7-keto, the holiday supplement

Last year, we spent the yuletide holidays with our kids in the Houston area.  We went out a lot, sampled the holiday food gifts that my daughter and her husband brought home, had a few treat foods that we only allow ourselves at this time of year, and were -- admittedly! -- self-indulgent with good food.  I got home to find i hadn't messed with my scale weight at all.

It got me more interested in a supplement that i had bought some time before and hadn't really been impressed with, but figured i'd use up during that trip anyway.  My lack of "negative progress" inspired me to buy more of it ... and again i wasn't impressed, so i put the SECOND bottle aside till now.

It's distinctly possible that in spring and summer, regular seasonal hormone responses are such that the boost that comes with 7-keto are easily overlooked, and it requires short days without much sun to really be noticeable.  The recent plethora of information about circadian influence on hormones might just shine a light on the phenomena i observed last year.

7-keto is shorthand for 3-acetyl-7-oxo-dehydroepiandrosterone, a metabolite of DHEA.  The amount our bodies produce follows the curve of a lot of other hormones -- rising through our teens, plateauing out in our twenties, and steadily dropping thereafter.  According to the Livestrong site, by the time we're fifty we've probably dropped to half of what we had in our physical prime.

Looking it up on WebMD and Dr. Weil, they're predictably less enthusiastic about it than other sites.  They insist there's "no" evidence that supplementing 7-keto will do any good -- after all the best trial available for it included only 30 overweight adults and only lasted eight weeks although it was a double-blind, placebo-controlled study.  They totally brush off the 3-times-better results of the 7-keto users....

On the other hand there are NO cautions given for ANYONE except "pregnant or nursing," the usual CYA response.  There are no listed interactions, either.  Conventional "health" advice can't say anything against it, and of course they WOULD if there were anything deleterious about it -- so they just fall back on "insufficient evidence."

Alternative sites list its benefits as improving fat loss, gaining lean tissue, immune health, memory support, and anti-aging properties.  My experience jibes with these claims.  Starting today, i'm going to repeat last year's practice of taking a 100-mg capsule twice per day, and see how it goes!  :-D

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I'm also still taking a tablespoon of gelatin in my first cup of coffee every morning.  It really does seem to have an impact on my appetite generally, and on my desire for meat specifically!  More often i find myself leaving food behind on my restaurant plates, and being satisfied with smaller servings at home.

For anyone with a runaway appetite, i'd be inclined to recommend this practise!  I soften a tablespoon of a good quality gelatin in about a quarter of a cup of filtered cold water in a large coffee cup, and then just top with coffee (or tea) and stir it in.  Drink it while it's hot!  :-)  Let it cool too long and it will start thickening up on you.

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To all my dear friends and readers -- a very happy holiday season!  It's well into Christmas Eve in Britain and Europe, the packages are probably already unwrapped in Australia and New Zealand ... and tonight marks the END of Chanukkah (i love light festivals).  But the lengthening daylight is something to celebrate for everyone in the northern hemisphere -- the sun ISN'T dwindling away to nothing, after all!  ;-)  Down south, enjoy your beaches and barbecues!  "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"