Nutritional Endocrinology Practitioner Training (NEPT)
Clinical Pearl

September 24th, 2017

On our coaching call on Thursday, I reviewed a very interesting DUTCH test.  The client was a 59-year-old woman with a history of difficulty reducing weight – in spite of major diet changes and an intensive exercise regime.

She had decent low-end-to-normal range – cortisol and DHEA findings, low progesterone, and completely tanked estrogen and testosterone.

What we discovered was over-activity of the reductase enzymes that convert androstenedione to etiocholanolone and androsterone. What this means is that instead of converting DHEA to testosterone, she had a buildup of these metabolytes and low testosterone.

In particular, there was over-activity of the 5-beta-reductase enzyme rather than 5-alpha reductase over-activity, which is more common. I did a little bit of digging and found that it revealed that a potential cause of this is low bile flow, indicative of a sluggish liver/gall bladder.

Here are a couple of references I found.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383127

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19515843

http://www.endocrine-abstracts.org/ea/0007/ea0007p204.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5%CE%B1-Reductase_inhib

 

To learn more watch the recording of Thursday’s call.

Click the link to review the DUTCH Test report.