Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from David Mills.
Hi I’m David,
Three and a half years ago I was diagnosed with low testosterone. I had man boobs, I was overweight, I had low energy, and my libido sucked. In this article I’d like to share with you how I used 100% natural methods to boost my testosterone levels by more than 280% in a matter of months. Not only did I get rid of my man boobs, but I’m also in great physical shape, I’m full of energy, and at age 63, I feel better than I have in decades!
Three and a half years ago my testosterone was just 155 ng/dl (normal reference range 348-1200 ng/dl). My estrogen levels where also high, with estradiol at 46 pg/ml (normal reference range being 7.6-42.6 pg/ml). My doctor put me on weekly testosterone shots, which gave me some nasty side effects. After many months of extensive research and experimentation, I finally managed to find some all-natural alternatives that work just as well as my doctor’s prescription testosterone, yet without the nasty side effects.
I have now been off testosterone supplementation of any kind for sixteen months. At almost 64 years of age, my testosterone checked last month at a whooping 590 ng/dl, and my estradiol at just 10.5 pg/ml. Let me repeat; I am at 590 ng/dl not taking any testosterone. My testosterone increased from 155 to 590 and my estradiol decreased from 46 to 10.5. My testosterone/estradiol ratio was 3.36 to 1 before I started any kind of treatment. It is now 56.2 to 1.
4 Natural Remedies That Skyrocketed My Testosterone
Here‘s how I did it. I take four things to boost my testosterone and decrease my estrogen. All four can be bought over the counter; no prescription is necessary. Here is my regimen for the last twelve months:
- Topical progesterone – 60 mg a day;
- Pregnenolone (progesterone’s precursor) – 100 mg capsules every other day;
- DHEA – 25 mg pill once a week,
- D-Aspartic acid – between 1,500 and 2,000 mg per day (usually comes in a capsule of 500mg or 750 mg).
How I Discovered This Powerful Regimen
The main reason I had low testosterone was due to low levels of leutenizing hormone (LH). Low LH happens to many men. LH is the hormone the pituitary gland in your brain makes to tell your testicles they need to make testosterone. I was making only 2.0 mIU/L of LH, when the reference range is 2-10 mIU/L.
My internist sent me for a CAT scan to rule out a tumor in my pituitary gland. Thankfully, the scan results were negative. I had no tumor, but I also had no answer for my low LH levels. Apparently some men get low LH without any identifiable reason. So I asked my internist if there was anything I could take to raise my LH levels, but he didn’t know. He had not heard of D-Aspartic acid and was unaware of recent studies showing that D-Aspartic Acid increases LH.
The only solution my internist had for me was testosterone shots. I took these and they worked. My energy increased, my strength increased, and I had a substantial improvement in mood.
The greatest benefit was to my back. At the age of 48, I had a lumbar disc removed and my back had been in constant knots ever since. I had five or six golf ball sized knots in my lower back. I called them the “iron cross”. Twelve years of an iron cross across my back just disappeared on high levels of testosterone. It was amazing. Testosterone is a steroid after all, and it worked on my back as well as Medrol dose packs (hydrocortisone). I could only take Medrol dose packs a couple times a year and they would help for a couple of days; but testosterone was magic. I could have shots every week and the knots pretty much stayed away.
However, these high levels of testosterone (mine got as high as 1250 ng/dl at one point) also had some unpleasant side effects…
The Nasty Side-Effects Of Artificial Testosterone
The only way to safely boost testosterone is to increase your body’s own natural production of the hormone. The trouble with external testosterone shots is that your body converts all the excess testosterone into estrogen. It does this using the enzyme aromatase.
After just 10 weeks on testosterone shots, my estrogen increased from 46 to 86 pg/ml. I soon got gynecomastia (man boobs) and a shrunken testicle sac (felt like my balls wanted to ascend to my abdomen). I also gained 15 pounds in a couple of weeks.
My doctor put me on an aromatase inhibitor to lower my estrogen, but I didn’t feel it was helping. I was also suffering from another common side effect of external testosterone supplementation, called polycythemia. This is where your body produces more blood cells and your blood gets thicker. It can lead to heart attacks, strokes, hypertension, and countless other life-threatening conditions. I learned that many people have to stop taking testosterone because of this condition.
The Testosterone Alternative That Flattened My Man Boobs Almost Overnight
I was not at all happy with the idea of taking an aromatase inhibitor (aromatase inhibitors are highly toxic and one of my doctors flat told me to throw it out), so I started taking progesterone to see if it would work on my man boobs.
Progesterone is the body’s natural aromatase inhibitor. It also opposes estrogen. Taking 30 mg of progesterone a day reduced my estrogen from 86 to 30 pg/ml. It worked literally overnight to cure my gynecomastia and shrunken testicle sac. So I said goodbye to prescription aromatase inhibitors and began using progesterone to reduce my estrogen levels. I started taking progesterone two and a half years ago for my man boobs and still take it to this day.
I was astounded by my discovery that progesterone could reduce estrogen so effectively.
But this paled in comparison to what I discovered next (and did so completely by accident).
Here's what happened.
The ups and downs you get from weekly testosterone shots can drive you crazy. Thirty hours after a shot, testosterone peaks; and thereafter it begins a steady decline. Ten days later you are back to baseline.
Taking a daily topical gel stops the ups and downs, so my doctor put me on testosterone gels; but the gels didn’t work nearly as well as the shots. After six months on gels, my testosterone level was back in the 200 range and taking large amounts of gel only got me to 350 or so. The gels did help my back but not nearly as good as the shots.
In the end I decided to get back on the shots, but to do so, I would have to come off the gel to establish my baseline testosterone levels.
As I feared, soon after I stopped taking testosterone altogether, my back pain started to come back. And here's where the magic happened…
I increased my progesterone dose to 60 mg to see if its anti-inflammatory properties could rival that of testosterone. To my surprise, it did! Progesterone worked just as well as my old testosterone shots.
When I went for my next hormone test, I was fully expecting to have testosterone levels of 150 ng/dl again (since I had stopped taking testosterone); but to my surprise, it was about 350 ng/dl, and all thanks to progesterone!
Progesterone had somehow boosted my body’s internal production of testosterone, which as I mentioned earlier, is the best way to boost testosterone safely and without side effects.
So How Did I End Up Adding Pregnenolone, DHEA, And D-Aspartic Acid To My Progesterone Regimen?
Since adding these to my regimen, my testosterone has gone from 350 ng/dl (on progesterone alone) to an impressive 590 ng/dl! I was not satisfied with 350 and wanted to see if I could get it higher.
Here’s how I did it.
On doing some research online, I discovered that D-Aspartic acid can raise LH levels – something my doctor was NOT aware of. In fact, it was the bodybuilding community that taught me this (it turns out bodybuilders know more about testosterone than most MD’s). When the study showing D-Aspartic acid raises testosterone came out, the bodybuilders were all over it. So I wanted to try it to see what it would do.
The problem was that D-Aspartic acid taken alone could deplete your testosterone precursors. Just to be on the safe side, I thought I should have testosterone precursors in reserve. The three primary precursors of testosterone are progesterone, pregnenolone and DHEA. These three precursors were also listed in a scientific article as a means of reducing cholesterol if you returned them (along with testosterone) to “youthful” levels. Since my cholesterol was on the high side, it made sense to try all of them, plus I had literature supporting the idea of taking them.
I figured if I took reasonable, safe doses of these three testosterone precursors, I could safely take D-Aspartic acid and not worry about running out of testosterone precursor reserves.
So I started adding in pregnenolone, DHEA, and D-Aspartic acid to my progesterone regimen. I decided to take very little DHEA because of concerns about its use in higher doses (I take 25 mg of DHEA a week instead of the 25 mg a day recommended on the bottle).
The amount of pregnenolone I decided to take was based on recommendations by Dr. Ray Peat. I settled on 60 mg a day of progesterone, though even higher doses of progesterone had been recommended to me by Wray Whyte, the owner of progesteronetherapy.com, who had been running the site for 15 years. She convinced me that several hundred milligrams a day of progesterone was safe, partly due to the fact that as fetuses, we are floating in a placenta making 400 mg of it a day during the third trimester of pregnancy.
As for how much D–Apartic acid I take, I started at a lower dose than what is recommended on the bottle. The bottle lists a daily dose of 3,000 mg a day and I decided to take 1,500-2,000 mg a day. As of last month, my LH is now 3 mIU/L, which is up from the 2 mIU/L I had three and a half years ago.
Tweaking the Regimen Even More
Now that I have my latest results, I recently bumped up my D-Aspartic acid to 3,000 mg a day instead of the 1,500–2,000 mg I was taking before. If I can get my LH to 4 or 5 maybe I can get my testosterone back up to 700 or so, which is my target. I am feeling pretty good right now, so who knows, I might already be in the 700 range – my next test will tell.
Safety and Benefits of the Regimen
I have now been on a regimen of 60 mg of topical progesterone, 100 mg of pregnenolone capsules every other day, 25 mg of DHEA a week and at least 1,500-2,000 mg a day of D-Aspartic acid for twelve months with zero side effects and excellent lab results. I also lost the 15 pounds I gained from my testosterone shots.
All of these substances are known to be very safe, with the possible exception of DHEA in high doses (which is why I take a much lower dose than recommended on the bottle).
The studies are all clear on the safety of progesterone, pregnenolone, and D-Aspartic acid in high doses. In one study, subjects took 2,660 mg of D-Aspartic acid daily for 90 days. Not only did they experience significantly higher testosterone levels and increased fertility, researchers also noted no serum abnormalities and no side-effects.
Just for good measure, and because Wray Whyte highly recommended it to me, I also take 6,000 units of Vitamin D a day to keep my Vitamin D levels up. Vitamin D is more of a hormone than a vitamin and it has a symbiotic relationship with progesterone.
So What Have You Got to Lose?
I welcome anyone to try my regimen, but if you do, I would caution everyone to get their hormone levels tested regularly. Getting tested may seem expensive, but since you’ll only be doing it every six months or so, it really isn’t that bad.
Where Is The Best Place To Get These Supplements?
I have looked all over the internet searching for the best deals on these products. Seeing that they have restored my testosterone levels, along with my youth and vitality, the fact that I pay just 50 bucks a month for all four of these supplements, seems like a total steal.
Here is where I have found the best prices and best quality.
I buy progesterone and prognenolone from a place called Supplementspot.com. I get the progesterone gel in the pump bottle; and each pump is very consistent in delivering 15 mg of progesterone per pump (so I take 4 pumps a day).
It's important, by the way, to only ever get bioidentical hormones, as these are closer to nature and studies have shown that they are safer and more effective than their synthetic counterparts.
I get my DHEA from Walgreen's.
I buy D–Aspartic acid on Amazon. I use a brand called “Finaflex Pure Test”, but since I am increasing my daily dosage I just bought a brand called “Hard Rhino D Aspartic acid”.
If you are interested in learning more, I have told Garry I would be glad to write more about progesterone, pregnenolone, and testosterone; including their relationship to cholesterol (they all come from the LDL “bad” cholesterol — for which I took statins and which ironically may have contributed to my low testosterone). I have been studying this stuff almost daily for the last three and a half years and am glad to share what I have learned. Your thoughts, comments and questions are welcome.
David Mills is a retired personal injury attorney with a keen interest in medicine. Over the 35 years he spent in this career, he has amassed a team of reliable medical experts he can consult at any time.
David has had a lifelong influence from medicine. His father (deceased) taught medical and graduate school for 40 years. His brother, with a PhD in biophysics, has spent 30 years doing human biochemical and medical university research. His wife is a registered nurse.
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Don’t high levels of progesterone actually increase the production of estrogen in males? That’s what I keep reading everywhere. So how does it help diminish estrogen?
No. Aromatase is the enzyme that converts testosterone to estrogen. Progesterone is an aromatse inhibitor. Women have lots of aromatse to immediately convert testosterone to estrogen; men have very little. But as men age, they produce more aromatse and convert more testosterone to estrogen. Progesterone stops the production of aromatse and/or inhibits its effects.
Hey Dave, question for you. Would you still suggest taking the progesterone cream if I’m also on testosterone cream?
I did it to stop testosterone from turning to estrogen. If you have gynocomastia like I did from taking testosterone, then you are converting too much testosterone into estrogen. Progesterone is an aramotase inhibitor and aromatase is the enzyme that breaks down testosterone and converts it to estrogen.
How long did you take these Supps for before you noticed any changes?
Depends on the changes you are talking about. Progesterone reversed my gynecomastia literally overnight, and about two days later it was completely gone. It will knock down estrogen excess very quickly.
Boosting testosterone took me a couple of weeks on progesterone alone. It might not have taken me that long with my full regimen. It took me months to come up with the final regimen of all four supplements.
Hi from OH trying to reach David Mills who wrote this. Would you consider contacting me so I can put you in touch with my husband has been trying to find answers why he does not sleep well no energy lost zest for life he is 53. At 49 we started testing, sleep studies, supplements, testosterone pellets, shots anything natural to try. Been to 6-7 natural approach doctors. Seen results from pellets first time but not since. Did shots off & on never seen results but estrogen seemed to raise. testosterone helps him feel better but still not where he was the first time and still struggling. I have been doing pellets too with great results the first time as well but never since and recently trying to figure out what was different the year I quit. Just had pellets again & discussed with doc the estrogen giving me the belly fat which at 51 not good for a women His response give me a water pill. I am not a pill person. I almost left & I should have now getting the fat belly again. he did not give me the same testosterone so i have no energy. I started researching progesterone which is the only thing I was on a year ago when I was not doing anything for my hormones and they were working fine. Best I had been since the first hormone pellets. This is what led me to your site. I am so glad I found it but my husband is very skeptical and thinks if a little is good a lot will get job done quicker so I wanted to discuss further.
Thank you so much and look forward to your email.
I don’t mind at all. My email is [email protected]
I’m glad to see that David Mills found a way to boost his testosterone production with these four supplements, but he could have avoided the nasty side effects he was getting with the testosterone shots by simply reducing his weekly dosage and dividing it into two weekly shots every 3.5 days.
For example, I was suffering with increased tension/anxiety, blood pressure, and hematocrit levels when my doctor first put me on 100 mg of testosterone cypionate weekly. This was simply too much for me. It shot my blood level of testosterone up to 1275 ng/dl, which is above the normal range for a healthy male. By simply reducing my dosage to 60 mg per week, and dividing that dose into two 30 mg shots every 3.5 days those side effects disappeared. My blood level of testosterone has dropped to 750 ng/dl, my hematocrit is back within the normal range at 48%, my blood pressure now averages 120/80, and I no longer feel overly tense or anxious. So the side effects are easily avoidable.
Roger, you certainly have a point. But getting a doctor to do that is the real problem. Most put you on a two week regimen. It makes no sense because the half life of testosterone is so short. In ten days time it is all out of your system and you are back to baseline.
Plus there is the problem of who is going to give you the shots. My wife is a nurse and I got a doctor to let her give me shots once a week. But even once a week made for too much fluctuation.
Very interesting and a remarkably lucid account. But there are still a few issues:
1) a CAT scan is not sufficient to rule out a pituitary irregularity as the source for David’s low LH (and subsequent low Testosterone).
2) studies suggest that aspartic acid is ineffective for raising LH. David’s study was on animals.
3) hormone levels typically vary during the day and may render test results meaningless.
4) self-reporting results in notoriously problematic, particularly when the subject is trying to prove the success of their own strategy.
Todd. Good questions. Let me take them one by one.
1. When I first was diagnosed with low testosterone my internist was very surprised that I did not have a very high LH. Normally, low testosterone induces your pituitary to produce high levels of LH to tell your testicles to produce more testosterone. (Todd I am sure you know this but this is for the benefit of those who might not). Since my LH was low when it should have been high my doctor suspected a tumor. So the CT or MRI (I have forgotten which) was done to see if I had a tumor. I didn’t. At that point, I discussed with my doctor what could be done to increase my LH instead of taking testosterone and he advised me he knew of no alternative except to take testosterone. He also advised me that there was no need to treat my pituitary. So the discussion stopped there. And as I have said many times, I would not recommend someone take D-Aspartic acid if you have normal LH.
2. I am not aware of studies that show D-Aspartic acid does not increase LH in humans and would love to see them if you would provide them. My LH only went from 2 to 3 (2-10 being the normal range) so that is obviously not a great result and may have been a statistical fluke.
3. Certainly hormonal levels vary during the day. But over the years I probably had eight or ten hormone studies. Most were done in the morning as that is when I usually made my appointments.
4. As I pointed out in the original article, I had no idea that progesterone would raise my testosterone. I had fully expected after my doctor told me he wanted me off testosterone for a month that my testosterone would really tank. It was a surprise to me that it went up. I never had anything like a strategy. At first I was really disappointed because I wanted to go back on shots and since my testosterone was “normal” he would not prescribe them. I was stuck. I really wanted my testosterone higher than what I considered to be low normal. So I added pregnenolone and DHEA and D-Aspartic Acid in over time. The problem was that I could not do anything like a controlled study to see if any of these other additions really helped (just taking progesterone may have increased my testosterone over time). But once I got what I considered to be something on the order of a high normal, I stuck with what I was doing. Plus it is very difficult to get testing done on your hormones. My new doctor won’t do them and I haven’t had any testing since the spring of 2014. My best friend’s doctor won’t test him either once he normalized his testosterone and PSA on this regimen. Since I can’t get tested, I just keep doing what I have been doing. And I recently upped my DHEA.
I am very well aware that a sample of one is not remotely like a p value of 0.05 in a 1000 person study. And of course statistical significance is also becoming a well understood problem in medicine; samples are often way too small to have real statistical value. See this article:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/odds-are-its-wrong
Which is why I tell people that this is my story and this is how this worked out for me. Whether you want to try it is up to you and it may not work for you as well as it did for me, or even at all. I am always interested in people who do try it out to see if it works for them. And I respect those who take a pass.
Thank you for your capable response, David. Your account sounds entirely sane, which is extraordinary on the internet.
I apologize. The two studies I was thinking of were to do with
D-Aspartic acid for boosting T, not LH:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0271531713001735
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25844073
And, as you suggest, what’s the point of using D-Aspartic acid if one’s LH level is normal.
DHEA (50 mg daily) for 2 months, in combination with 50 mg zinc, increased my muscle strength and libido markedly. But I also noticed more flab around the middle (from estrogen?). I tapered off and have started pregnenolone 50 mg daily – thus far without results. (Quitting DHEA has put me back to lifelong problems which I associate with tested “low-normal” T. A guy can sense when his T is low. So can the women. Immediately upon getting the results with the DHEA, I was attracting women and sex.)
Testing has been limited to low-normal T. No LH test has been done though I will consider it if I ever clear my system of the supplements I am now taking.
David, does “flab around the middle” and diminishing returns with the DHEA suggest anything to you?
Have you experimented with taking the pregnenolone under your tongue?
I have progesterone here ready to go but would rather take this one step at a time. Thoughts?
Many thanks.
PS I’ve re-read your initial article and it’s impressive the 2nd go around, too.
I should add that my situation is somewhat different from yours. I had a 24-hour urine hormone testing at Meridian Valley Lab. http://meridianvalleylab.com/ My T was low-normal, and there was nothing high nor unusual about the estrogenic hormone levels nor the ratios of androgens to estrogens. I have also never had man boobs.
Also low was Growth Hormone. I have also experimented successfully with ADH (anti-diuretic hormone) for a lifelong problem with recently diagnosed polyuria. This suggests to me hypopituitarism but I have been unable to get into a doctor to confirm this diagnosis. Taking prescription GH is very expensive, and ADH (Minirin) – also requiring a prescription – isn’t cheap either. So, in limbo, I have been focusing on the lowish T, as I have described above.
So, preceding and exacerbated by the DHEA, no gynecomastia, but the unsightly flab around the middle as I have mentioned. That flab is almost a sure sign of low T in my view, but perhaps not a sign of excess estrogen and maybe I am barking up the wrong tree with the progesterone??? I would certainly appreciate your thoughts as I am starting to lose the thread.
I wrote two longish bits here which were not published. I won’t try to reconstruct them … but one included an apology for my post above in which I misrepresented studies suggesting no increase in “T” from D-aspartic acid (for which I supplied links) for no increase in “LH”.
Egad … the two longish pieces have again shown up as “awaiting moderation”. Possibly a cache issue?
Sorry Todd, I’ve been very busy lately and it took a while for me to get round to approving comments. I’ve approved yours now, so they’re publicly viewable.
By the way, if you don’t mind, regarding your posts, it would be interesting to know roughly how old you are.
Todd: No offense taken at all by your posts. They are good questions and the point of this is for us all to learn.
A couple of responses. I have never taken pregnenolone under the tongue. It is supposed to be well taken orally so I haven’t tried taking it by any other means.
There are two pathways to increase T from pregnenolone. One pathway produces T via DHEA and the other pathway produces T via progesterone. One of the reasons I take all three of these supplements is that it pretty much guarantees me the ability to create T by whatever pathway my body thinks it needs to or does best. I have been taking less DHEA than you have. But I have noted that upping my DHEA recently gives me a bit more vigor.
It may be that you need progesterone as an estrogen blocker and/or a dht blocker and/or a cortisol blocker. Estrogen and cortisol can add belly fat. You might try to get your estrogen down to low or very low normal and you might see what your cortisol level is. I have never had mine tested but maybe that is something I should do as well.
No problem Gary. I’m 57.
Hey David – just want to check something. You refer to doses of progesterone, pregnenolone, and D-Aspartic acid in daily doses but DHEA as a weekly dose of 25mg. Do you divide that 25mg up into daily doses or just take one dose per week?
Shane: It would be best to spread that amount out over several days a week if you can. That is not easy to do since it comes in tablets or capsules and about the lowest you can buy it in is 25mg. I was just doing once a week. After writing this article I later found out that beginning somewhere about 30-35 years of age men lose production of about 10mg of DHEA per week every five years. And that loss accumulates. After learning that, since I am now 65, I have upped my dosage to 50 mg per week which is probably still a bit low. So I generally take it twice a week now. Sometimes three.
Hello all. I’m a 50 yo male. I started getting pronounced gynocomastia at age 12. I’m a “skinny fat”. Very difficult to build muscle. I store fat like a woman – chest, hips, stomach, ass. I’ve had liposuction twice. It helped but I just wound up with smaller man boobs. A good diet helps (i do pale-ish natural diet) but I plateau and stop improving. Recently I went to a wholistic medical practice for other reasons. They ran many tests. Thankfully I’m healthy, but they told me “you have the hormones of a woman”. My T was below the acceptable range. They prescribed Testosterone but I said “no” as I fear its long term issues. They then recommended pregnenalone. I researched it and found this article. I started taking 50mg a day. I also added progesterone cream as recommended here. I didn’t add DHEA. So far in about 3 months my T levels are higher (now in low/normal range) and my fat storage is changing. I’m not dieting but the fat on my chest, midsection and ass is decreasing. It’s noticeable. I’m very encouraged. Just wanted to share my experience and also tell anyone who’s young and depressed about gynocomastia (as I was) that in the long run it’s really not that important and it won’t effect your ability to have a great life and any success you want.
Hi Andrew
Great to hear your success story. I’m sure David’s article has helped a lot of people. Please do like the post on facebook to help get the word out, so others can benefit from David’s story too.
As embarrassing a deformity like gynecomastia is, it’s only as limiting in your life as you let it be. I’ve known guys with gynecomastia who are totally confident and only see their problem as a slight nuisance on the side, while I come across others who want to commit suicide. If gynecomastia is getting you down, then sure, do everything you can to get rid of it, but at the same time, realize that it has no power to stop you from having–like Andrew says–a great life and any success you want.
David, have you considered taking the pregnenolone sub-lingually?
The more I look into this, the more I’m baffled; I’ve order the regimen to try as this looks promising.
Being a good boy, I’m looking up as much research as possible before the self-experimentation begins and questions are rising.
I know with the lack of research for men this is controversial so please know I’m not for or against anything said in the article or comments- I just have concerns.
http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=3637579 this contradicts what is being said above. David can you please shed light?
Your feedback, will be much appreciated.
Whoa. Had a few heart flutters and missed beats today, read about this commonly reported side effect for pregnenolone http://www.raysahelian.com/pregnenolone.html …
And I’m out.
The experience has been good – DHEA certainly had some positive effects – while they lasted. But my initial conditions (which, BTW, included a normal DHEA reading at Meridian Valley) were different than David’s. I’ve never had gynecomastia and was just interested in David’s work as it applied to boosting T.)
I think the takeaway is: treatment must be tailored to the individual’s circumstance and response.
And, at the website above, there is plenty of reason to be concerned about the higher doses being suggested here.
Thanks Todd for your feedback. I have been taking 100 mg daily of pregnenolone for several years now (lost track exactly).
I have never had palpitations from it as far as I know. Did not know they were a side effect. But then again, I have been on beta blockers (for high blood pressure) all the time I have taken pregnenolone and the beta blockers could have been the reason I haven’t had any.
As I tell everybody, what I have done is far from a controlled study. And all supplements or drugs can have side effects.
People have palpitations all the time. So establishing a causal link is something only an extremely good study would validate.
I would ask one thing Todd. Now that you are off the regimen, would you please repost if you have palpitations in the future?
Also, it appears that pregnenolone stimulates thyroid production and that people who are hypothyroid may be deficient in it and those that are hyperthyroid may have too much of it. And DHEA will be normal.
http://www.clinchem.org/content/46/4/523.long
That could explain why some people get palpitatations if there is a causal link.
I tend to be a bit hypothyroid.
In reading the article above in more depth, it appears that if you are hypothyroid you may be deficient in DHEA and DKEA-S but that if you are hyperthyroid, you will have to much DHEA-s and normal DHEA.
How long have you used this combination,
Did you cycle on or off
Can you stay on indefinitely?
I have been on it daily since I began and have never cycled off.
do you cycle the Progesterone, Pregnenolone, Dhea, at all, or you take them every day
I take the progesterone, the pregnenolone and the D-Aspartic Acid every day. (Tho lately I have sloughed off on the D-Aspartic acid and don’t do it as regularly as I once did). I take the DHEA several times a week. If there were ways to break up the capsules I would take it every day as well.
And I never have cycled on and off.
I tried it and it worked for me.
My bph symptoms have almost go away totally.
Found supplements online cheap
I also added boron, l arginine, and l glutamine.
I feel great my workouts haven’t been this good in 20 years.
Thx
Great! Glad it worked for you. Now if we can ever get doctors to believe us.
Hi Dave. Due to testicular cancer I lost a testicle 12 years ago. I have been on T therapy since then. For years I did not get adequate amounts of T due to my Dr’s ignorance. Would you recommend your plan for me while I am on T therapy? When not on T therapy my natural T level is very low. Thanks S.
Yes. I took progesterone for many months when I was taking T. Progesterone is an aromatase inhibitor and aromatase is the enzyme that turns testosterone into estrogen. Your doctor should be checking your estrogen to ensure your testosterone is not turning to huge amounts of estrogen as I was doing. If you a taking T you may not need d-aspartic acid, the sole purpose of which is to make leutinizing hormone to stimulate T production if your T is high enough. But taking DHEA and progesterone and pregnenolone would help boost T if you are making enough LH and possible reduce your need for T (which is synthetic and full of side effects).
Hi David,
In regards to your pregnenolone schedule. Ray Peat actually advises from the looks of it 300 mg once a week. How did you decide upon 100 mg? did you just dived the dose to 3 times a week type thing?
Thanks
I take a 100 mg every day. Peat recommended taking Pregnenolone for younger men and progesterone for older men. But since my T was so low I decided to do both. There are two reasons I take both: (1) the half life of pregnenolone is much longer; and (2) pregnenolone cane make testosterone by an extra chemical pathway (DHEA pathway) than progesterone. I believed that using that approach would keep my testosterone higher.
Oh ok I see.
I guess I’m still wondering how to schedule the pregnenolone. Every day or once a week like Peat suggests since it lasts so long atleast a week. 30-50 mg produced naturally so I wonder if taking more than 350mg a week is good.
Oh I wanted to ask as well whats your age? and if you had any testing done since taking 100 mg a day? any red flag skewed numbers come up?
Sorry to pepper you questions but not many others that have trekked this path before me and know lots.
One of the posters here had trouble with taking this much. Said it gave him palpitations. I have never had any side effects taking 100 mg per day but that may be too much for you. I think the only way to know is to do labs and see what level your testosterone is. I have had my labs done every six months for years now and all are normal except for my cholesterol which has been high since I was first checked when I was in my 20s. I am 65 now. And my high cholesterol has not caused any significant blockage of my arteries. I had an angiogram last year and my heart was in very good shape. Unfortunately, my new doctor won’t check my testosterone level so I have no idea what it is now. GRRR.
The problem with doing any regimen like this is there are no clinical trials. You pretty much have to be willing to be your own guinea pig.
I am just getting onto your program after doing some research. As you found, getting a doctor to “cooperate” on this is tough, though they’re quick to point out I shouldn’t do it without an endocrinologists’s guidance!
The first time I tried the D-Aspartic Acid (the same you use), I noticed that it was very sour (“duh: it’s ACID!”). There are two concerns about this: acid reflux or other digestive symptoms, and damage to tooth enamel. Enamel damage is a real concern with acids, whether they are in foods (Pepsi or orange juice) or supplements. (https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/2i41zx/word_of_warning_teeth_erosion_from_acidic_powders/) Are you thinking about this and handling it in any way? I’m wondering if taking the DAA with food helps, and I’m planning to rinse my mouth with fresh water after taking it.
I take capsules. Strange that you should mention acid. I now take Betaine HCL often. It may be that the medical profession got something else wrong by 180 degrees. I had lots of indigestion a year ago and tried all the antacids. None of them really helped. Then I read somewhere online that as one get’s older, one loses the ability to make the same amount of acid that one does when young.
Sure enough taking HCL helped tremendously. It actually helped clear up my skin as well. Bizarre.
The two sphincters in the stomach, top and bottom are regulated by acid ph. So if you don’t get the right acidity in the stomach at the right times, these sphincters don’t open and close properly. Leaving the top one open, is a recipe for acid reflux. When your stomach gets good and acidic, it closes tight and the bottom one opens, vice versa.
A couple more things.
The HCL is in capsule form.
I have also gone to drinking cranberry juice with lemon and lime extract added to increase stomach acid.
I recently had a dentist checkup and the dentist commented how good my teeth and gums were. Go figure.
There are LOTS of things the medical profession get wrong.
My dad was suffering from some serious heart burn. Antacids like Gaviscon and Maalox stopped working, so his doctor started prescribing a proton pump inhibitor (PPI) to stop the secretion of acid into his stomach. Then he started to get sick like crazy, he was vomiting and couldn’t keep any food down. He saw quite a few doctors about his vomiting, and they simply told him to wait for his stomach to settle.
I always knew that stomach acid plays an important role in helping to digest food and inhibiting bacterial growth in your stomach. So taking a PPI to stop acid secretion probably wasn’t helping with his vomiting. He was probably throwing up his food because of either a bacterial overgrowth in his stomach, or simply because his stomach couldn’t digest the food without any acid.
Anyway, so I got him to stop his PPI and told him to never take it again. I also got him some Betaine HCL to help INCREASE stomach acid secretion. I went to the pharmacist, and guess what? He had no idea what Betaine HCL was, so I had to order it online. Vomiting problem over.
Two things worked really well for his heartburn. On reading up on acid reflux, I learned that the main reason we get acid reflux, is not because we have too much stomach acid, but because we have too little. When you have too little stomach acid, you get a bacterial overgrowth in your stomach. These bacteria release gases, which push what little acid you have, up toward that sphincter at the top of your stomach.
A low carb diet works perfectly here, because carbohydrates feed this bacterial overgrowth. When my dad reduced his carb intake, his heart burn went away.
But being as we are, when we’re cured of an ailment, we quickly go back to feeling invincible again. So my dad tends to go back to his high carb foods until his heart burn resurfaces again. When it happens, he finds he gets quick relief from apple cider vinegar! That stuff works wonders for acid reflux! Give it a go David and let me know what you think :p
Hi David… I’m interested in your regimen… I’m 24 years old and have been going through hell the last couple years. My testosterone has dropped on each of the 3 tests I’ve taken, with the last one I took in July 2015 reading 276 total T. 9.1 Free T. ~2 LH, ~2 FSH. I really don’t want TRT. I was just wondering… If I follow this regimen for a few months, should I count on my numbers staying up if I eventually stop taking the pills? Or will my body be reliant on that stuff like with TRT? I have confirmed to be secondary hypo, not primary, so my boys are normal size and apparently function. Just looking for some advice here…
Well, my thought is that you are probably progesterone deficient and your LH is at the bottom end of the normal scale (2 to 10). If you are progesterone deficient, there really is no substitute I know of to get you to normal levels except for taking pregnenolone or progesterone. Unfortunately, very few doctors will test for progesterone levels.
Your LH might be enough to make adequate testosterone and it may not, so you may need to take d-aspartic acid often to keep your levels where testosterone can be made.
But I think it would all be trial and error. It could be that by kickstarting everything you don’t need supplements long term.
The problem is getting regular labs to find out how various combinations are working out for you.
Hi David
Thanks for the great info. Any chance we could chat. I wanted to bounce some ideas off of you.
My email address is: [email protected]