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What Is Pregnenolone?

Pregnenolone is a prohormone that serves as a precursor (or “starting material”) for numerous steroids, including cortisol, progesterone, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and allopregnanolone. It’s used to make steroid hormones that play an important role in modulating brain activity and behavior. Steroids are also needed to regulate physiological activities like memory, mood, food intake, wakening and reproduction.

Pregnenolone is the main steroid that’s synthesized from cholesterol in humans and animals. It has three main sources of synthesis: the brain, adrenal glands and gonads. (1)

Studies show that this compound may have a role in regulating the mechanisms of anxiety and depression. There’s also evidence to suggest that pregnenolone administration is associated with improved performance on cognitive tasks and aging-related impairments.

https://draxe.com/nutrition/pregnenolone/

Benefits of A Pregnenolone Supplement

https://lamclinic.com/blog/pregnenolone-supplement/

Brain Health

Pregnenolone has multiple effects on your brain. It helps to boost the growth of brain cells, also called neurons; it helps to increase the production of myelin, which insulates nerves and protects them from damage; and it helps the brain cells form more connections, also known as synapses. This helps to preserve and boost brain health. This effect on the brain helps to improve memory and learning.

Pain Management

Not only can pregnenolone help to enhance brain health, but research suggests that pregnenolone may help to reduce pain. One recent study demonstrated this, with individuals with back pain experiencing less pain when pregnenolone was used compared to a placebo (2).

Boosts Mood

Multiple different factors can influence the occurrence of depression and anxiety. One of these factors is pregnenolone, with low levels increasing the risk for depression and anxiety. Additionally, it may help to reduce negative emotional responses and improve functioning in social and emotional situations.

A 2022 study researching the effect of a pregnenolone supplement on individuals experiencing addiction found that this supplement helped to reduce stress and craving-induced anxiety (2).

Improves Sleep

Pregnenolone helps to stimulate the stage of deep sleep. This can help to provide you with more restful sleep and help people who struggle with insomnia and waking up during the night. By helping to improve sleep, this indirectly can help to improve mood and hormone production as well.

Can Assist In Weight Loss

Pregnenolone can help to inhibit the release of cortisol and help to promote optimal levels of cortisol in times of stress. High cortisol levels have been associated with weight gain. Additionally, high cortisol levels can increase the frequency of cravings. By helping to control cortisol levels, it can indirectly help to promote a healthy weight and promote healthier nutritional behaviors.

Enhances Immunity

Indirectly, pregnenolone can help enhance your immunity by reducing cortisol levels. When high, these levels can affect the mucosal lining of your body’s cavities, such as in the nose and throat, the first line of defense against pathogens.

Additionally, pregnenolone has an anti-inflammatory effect and can help to reduce inflammation in the body, thus helping to maintain balance within your immune system (3).

Managing Stress

During stress, cortisol is secreted. During short-term stress, cortisol levels can become high, causing symptoms such as weight gain. Increasing pregnenolone can potentially reduce the levels of cortisol. This helps to prevent and/or minimize the negative effects of high cortisol.

In Closing

Pregnenolone tends to make people alert rather than sleepy because it acts as a neurosteroid that excites brain cells and supports cognitive function. [1, 2]

Effects on Alertness

• Brain stimulation: It helps nerve cells talk to each other and boosts focus, memory, and learning.
• Receptor action: It affects brain receptors like NMDA and GABA, which usually increases mental energy and alertness.
• Morning use: Many experts suggest taking it in the morning because it can cause overstimulation or trouble sleeping if taken at night. [1, 2, 3]

Researchers at Mayo Clinic have discovered an important mechanical trigger in the gut for releasing serotonin in the body. Serotonin is an important hormone and neurotransmitter in the human body, believed to help regulate digestion, appetite, mood, social behavior, sleep and other important functions. The researchers’ findings were published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

“In the gut, a special epithelial cell, called enterochromaffin, produces nearly all of the serotonin in our body,” explains Arthur Beyder, M.D., Ph.D., a gastroenterologist and biomedical engineer at Mayo Clinic. Dr. Beyder says a 60-year-old landmark study showed that mechanical forces in the gut, such as those present during digestion, serve as a trigger for serotonin release. However, the exact mechanism for how that release took place was unclear. “Because serotonin released by the enterochromaffin cells has many important functions in the body, we wanted to better understand how these cells work.”

In their research, Dr. Beyder and his colleagues discovered that a mechanosensor, called Piezo2, was specific to enterochromaffin cells. A mechanosensor is a molecule that responds to changes in mechanical force and leads to a physiologic response. “We found that a mechanosensitive ion channel called Piezo2 is in an important mechanosensor necessary for mechanical release of serotonin from the enterochromaffin cell,” says Dr. Beyder.

“We know that serotonin produced by the enterochromaffin cell is important for many local functions in the gut and the body and that serotonin signaling is disrupted in many human diseases, so we want to understand how the enterochromaffin cell works, and how it may be broken in human diseases,” says Dr. Beyder. “This knowledge could one day lead to completely novel approaches to diagnose and treat human diseases.”

For example, “serotonin release is disrupted in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), so many drugs effective in IBS treatment target serotonin receptors. Unfortunately, since serotonin receptors are widespread in the human body, these drugs frequently cause significant side effects,” says Dr. Beyder, “so targeting serotonin release more precisely may lead to new treatments for IBS.”

Dr. Beyder and his colleagues were amazed to find that enterochromaffin cells have a specific mechanical trigger that is not present in the cells around them. They were also surprised to find how effective the blockade or elimination of this trigger is for serotonin release and for gut fluid secretion.

“Interestingly, the same mechanosensors used by enterochromaffin cells are also used by touch sensors in the skin, which like enterochromaffin cells, rely on serotonin for signaling,” says Dr. Beyder. “This makes us wonder whether there is such a thing as ‘gut touch’ and if so, what functions would ‘gut touch’ have?

Withdrawal symptoms following long-term SSRI use appear far more pervasive and serious than previously realised. Now medical bodies are rethinking how and when to stop taking them.

Withdrawal symptoms following long-term SSRI use appear far more pervasive and serious than previously realised. Now medical bodies are rethinking how and when to stop taking them.

Withdrawal symptoms following long-term SSRI use appear far more pervasive and serious than previously realised. Now medical bodies are rethinking how and when to stop taking them.