DHEA at low doses has been more helpful for me than testosterone even at superphysiologic doses
I have low DHEAS and testosterone due to chronic low dose prednisone. I went to a HRT clinic not knowing the philosophy of many of these clinics is to start women at superphysiologic testosterone dosing. They started me at 15 mg/week. I noticed some benefit, but mainly lowness and brain fog the 2nd half of the week. Also oily skin.
The clinic I went to, Trillion, doesn't support much lower dosing because they won't order 50 or 100 mg vials and also would not support biweekly dosing for trough symptoms. It blows my mind that they have multiple clinics in multiple states operating in this manner. I also have high blood pressure and a family history of heart disease. They do not take family history and no one there knows how to take a manual blood pressure reading. They always charted me as having normal blood pressure.
Anyway, I found a much more flexible provider and take testosterone shots daily now. I stabilized at a lower dose, but it's just okay.
I started 5 mg micronized DHEA tablets a couple months ago based on chat bot recommendations (why not?), and it was everything I expected from testosterone and more. More mental energy and clarity, more libido, better mood. My DHEAS before was at 8, and is now around 100 (optimum is over 100), so that's probably why it helped me so much. My testosterone levels have also increased with the added DHEA. Enough to where I plan to taper off my testosterone injections.
I asked my HRT doc why no one is prescribing DHEA (it's an important neurosteroid) and she said it was b/c people have variable responses (DHEA is precursor of testosterone and estrogen). This kind of makes sense, but this mentality didn't serve me well as a patient imo. It is pretty standard in medicine to supplement DHEA with levels as low as mine.
Just wanted to share my experiences.