One of Dr. Gary Young's booklets, Pregnenolone: A Radical New Approach to Health, Longevity, and Emotional Well-Being, elicited cheers when he announced it had been printed; and within two hours, the booklet was sold out.

Distributors were elated to find a compilation of exciting research on this little-known hormone precursor. As Dr. Young explained, pregnenolone is made from cholesterol in the body; and in turn, pregnenolone can be synthesized into a number of hormones: estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, aldosterone, cortisol, etc. It is, in fact, the master hormone from which all the steroid hormones are derived.

One reason that most people have not heard much about pregnenolone has to do with drug companies and profits. Dr. Young told how pregnenolone research in the early 1940s was very promising and showed that pregnenolone is effective in relieving arthritis pain, reducing PMS and menopausal symptoms, fighting stress and fatigue, improving memory, and lifting mood. But just as this research was being printed in medical journals, the discovery of synthetic cortisone was announced.

Cortisone showed powerful and immediate effectiveness against arthritis. Drug companies could patent their laboratory version of cortisone and then make a huge profit. Pregnenolone is a natural substance and not patentable. Because synthetic cortisone was so fast-acting and offered great profit potential, pregnenolone research was basically abandoned.

It was not discovered until later that cortisone had terrifying side effects (immune system suppression and osteoporosis being the two most devastating). Pregnenolone has been shown to be virtually free of side effects. A man in one pregnenolone study did develop a temporary rash; while in another study on memory, a participant reported the "side effect" of decreased symptoms of arthritis!

The beneficial effects of pregnenolone on arthritis and other bone, joint, and muscle diseases are well documented. In two studies on ankylosing spondylitis-an inflamitory disease of the joints that causes back pain and stiffening-patients showed marked improvement when treated with pregnenolone.(1)

Neurobiologist Dr. Eugene Roberts studied the arthritis research from the 1940s and 1950s and said, "Treatment with PREG can be maintained indefinitely without apparent harmful effects and is much less expensive than with ACTH or cortisone or with other anti-inflammatory steroids."(2)

Scientists and researchers are again looking at the value of pregnenolone. The research that Dr. Young found establishes how pregnenolone declines in the body more than 60 percent between the ages of 35 and 75. Along with this natural bodily decline, our bodies have had to deal with a decrease in the building block of pregnenolone-cholesterol. "Low cholesterol" or "no cholesterol" has been pounded into the heads of health-conscious consumers. While the cholesterol link to heart disease is under question today, cholesterol-lowering drugs are causing a hormone imbalance. Without cholesterol, there is no pregnenolone, which in turn creates hormones.

The lack of cholesterol (and thus pregnenolone) in our diets may be the cause of many cases of depression. Dr. William Regelson writes that "a recent study conducted by the National Institutes of Mental Health showed that people with clinical depression have lower than normal amounts of pregnenolone in their cerebral spinal fluid (the fluid that bathes the brain)."(3)

Spinal cord injuries may be minimized with pregnenolone according to a number of rat studies. Dr. Eugene Roberts, would like to see a pregnenolone cream placed in first aid kits for use on the spine following earthquakes or accidents.(4)

Menopause is a dreaded ordeal for the millions of women who choose not to use estrogen replacement therapy because of a four to eight times higher chance of uterine cancer. The pharmaceutical companies developed "hormone replacement therapy," which combines synthetic progesterone with conjugated equine estrogen. The majority of female consumers of this therapy are probably unaware that the estrogen they are taking is not natural to the human body and comes from a pregnant mare's urine (PMU). Dr. John R. Lee notes that 52 percent of the estrogens in this concoction are the horse estrogens equilin and equilenin, which are not natural to humans.(5)

Dr. Young talked about how the synthetic estrogens and progesterones "plug" the body's receptor sites. "All of your prescription drugs are based on petrochemicals, and these chemicals plug receptor sites, creating even a greater imbalance, which suppresses and compromises immune function." He explained the value of the Raindrop Technique where certain oils are dropped along the spine. "Along the spine happens to be one of the largest accumulations of receptor nerve sites, and that's why Raindrop Technique works so specifically. When the oils get in there and can start stimulating nerve transmission, that's very, very important. When you put the oils with pregnenolone, then the oils carry the pregnenolone into the cell structure to start that cell's rejuvenation. It is win, win, win and balance, balance, balance," he said.

Wouldn't it make more sense to use a natural substance in hormone replacement therapy? The best thing about pregnenolone is that it is completely natural. The human body, the true "master chemist," transforms pregnenolone into the hormones the body is lacking. Estrogen, progesterone or testosterone-it all depends on what is needed most.

Men are also susceptible to the age-related loss of pregnenolone in the body. They needn't fear that pregnenolone might be turned into a female hormone. Research on memory by Rahmawhati Sih, Ph.D., showed that after older men and women were given pregnenolone, the memory tests given three hours later showed gender variation. The women rated higher in verbal recall, while men improved in visual spatial tasks that required three-dimensional thinking. Dr. William Regelson reviewed this research in his book The Superhormone Promise: Nature’s Antidote to Aging and wrote that Dr. Sih's "results suggest that pregnenolone is being broken down differently in men and women; that is, it appears to have a testosterone-like effect in men and an estrogen-like effect in women." (6)

It is easy to see why the thousands of Distributors who attended the Young Living Annual Grand Convention were excited enough about pregnenolone research to clean the shelves of Dr. Young's new booklet.

1 Sahelian, Ray, M.D. Pregnenolone: Nature's Feel Good Hormone. (Garden City Park, New York: Avery Publishing Group, 1997),57.
2 Roberts, E. (1995) "Pregnenolone-From Selye to Alzheimer and a Model of the Pregnenolone Sulfate Binding Site on the GABAA Receptor," Biochemical Pharamcology 49:1 (1995): 1-16.
3 Regelson, William, M.D., and Carol Colman. The Super-Hormone Promise: Nature's Antidote to Aging. (New York: Pocket Books, 1996),79.
4 Young, D. Gary, N.D. Pregnenolone: A Radical New Approach to Health, Longevity, and Emotional Well-being. (Salem, Utah: Essential Science Publishing, 2000), 21.
5 Lee, John R., M.D. "Natural" vs. "Synthetic" Hormones, A Question of Semantics. http://home.coqui.net/ytorres/NHRT/art,ll.htm> (3 July 1998).
6 Regelson, 77.

Reprinted with permission of Young Living, Lehi, UT 84043
Essential Edge magazine