So DHEA, is there like a measure? Is there a measurement?

Like, how do you know?

How do you know if it— like, besides the feelings, I guess, you know, it's the same thing that we say across the other hormones, like you can tell because you don't feel as energetic and you don't have the same sex drive and things like that. Is this the same? DHEA's got the same sort of side effects for that, and that's how you kind of monitor it's how you feel?

Not really. That's the thing with DHEA. That's the one— that's why it's the one that gets forgotten, or it's the one that practitioners don't worry about or pay attention to. Because it's one that you don't— you can't really go off of symptoms like you can with the other hormones to say you need more, you need less.

Hmm.

So DHEA is one that we do measure. We measure that in serum, in blood. It can also be measured in saliva and urine. So we generally I like to— because we are in a society that's under so much stress and DHEA can help with stress, I still watch that hormone. And that's why you call me the hormone expert extraordinaire.

Mm-hmm.

Because I watch them all, not just that one. I still check that level. I still supplement that because of the other things that it can do, right? It can help with the adrenal glands, so it can help with stress. Some of the other things it can do is it can help with metabolic syndrome.

Hmm.

So metabolic syndrome, like we were just talking about insulin resistance and collecting some of that fat in your abdomen, high cholesterol, some of those things like that. So it's also been known to reduce inflammation in the arteries. So, DHEA, I think, has yet to come into its own.

Hmm. Well, I mean, you had said that there are some specialists that even leave it off. So, you know, yeah, it's got plenty of room to grow because some people are not even monitoring it.

Right. Well, and studies. So, we had, because of it, not giving you symptoms like you asked earlier, like the other 3 do, obviously more focus has been put on the other 3 hormones because we can replace those and clear up a lot of symptoms and really make people feel better. Where DHEA, not as much. You know, I almost think of DHEA almost as a protective hormone.

Hmm.

That can help protect you against osteoporosis. And if we're talking about inflammation in the arteries, we're talking about insulin resistance, just some of the things that it, you know, the adrenals, that's the big one that I really feel that it's important that I make sure people get their DHEA. It's rare that anybody walks out without a DHEA supplement in some form.

Hmm.

And, and like you said, you've seen it on over-the-counter, so, you know, people can mess with it and do who knows what with it, and it might help them. I don't know that. I honestly don't believe that there is any danger of overdoing it in the cases of DHEA. I was telling you earlier when I was— well, it would have been when I was in my late— my early 30s. I must have read someplace— this is before I knew anything about anything really— and read someplace that DHEA was something you should take. And I took DHEA and it actually made me just— people just really irritated me.

Oh, yeah.

It was an incident. Somebody said something about a friend and I just was just so mad about it. And I realized I would jokingly tell people after that, oh, I can't do DHEA. It makes me mad. It makes me angry. And what probably happened, what probably happened is I had enough of my own. I had enough of my own testosterone and then my body converted that additional DHEA into testosterone that I didn't need.

Okay, I see. And so when you are prescribing it, because you're saying it's, it's helpful when you're trying to balance out your other hormones and getting them in line, is it similar to others where, you know, there's a preferred way in which you'll, you know, use it? Is it like a topical? Is it something that you take in orally? Like, are there benefits to one over the other?

Well, the— some— so yes, some hormones, the different ways that you can take it in. It's DHEA orally. DHEA supplement is fairly cost-effective. It's not super expensive.

Hmm.

So I tell people, if you get something though, as you do with any supplement, make sure it's a clean supplement. You know where it's come from. You read all the other stuff that's in it.

Hmm.

And you get it from a reputable supplier or directly from the company that makes it, right? Because we don't know what happens when it comes from someplace online that who knows what happened in between. But I do have somebody that hates to take pills, so we put her DHEA in her topical testosterone.

Okay. She's just— that's the part of the— that's the fun part of compounding, right? You just throw some extra in there.

We'll just throw a little of this in there. And because DHEA is, again, not one that can be a big symptom or you don't— or how do I put it? It's not one that can cause— really cause symptoms or be the cause of symptoms.

Uh-huh.

I feel comfortable putting it in with the testosterone, right? They're both androgens, okay? I don't like to mix my other hormones together because I might need to, or you might need to, as the person using it, adjust one but don't need to adjust the other.

Hmm.

So those are the 2 that I'll put together. Now, if I had somebody down the road, maybe he's been on their topicals for years upon years, but I still don't because we can absorb things differently. Our skin changes, our absorption rate changes over time. So DHEA is a good one to do as a capsule.

Okay. All right. So there's other ways to take it. If you don't like pills, there's another way. But really the oral DHEA is the one.

It's easy. And I like to do supplements that have more than one thing in them.

Oh.

So I will have a supplement that has its DHEA in it and then other ingredients that will help people to metabolize their hormones in a safe direction. So to help their body metabolize them safely and use them. And I will just give them all that together in, in one capsule.

Interesting. Okay. So that kind of flows into the question I was thinking is like, you were saying, make sure you get it from a clean source. What else is in there? I mean, when you get something that is sort of like an oral supplement and it just says like DHEA on the bottle, what else would they put in there?

Well, some people will put fillers in there and some need to have a certain amount. And this is going to get a little bit out of my expertise, but I do know that you have to be careful that they haven't used Sometimes they need to use— it has to do with the packaging. When they put the ingredient inside the capsule, the machine that does it, the capsule has to be able to go through the machine and slip through and the seal and everything. And so they will use— sometimes they'll use a powder, some will use cornstarch to make sure that they don't use wheat or a type of flour or a wheat product.

Right.

If you have issues with gluten.

I see. Okay.

And that tends to be one of the less expensive things that they can use. So you, if you're somebody that needs to be gluten-free, that's something you have to watch for, that your supplements actually say that, because then in the manufacturing process, they might use something that has gluten in it. Hmm.

Okay.

Right?

Which makes sense. Yes, it does.

Yeah. So I had to think about that. I'm like, do you remember that in a manufacturing process, a company was mentioning that. Capsules are better than tablets because tablets have had to be heated to put them together into a tablet, and heat generally ruins some of the efficacy of a supplement. Huh.

I never knew that.

Yeah. So capsules are generally best. Now, there are some things. I mean, you get some prescription drugs, you get some things like— well, I guess if you think about it, you and I were talking about acetaminophen and ibuprofen, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

You're like, okay, so what about gel caps over the pressed tablet? Well, if I go off of what I know about what it takes to make a pressed tablet, I would logically believe or think that a gel cap would probably be— get you more medication, or at least the medication would be, uh, more potent than in a capsule. Not capsule, but in a tablet that's been Heated and pushed together. And also, when you have a tablet, what holds that together? What do they use to get that tablet to stick together?

I, you know, these are things that I never think of. If I'm ever taking tablets or capsules, I don't think of like what else is in there. I don't think what it, what it's made of. And I probably should. I'm a big, uh, wonderer. Like, I like to wonder about things. But that's absolutely not anything I've wondered about in the past.

Well, maybe that will have to be one of our podcasts sometime. The difference between tablets and capsules and just some of that general information. And like you said, what, what kind of fillers would they put in there? There are— here's a perfectly good example. If you are somebody that has a thyroid issue or thyroid problem, you have low thyroid frequency, Frequently, people will take something called Synthroid. Synthroid comes in a tablet. Synthroid, one of the things they use to form that tablet is gluten.

Huh.

Gluten is a sticky protein. So, which was just completely— I think I don't know if I talked about it in the thyroid podcast, but incensed me when I found that out because as somebody with Hashimoto's thyroiditis, you should not be Taking in gluten and I'd been avoiding it for several years only to find out that my medical provider was giving it to me in my pill.

That is annoying.

So needless to say, I don't take that anymore.

Yeah.

But it's little things like that. How are your medications? How are your supplements? How are they made? How are they manufactured? What's in them? And that when I talk about that DHEA and being able to buy that over the counter, I can't imagine why DHEA would be in anything besides a capsule. But if it is, what else is in there with it?

Hmm.

And when I say reputable, I think about a, like, a nutrition store that if something happened, they probably have to worry about their reputation. Think about, for instance, there is a company that I get supplements from called Designs for Health. And as you know, a lot of these companies will also sell on Amazon.

Hmm.

And what the rep told me about their company specifically, she said, we do that. But if you look and see who the supplier is, It's us. Those supplements come directly from our warehouse to, to the shopper.

Okay.

There is nobody in between. They don't go and sit in Amazon's warehouse. They don't go and sit in somebody else's warehouse. They don't go and sit in, you know, Nutrition Super Nutrition Store. I made that name up. So that they can ship it out to you.

Mm-hmm.

So, one of the things she pointed out to me that I wasn't aware of— now, it's still less expensive to get it from me because they don't, you know, they respect their prescribers. But if somebody wanted to and we're talking and they said, hey, I'm going to go to Amazon and get a DHEA, I would say, you know, I can tell you Designs for Health. It was a good product. I know it's good, and I know it will come directly from them. So you don't have to worry about anything happening to it in between.

Hmm. Well, that's it. And that's, that's a big part about, you know, why call and talk to Sherri, honestly, like throughout this entire process, talking about each hormone and how to tell if you are lacking or You know, what are some of the symptoms or some of the negative effects? I mean, at every single point in time, to me, it just screams. That's why it's important to talk to a specialist that knows what's going on with hormones. What are you watching for? How do you monitor it? What are you gonna do to supplement? Like, it's a whole journey in and of itself. It's like a, it's like a side quest to make sure everything is still in line.

So, it is, and it's— it is a specialty. It is something that I wouldn't expect your primary care to know anything about. For ladies, I wouldn't expect your OB-GYN to know about it because it is its very own specialty. Someday, hopefully, it will be even more recognized as a specialty.

Mm-hmm.

And at that time, then, It will probably also be a little bit more— what do I want to say? Controlled, I guess.

Hmm.

We get, as I made the comment to you, the provider that I went to, wonderful, smart person, but didn't address my DHEA. And when I asked one of her fellow practitioners, how come you guys don't do that? That practitioner said, "Well, you know where we used to work? We always did. I have no idea why she stopped doing it." Hmm. Interesting.

I mean, it could not to speak poorly about anybody, but could it have just been that it was maybe they were dyslexic and they didn't want to keep saying D E H E A?

D H E A.

D H E A.

Probably not. I will say it is one of the more expensive blood tests. So maybe that was it, right? For, for what that hormone does and does not do, it may not have been cost effective for her to add that test every time.

I see.

Right. So now that you say that and you think DHEA is hard to say, I don't even know if I can pronounce it. Dehydroepiandrosterone. Dehydroepiandrosterone. Dehydroepiandrosterone. That's why we call it DHEA. See, John?

Yeah, I, you know, I had a feeling that it was going to be something like that. Yeah.

Well, and, you know, it's also one of those that the studies have linked low levels. Here's what's interesting. They've linked low levels of DHEA in older people to osteoporosis, heart disease, memory loss, and breast cancer. Oh, right.

Yeah.

But there's no proof That they caused them. It's been associated, but no proof that it was the cause.

Hmm.

So, what that means is they went into the study and they looked at these people and they said, huh, every single one of these people had low levels of DHEA, but they also had other things. So, they've linked it, but they haven't done the studies to say this was the cause.

Sometimes thinking about it like, you know, that it's in the same lineup. I don't know. I always wonder about the things that kind of are tied to something but not officially tied to it. Like, if it's there— I don't even know what I'm trying to say. Like, what's the harm in trying to balance it so that you can avoid, you know, You know, the negative. Does that make any sense?

It does. So, saying, well, if it doesn't hurt me or it's not controversial, why wouldn't you want to balance it?

Yeah.

Right? So, why wouldn't you want to? Well, you do want to because one of the main things, adrenals. You want to protect your adrenal glands. You want to support them. And DHEA is really big for supporting the adrenal glands. So, if you are somebody who's under a lot of stress or you have a lot of stress in your life or you just don't know how to relax, you're probably depleting your DHEA and your adrenal glands would probably be very happy if you would give them some more DHEA so they would feel better.

Well, that's it. I know a ton of car dealer people that probably have high enough stress levels that they need to be checking these.

Right.

I'm going to tell all my friends.

And you would be surprised. It is interesting. The people that don't feel like they're under a lot of stress, they're handling things, will have very high cortisol and low DHEAs. And people that say, I'm under a lot of stress and I am just doing everything I can They won't. And part of that goes into whether you're dealing with it in a way that you're openly doing something to get rid of that stress and that energy. If you run, you do— you go sit in a dark room every day for 20 minutes and don't let anybody bother you, whatever you do. I think the people that internalize it and don't do something with it, they have more— They have more issues.

And that makes sense. Definitely. Because, and we were talking about this actually before we started, where sometimes just, you know, maybe eating a little bit better and working out can have a positive effect to all of this, but you're, you still haven't really addressed the core issue, which is your balance is off, right?

Right.

So maybe doing these things helps you deal with the stress, But could you be in a better mood faster and more frequently if your levels were at the right level of firing for you?

And that's very true because you are supporting your body with the things that it needs. Because we know that the body is an amazing machine and the way it works and how everything is balanced and how if this can get off, it can cause a cascade, how How amazing it is and how it works. So if you have the opportunity to assist your body and all the work and all the things that it has to do with replacing these hormones that are either in abundance, too much cortisol, or not enough, like some of the sex hormones, why wouldn't you?

And it only takes a 15-minute call if you don't want to go in anywhere. You just set it up, right? You can go online.

Just go to balancedbodymedical.com and you can sign up for a free 15-minute discovery call and we can talk about this. One of the things we do in the call is to find out, is this something you need? Might you have something else going on? What have you done so far? Many times I talk to people, my lab work It's great. My results are good. I asked my doctor about hormones and they said, huh, you want what? Why would I check your levels for that?

It doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah.

Things like that. Or men, right? They're tired. They, they don't have any energy. They're kind of humdrum. They're depressed. They have memory loss and they go to the doctor. They're afraid they have Alzheimer's or dementia and the wife is Getting ready to hurt them and they can't remember anything. And, you know, and all it is is low testosterone.

Hmm.

So, just simple things and you would never think my energy, my memory, my mood, could— my cholesterol, my blood sugar, could all Level out with the replacement of one hormone.

You guys, man, that is— that's deep.

Yeah, it can be that simple, but yet difficult to find somebody who understands it because it is its own specialty.

Well, and from what I understand too, a lot of times You talk to somebody and you're like, what do you think about this specialty or this specialist? Not talking about one person or another. And then doctors are like, hmm, and then walk out the door.

That's so funny you say that because I have patients come in and said, I have asked them twice, last 2 appointments, check my hormones. And they go, I don't know why we need to do that, and walk out.

Yep. They're busy. They're running around. They're trying to give everybody shots or something. What good is it?

What are we gonna do about that? Because for that particular practitioner, they don't know what to do with it, right? My own, I talked to her about a reverse T3 and she said, well, what are we gonna do if it's elevated? So why check it?

Rough. That's rough.

And I go back to saying because that reverse T3 is a thyroid. It again, it's a, it's a specialty. Hormones like thyroid is a specialty. She's primary care. She's got to know a lot about, or a little about everything, right? And so that's not her specialty.

But it is yours.

Correct. It is my specialty. Yes.

Which is why we call Sherri Griggs with any questions tied to The car of hormones.

That's right. And then I believe after this, we start talking a little bit more about— we'll start going into maybe some— we've brought up words like Hashimoto's thyroiditis. We've brought up words like insulin resistance, but we've never really talked about what these things are, how they work, What treatments there are out there for them. So moving forward, we'll start talking about some of those things.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, this is the— we got done just learning about the different hormones, which ones we have, which ones could be out of balance, how they're out of balance, what they mean, all of that. Now we actually get to get in and have fun talking about them as chess pieces and the problems that you, that you have to deal with with them out of balance. So I'm excited about what we jump into next.

Oh, yes. Yeah, it will definitely be fun. I'll give you some case studies. I'll tell you about some things that have happened to people and some, you know, our success stories. And it'll be exciting.

This has been the Balanced Body Medical podcast with Sherri Griggs, owner of Balanced Body Health and Wellness. If you're looking to find Sherri, go ahead and look for the website balancedbodymedical.com. If you're looking for the business and you want to find Sherri at her office, you can find her at 10815 Elm Street in Rockbrook Plaza.

Thank you.