“DHEA supplements slow human aging.”
DHEA supplements have not been shown to slow aging in people.
DHEA supplements have not been shown to slow aging. A pill can raise your DHEA blood level, but that is not the same as a younger body, and a two-year trial in older adults found no anti-aging benefit.
If you are thinking about DHEA to slow aging, you can skip it; a two-year trial found no benefit, and it carries real hormone side effects.
Safety note: DHEA acts like a hormone and can raise androgen levels. It can cause oily skin, acne and unwanted male-pattern hair growth in women. Do not use it if you have a hormone-sensitive cancer; high doses or long-term use might raise the risk of these cancers. It may worsen mood disorders and raise the risk of mania. It should not be used during pregnancy or breastfeeding, and it should not be combined with estrogen or testosterone. Taken with certain antidepressants, it may cause manic symptoms.
Talk to a healthcare professional if: you have or have had a hormone-sensitive cancer, you have a mood disorder such as depression or a condition that causes mania, you take estrogen, testosterone or an antidepressant, or you are pregnant or breastfeeding and are thinking about DHEA.
A two-year trial designed to test DHEA as an anti-aging supplement found no meaningful benefit for body composition, fitness, strength, blood sugar control or quality of life. Confidence is limited because that trial was small and no study has measured whether DHEA changes how long people live.
DHEA supplements have not been shown to slow aging in people. In a two-year trial in older adults with low DHEA levels, the supplement raised DHEA in the blood but did not improve body composition, fitness, strength, blood sugar control or quality of life.
The 2006 trial enrolled 87 older men and 57 older women with low DHEA and gave DHEA, testosterone (men only) or placebo for two years. The only gains seen with DHEA were small: bone density rose slightly at the hip in men and at the wrist in women. Neither hormone caused major side effects in the trial. A 2014 review of 23 trials in 1,188 postmenopausal women found DHEA did not clearly improve sex drive or sexual function and had no clear effect on weight, cholesterol, blood sugar or bone density, with low confidence in the evidence. DHEA levels do fall with age, which is why it is sold as anti-aging, but raising the level has not been shown to make the body work younger.
- Nair KS, Rizza RA, O'Brien P, et al. DHEA in elderly women and DHEA or testosterone in elderly men. New England Journal of Medicine. 2006;355(16):1647-1659. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa054629. PMID: 17050889
- Elraiyah T, Sonbol MB, Wang Z, et al. Clinical review: the benefits and harms of systemic dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) in postmenopausal women with normal adrenal function: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. 2014;99(10):3536-3542. DOI: 10.1210/jc.2014-2261. PMID: 25279571. PMCID: PMC5393492
- Mayo Clinic Staff. DHEA. Mayo Clinic. May 12, 2026