DHEA, TEST supplement no "fountain of youth"
I found this article in Google news this morning. ( There are several others that are more detailed, but this was easiest to copy and paste.) I have been looking into possibly starting a program that is similar to the one in the article. The big difference between me and the test subjects is age— I am less than 50, and they were all over 60.
In one of the other articles, it gave more of a “Full disclosure” on the scientists involved. Of course they have all accepted money in one shape or form from Big Pharma.
If there any members here that are trying this combination, how about sharing your experiences. Please include your age, because it seems to be an important factor in the outcome.
BOSTON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - The food supplement DHEA, touted as a “fountain of youth,” does nothing to slow the damaging effects of aging despite widespread claims to the contrary, researchers said in a study released on Wednesday.
Extensive federally funded tests only uncovered “minimal and inconsistent” evidence that a daily dose of 75 mg may help strengthen thinning bones.
But even that benefit was far less dramatic than what doctors can accomplish with established medicines, said the study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
“The conclusion is very clear,” chief author Sreekumaran Nair of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, said. “There’s no reason for older people to continue to take (DHEA).”
Earlier studies reached similar conclusions.
In a Journal editorial, Paul Stewart of the University of Birmingham in Britain said it was time for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin regulating the substance so consumers will stop being ripped off by DHEA suppliers who make unsubstantiated claims about it.”
DHEA, which the body uses to make sex hormones, is widely touted on the Internet and elsewhere as a “fountain of youth” drug that can slow the aging process and treat everything from heart disease to HIV, depression and Alzheimer’s.
Appropriate regulation would dispel much of the quackery associated with this elusive hormone,” Stewart said.
For decades, the Food and Drug Administration regulated dietary supplements as foods but the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act took that power away.
DHEA’s reputation as an anti-aging supplement was based on research in rodents and very limited studies in humans.
But rodents make almost no DHEA to begin with, “so what they were given was a huge amount” in those studies, said Nair. It was also usually given to young animals, not older ones.
The Nair study involved two years of treatment designed to give volunteers over the age of 60 DHEA and testosterone blood levels equivalent to people age 20 to 30 on the high end of the normal range.
The study also found no benefits to giving daily 5 mg supplements of testosterone, the male hormone, to men over 60.
The treatments successfully raised hormone levels, but after two years, people who received placebos were just as likely to have increases in muscle strength, exercise capacity, and other measures of health than the volunteers who received the DHEA pills or testosterone patches.
“Treatment with neither DHEA nor testosterone had any detectable effect on physical performance, insulin sensitivity, or the physical and mental components of the quality of life,” the researchers said.
Even if DHEA produces some benefits over the short term, they said, “they are not sustained” over the long haul.
“Our data provide no evidence that either DHEA or low-dose testosterone is an effective anti-aging hormone supplement and argue strongly against the use of these agents for this purpose,” they said.
