Hormone health means the checks and balances help your levels stay even, so stress is minimized. While pregnenolone steal is not an official medical term, the concept remains valuable.
All the steroid sex hormones are derived from cholesterol.
The pregnenolone steal notion states that since the steroid hormone for progesterone and DHEA first pass through the molecule pregnenolone. If your body is stressed then instead of making DHEA, it will make cortisol, and more cortisol, and more cortisol. In cases of dysregulated ACTH secretion or an adrenal tumor is how this happens most frequently.
The consequence of a pregnenolone steal going on for weeks, months, or years, can cause all sorts of health havoc. In the short-term shifts in production are quickly resolved by back up pathways of hormone production.
The biggest consequence is fatigue, the second biggest consequence is fat gain, and the third most common consequence of too much cortisol from this pathway is brain fog.
How to both combat the ongoing stress and subsequent prenenolone steal with chronic cortisol elevation, and the consequences of the production is a complex science, not completely understood and mostly comes from animal studies.
Successful metabolic and hormonal health means identifying and combating the consequences of these conditions.
