Ayurvedic medicine, a form of traditional Indian healing, first popularized by Deepak Chopra in the 1980’s in the book Quantum Healing, has become (nearly) mainstream, but there was a time, in our part of the world, when the 7000-year old science was unknown. I first learned of it in pharmacy school from an Ayurveda trained dermatologist named Amrit Singh, who regularly used it in his practice, endlessly extolling its virtues for skin health and the healing of many internal ailments that Western Doctors considered untreatable. Plant medicine plays a major role in Ayurveda. One of Dr. Singh’s favorite healing botanicals was the Indian Gooseberry known as Amla, the fruit of the Malaca Tree, revered by Hindus as the home of the God Vishnu.
As the lion of March morphs into the lamb of April, it’s spring time again! That means, in addition to the returning robins and budding leaves, it’s only a matter of time before the media is flooded with dermatological dogma about slathering ourselves in sunscreens and staying out of the sun. Yet we know that sun exposure is required to produce what may be the most important and multifunctional essential nutrient, the hormone like substance that is produced in the skin called Vitamin D, without which human life would not be possible. So what gives? Is the sun a demon in the sky, the source of photo-oxidation (sun related skin damage) resulting in splotches, wrinkles and cancer? Or is the solar orb our friend, emitting healing and nutritive energies that human beings require for their very existence?
Pregnenolone, anonymous and unheralded as it may be, is the Mother of all steroid hormones. It is derived from cholesterol. From there it’s converted into testosterone, progesterone, estrogen and cortisol, among other important biochemicals. Even vitamin D, the body’s homemade essential nutrient, is a derivative of the under-appreciated biochemical.
Pregnenolone itself, in its raw unconverted form, can be considered the quintessential biochemical of youth. Kids and teenagers make loads of it. While pregnenolone on its own may not have many hormone properties, it is able to improve the activity of and stabilize the effects of other hormones, including cortisol, testosterone and estrogen. As we get older, our pregnenolone levels tend to decrease. This is one of the reasons for the ever increasing degenerative impact of stress associated with aging.
