What is pregnenolone?

Pregnenolone is like the starting ingredient in a super cool kitchen that makes all sorts of delicious treats.

Imagine you have a special kind of cookie dough, this is pregnenolone. It's not a cookie yet, but it can become many different kinds of cookies depending on what you add to it. In your body’s kitchen, this cookie dough turns into things like chocolate chip cookies (which are like cortisol), sugar cookies (like progesterone), or even peanut butter cookies (like testosterone).

Your body has a special oven called the adrenal gland, where this cookie dough is made. When you're stressed, tired, or need more energy, your body uses this dough to make different treats that help you feel better.

Sometimes, if there's not enough of this cookie dough, it can be hard for your body to make all the delicious treats it needs, just like how a kitchen without enough dough might only be able to bake one kind of cookie at a time.