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Is It Safe To Take High Doses Of DHEA For Weakness?
Question: Hi there. I was diagnosed with celiac about a year ago. I went undiagnosed for about 9 years. I dealt with horrible depression and general sickness. I was diagnosed by a holistic doctor who gave me a bunch of supplements that have helped me tremendously. I recently started experiencing drops in my energy, inability to think, and loss of libido. My doctor had given me DHEA for energy purposes and when I started experiencing the loss of energy I began to take more dhea because I felt that it was helping. At first it was 15 mg per day but soon I couldn't function without taking more and more and I am up to 1700 mg of dhea which kind of scares me a bit because it's such a high dose but I find I can't function during the day without taking it. I have a job and I'm in school so I need to function. I'm worried that I'm doing harm to myself by taking this much and that my adrenal system is damaged from the undiagnosed celiac from all those years. I will see a specialist soon but I'm worried about taking such a high dose of dhea but I feel that it keeps me functioning during the day. Help!
Brief Answer:
BEYOND DHEA
Detailed Answer:
Good day.
Sorry to hear about your problems. I feel we need to think beyond DHEA. celiac disease is an autoimmune disease. Other autoimmune disorders could be associated. Most commonly Thyroid disorders (hashimotos disease) and Vitamin B12 deficiency (pernicious anemia). Apart from this Cortisol deficiency (Addison 's disease) is another concern.
If you are tired, we need to rule out above issues as well. Just concentrating on DHEA alone is not good enough. Low libido could be due to low testosterone levels. DHEA is good to improve libido in woman. It's a very weak androgen. Males require more potent androgen replacement. First step is to do a fasting testosterone level.
Discuss this with your doctor and let's see what he thinks. By the way have you had your CBC, electrolytes or Thyroid blood works recently?
Regards
Binu
BEYOND DHEA
Detailed Answer:
Good day.
Sorry to hear about your problems. I feel we need to think beyond DHEA. celiac disease is an autoimmune disease. Other autoimmune disorders could be associated. Most commonly Thyroid disorders (hashimotos disease) and Vitamin B12 deficiency (pernicious anemia). Apart from this Cortisol deficiency (Addison 's disease) is another concern.
If you are tired, we need to rule out above issues as well. Just concentrating on DHEA alone is not good enough. Low libido could be due to low testosterone levels. DHEA is good to improve libido in woman. It's a very weak androgen. Males require more potent androgen replacement. First step is to do a fasting testosterone level.
Discuss this with your doctor and let's see what he thinks. By the way have you had your CBC, electrolytes or Thyroid blood works recently?
Regards
Binu
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Above answer was peer-reviewed by :
Dr. Chakravarthy Mazumdar
Answered by
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