Page 6 - The DHEA Debate - Life Extensions Magazine

Stephen Cherniske: You just haven’t looked. When the National Institutes on Aging analyzed
data from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, they found a profound relationship
between DHEA levels and survival.38

“Consistent with the beneficial effects of calorie restriction on aging and life span in
other animals, men with lower temperature and insulin and those maintaining higher
DHEA levels have greater survival than their respective counterparts.”39
Likewise, studies of people aged 90 to 106 demonstrate that those who reach this remarkable
milestone have higher-than-average DHEA levels. As you would expect, this was associated
with a higher muscle-to-fat ratio and greater functional ability.40,41
The average adult replaces more than 300 billion cells each day. Anti-aging is accomplished in
three ways: by providing optimal raw materials for this repair activity, reducing the damage that
these cells are exposed to, and restoring and maintaining anabolic (repair) metabolism. As I
mentioned, DHEA is the most comprehensive repair signal in human biochemistry, and it is time
that we fully appreciate the influence it has on one’s rate of aging. I am not the only scientist
who believes that anti-aging is virtually impossible without paying careful attention to one’s
DHEA level. Here are the findings from a study on hormones and aging:

“The maintenance of a good physical functional ability and quality of life is related to
serum testosterone, estrogen, and DHEA(S) concentrations.”42

Naysayer: But isn’t that the problem—that DHEA, because it is a cell proliferator, might
accelerate nascent tumors?

Stephen Cherniske: Wrong! DHEA is a cell regulator. It induces apoptosis (cell death) in
malignant and malfunctioning cells,43-45 and controls hyperplasia (abnormal cell growth) in the
smooth muscle of the lungs.46 In numerous animal models, it has been shown to mimic the cell-
regulating, anticancer benefits of calorie restriction.36,47
In thousands of animal studies, DHEA has been shown to prevent diabetes, obesity, infection,
liver disease, and many types of cancer.48 In humans, DHEA levels predict mortality in a
number of disease states, including AIDS, sepsis, cancer, and heart disease.49-52 And
supplementation with DHEA has been shown—in controlled human studies—to increase muscle
mass, improve bone density, combat stress and depression, enhance quality of life, restore
immunity, protect the brain, improve memory, reduce the symptoms of systemic lupus
erythematosus, and reduce risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease.3,4,22,53-61

Naysayer: How can you be sure that DHEA won’t cause cancer?

Stephen Cherniske: There are no data to suggest that. In fact, all the evidence is to the
contrary. Dr. Marian Laderoute, a pathologist at the Canadian Bureau of Infectious Diseases,
reminds us that cancer is associated with low DHEA levels. She and others point out that the
specific mutations required for carcinogenesis can be traced to a failure of immunity and cell
regulation that takes place as a consequence of falling levels of DHEA.62
Clearly, cancer does not take place due to high levels of DHEA. If that were the case, young
people would get cancer, when in fact it is remarkably rare in the young. Declining immunity
must be a factor, but we also do not see an increased incidence of cancer among young
patients on immunosuppressive therapy (for example, organ transplant recipients). Cancer
incidence, it turns out, is tied to numerous aspects of aging, including impaired apoptosis,
decreased immune surveillance and decreased number and activity of NK (natural killer) cells.
DHEA has been shown to improve every one of these factors.45,55,63,64