1-DHEA - WHY EMBRACE THE DARK SIDE WHEN GREY JEDIS DO IT BETTER

1-DHEA - WHY EMBRACE THE DARK SIDE WHEN GREY JEDIS DO IT BETTER

In case you’re not nerdy enough to get the title’s reference, I’ll save you a google and just explain:  Grey Jedis in the Star Wars Universe can utilize both the light and the dark sides, and in doing so pretty much dominate every battlefield onto which they step.  And no, it’s not some yin-yang nonsense wherein they’re just milquetoast and boring- they want to trash everyone they fight, so they use the most brutal stuff they can take from both sides and beat everyone around them like red-headed stepchildren.

 Maybe this will require a trigger warning because the compound I’m about to explain is that brutal.  1-DHEA, the main ingredient in Chemical One, is a preprohormone that packs all the punch of testosterone enanthate.  Yeah, I’ll wait while you scoff, because we’ve all heard tall tales about prohormones before, and this one is a preprohormone- your skepticism is justified.  

1-DHEA, also called 1-Androsterone or 1-Andro, is the latest version of 1-testosterone to hit the market.  For those of you who remember the halcyon days of prohormones wherein steroid formulas that were never mass produced, or methylated versions of popular steroids were marketed (wrongly, but marketed nevertheless) as prohormones, 1-testosterone was one of the best.  1-test was never marketed by pharmaceutical companies, but it and its methylated version got rave reviews in the bodybuilding world before it was pulled on the market, and some reviewers preferred it to darkside “supplements” like dianabol and anadrol.  That was pulled off the market in 2005 and scheduled alongside other designer steroids, but its precursor, being naturally occurring, was not.

That’s where 1-DHEA comes in.  Upon ingestion, 1-DHEA goes through a two-step conversion process, converting first by 3-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase and then 17-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase enzymes into 1-testosterone.  This two-step process means 1-DHEA isn’t a prohormone- it’s a preprohormone, and although it goes through all that conversion, it still packs a hell of a punch.  The single human study done on 1-DHEA revealed that this badass preprohormone pretty much works like magic, the dark side kind, because the authors reported effects for 110mg of 1-DHEA three times a day in trained athletes that were almost identical to those found in another study that 300mg of injectable testosterone enanthate a week. 

In that one-month study, dudes who had an average of 6 years of training under their belts had their bodyweight increase 6.4% even as they leaned out, and gained 9.2% on their bench, 14.2% on their squat, and 14.6% on their deadlift.  There were no estrogenic effects at all, because 1-DHEA cannot be converted into estrogen.  Instead, they looked, lifted, and felt significantly more awesomely after a month.  Like I mentioned above, the authors of the studies themselves seemed amazed:

“Collectively, these studies suggest that [oral] administration of 330 mg 3-hydroxy-5-androst-1-en-17-one/day provides improvements in body composition and muscular strength that are similar to those shown when 300 mg/wk testosterone enanthate is administered IM” (Grenados).

At this point I’m hoping your interest is piqued and your skepticism is somewhat allays, but if you’re anything like me I’m sure you just took a look a the citation and noticed the title of the article ends with “but impairs user health.”  Lifters in the study used 330 mg a day of garden variety 1-DHEA, and that dose and delivery system had similar effects to a methylated prohormone on the liver, and of 1-Testosterone on cardiovascular health.  None of that should be particularly terrifying to you, as the impact on users was not terrifically significant, and a liposomal delivery system like the one Chaos and Pain uses for Chemical One should limit or eliminate the hepatic toxicity of the supplement.  

As for the cardiovascular issues, they could be linked to the high doses of 1-DHEA.  If you’re concerned about your cholesterol, you could simply use olive oil when you cook and take an extra couple of scoops of Cannibal Kraken, which should balance out your ratios and put your fears at rest.  Frankly, given the fact that the authors of 1-DHEA’s human study noted a marked improvement in mood in the subjects taking 1-DHEA, you probably won’t be worrying about much of anything.

 So, there you have it- 1-DHEA has all of the brutal badassery of the strongest stuff the dark side has to offer but lacks the illegality and brutal impact on your estrogen levels and internal organs.  It’s what grey Jedi would take… if we shipped to the Galactic Republic.

Sources:  

Granados J, Gillum TL, Christmas KM, Kuennen MR. Prohormone supplement 3-hydroxy-5-androst-1-en-17-one enhances resistance training gains but impairs user health. J Appl Physiol (1985). 2014 Mar 1;116(5): 560–569.