Staying Natural Is Not Always the Healthier Choice: When Unnatural Compounds Improve Your Health

The assumption that natural equals healthy and unnatural equals harmful is so deeply embedded in fitness culture that questioning it feels heretical. But when you examine the evidence, there are clear cases where so-called unnatural compounds provide health benefits that a purely natural approach cannot match.

The Environmental Argument

We live in an environment that is profoundly unnatural. Endocrine disruptors in plastics, pesticides in food, artificial light disrupting circadian rhythms, chronic psychological stress from modern work culture, and micronutrient-depleted soil all conspire to distort your natural hormonal baseline downward. Your “natural” testosterone level in 2024 is almost certainly lower than your genetic potential would produce in a pre-industrial environment.

Correcting for environmental degradation of your hormonal profile is not the same as artificially enhancing it beyond your natural capacity. If your baseline has been suppressed by factors outside your control, interventions that restore it to its genetic potential are arguably more natural than accepting the suppressed state as your “natural” level. This principle is a direct application of the Tony Huge Laws of Biochemistry Physics—you must apply an equal and opposite biochemical force to counteract a pathological environmental one.

The DHEA Example

DHEA is a hormone precursor produced by the adrenal glands that declines significantly with age. Supplemental DHEA has demonstrated neuroprotective effects, anti-inflammatory properties, improved bone density, and anti-aging benefits in clinical research. Brian Johnson, the longevity researcher who reversed his biological age by decades, includes DHEA in his protocol.

Many people consider DHEA unnatural because it is a supplemental hormone precursor. But DHEA is produced endogenously by your own body, it declines naturally with age, and supplementing it restores levels to those your body maintained when you were younger. Calling this unnatural while calling age-related hormonal decline natural reveals the absurdity of the framework.

Detaching from Identity Labels

The core problem is that “natural” has become an identity rather than a descriptor. When naturalness is part of your identity, evaluating compounds objectively becomes psychologically threatening. Admitting that a particular unnatural compound might improve your health feels like an attack on who you are.

A health-first approach requires detaching from these identity labels and evaluating each intervention on its evidence: what are the demonstrated benefits at appropriate dosages? What are the risks? Does it suppress endogenous production? Can it be discontinued without adverse effects? These questions produce better decisions than asking whether something fits an arbitrary and inconsistent definition of natural.

Interesting Perspectives

The debate over “natural” vs. “unnatural” health interventions extends far beyond fitness into philosophy, technology, and even transhumanism. Some biohackers argue that the entire concept of “natural” is a moving target—humanity has used tools to augment our biology since the first sharpened stone. In this view, using a selective androgen receptor modulator (SARM) to correct a receptor deficiency is no different conceptually than using glasses to correct a vision deficiency; both are technological tools to optimize function. Others point to the “appeal to nature” fallacy, where the assumption that something is good because it is natural is a logical error (poison ivy is natural, insulin is manufactured). A more radical perspective frames the human body itself as an inherently flawed and inefficient “natural” system that requires continuous debugging and upgrading with precision chemical tools to reach its true potential, making the pursuit of an idealized natural state a form of biological Luddism.