7-Keto: Your Fat-Burning Workhorse

7-keto speeds up metabolism and heat production to promote weight reduction, as well as enhancing lean body mass and muscle development and increasing the activity of the thyroid gland. What separates 7-keto from all other fat-reduction supplements is that it’s a hormone that adjusts and/or mimics the body’s own natural hormonal strategies that encourage fat loss. —Dr. Oz

One of the complaints about various fat burners is that they overstimulate the central nervous system, which can elevate heart rate and blood pressure. Another is their inability to sustain thermogenic activity, or fat burning, for a considerable amount of time and the need to take them throughout the day to get the desired response. 7-keto DHEA appears to be a fat burner that doesn’t have those problems.

While valued as one of the body’s most elite anti-aging weapons, the hormone DHEA, a.k.a. dehydroepiandrosterone, also is a precursor of the male hormone testosterone. Because of its androgenic effects sports physiologists have sought to find ways to use DHEA’s thermogenic and anabolic capabilities safely and effectively. What has emerged is a derivative of DHEA known as 7-keto DHEA. New research indicates that 7-keto is several times more effective at increasing the body’s basal metabolic rate than DHEA.

BMR determines how proficiently your body metabolizes fat while at rest. In studies conducted at the University of Wisconsin, researchers reported that 7-keto DHEA was 2.5 times more active at increasing liver thermogenic enzymes. It appears that 7-keto DHEA plays a major role in regulating thyroid function by boosting  levels of the thyroid hormone triiodothyronine, or T3. Additionally, 7-keto DHEA helps increase the metabolism of carbohydrates, fats and proteins as a direct result of its accelerating the rate at which mitochondrial cells produce more ATP.

7-keto DHEA also improves thermogenic processes via its ability to improve the transport of protons across mitochondrial membranes known as uncoupling proteins. UCPs directly affect fat burning and bodyfat reduction, which researchers now know is a direct result of 7-keto’s role in the increased production of the amino acid L-carnitine.

You may have read that L-carnitine acts as the key that unlocks and escorts fats to be burned in what could be referred to as your fat-burning matrix—the mitochondrial cells. There the fat is processed, metabolized and converted into fuel. Also, in a recent randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study of 30 overweight adults who were divided into two groups, group one getting 100 milligrams of 7-keto twice daily for eight weeks and the other getting a placebo, the 7-keto group lost significantly more bodyfat.

The key but most misunderstood fact about 7-Keto DHEA is that it enhances the production of insulinlike growth factor 1, also known as somatomedin C, as well. IGF-1’s structure is very similar to that of insulin and is one of the chief anabolic hormones linked to the production of growth hormone. Known attributes of increased growth hormone production are decreased bodyfat, increased muscle mass, increased bone density, improved energy levels and heightened immune function—as well as multiple antiaging effects.

7-keto DHEA also plays a role in reducing cortisol. Researchers contend that it downregulates the actions of the enzyme that converts inactive glucocorticoids like cortisol to their active form. Elevated cortisol accelerates muscle wasting as well as encourages the storage of bodyfat.

From all of the available data, 7-keto appears to be a fat-burning workhorse.

Suggested dose: 25 to 200 milligrams daily. Current data suggest that taking 7-keto DHEA in the morning, when hormone levels peak, is most effective. Dr. Oz recommends taking 100 milligrams with breakfast and 100 milligrams with dinner.