Controversial hormone injections could hold the secret to youth
Researchers are trying to figure out how to extend our vigor into old age, and a controversial hormone injection might be the answer.
Baby boomers, some 79-million strong, are going gray, but many are refusing to surrender their youth without a fight.
Scientists are split over whether there’s a biological limit to how old a human can get.
Some bet the first person who will live to 150 was born by the year 2000.
However, living a long life isn’t enough. Researchers are trying to figure out how to extend our vigor.
John Bellizzi’s routine is a lot like anyone else’s, but this 51-year-old is willing to go a lot further than most of us to keep fit. Twice a week he gives himself a shot.
“The one that I take is made from urine from pregnant women,” says John.
John is part of a growing group of men who are using human chorionic gonadotropin, or HCG—an injection of testosterone.
“I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘What? Are you nuts?’ With the added testosterone in my body, I build muscle mass quicker. I have more vigor. I’m thinking faster,” says John.
His stats prove something is working. In two years he’s dropped and kept off 16 pounds, lowered his body fat by 13-percent and dropped 50 points off his cholesterol. It’s the latest trend at the Cenegenics Medical Institute in Las Vegas.
“We can manage the way we age, so at the age of 68, I can do the same things I did when I was 20,” says Dr. Robert Willix
Patients go through a seven-hour physical and then have a nutrition, exercise and supplement plan designed for them. But some worry this is taking us down a dangerous road medicine has traveled before.
“We used to think that by replacing estrogen, we would rejuvenate women, and low and behold, we found the opposite. We actually created more heart disease, blood clots and cognitive impairment than we prevented,” says Dr. Lewis Lipsitz, director of the Institute for Aging Research in Boston.
When it comes to HCG, there’s still uncertainty.
“I think that they are advertising a toxic soup for you, and it’s really something to avoid at all costs. It’s really modern-day quackery and hucksterism in my opinion,” says Tom Perls, PhD, director of the New England Centenarian Study in Boston.
Australian researchers say they believe a compound found in human semen can have a dramatic impact on lifespan. A team is testing the effects of a substance known as spermidine.
Researchers say it removes cellular garbage, like damaged cells. It increased the life of fruit flies by 30-percent and worms’ by 15-percent.
When spermidine was applied to human immune cells, they also lived longer.
RESEARCH SUMMARY
TOPIC: AGE WAVE: SHOT OF VIGOR OR QUACKERY?
HORMONE THERAPY FOR AGING: Human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) is a hormone produced during pregnancy that is made by cells that form the placenta. The hormone can be extracted and given to men to boost testosterone levels. In 2009, Dodgers star Manny Ramirez was suspended in part for obtaining a prescription for HCG, a substance banned in major league baseball. Some companies claim that HCG can counteract the body’s decreased production of testosterone after age 30, thus reducing the risk of conditions like heart disease, diabetes, sexual dysfunction and osteoporosis.
“It is my general advice about hormones in general, to go to a specialist, an endocrinologist, and find out if you have a problem that needs addressing, but these other anti-aging doctors — or even just non-doctors who are advertising hormones — I think that they are advertising a toxic soup for you, and it’s really something to avoid at all costs,” aging expert Tom Perls, Ph.D., director of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston Medical Center, told Ivanhoe.
The Endocrine Society advises against testosterone therapy besides when it’s administered to counteract a specific condition like delayed puberty or AIDS wasting. Their guidelines “recommend against … offering testosterone to all older men with low testosterone.”
Other experts caution that hormone supplementation as a whole is dangerous territory. “There was a time when we thought we should supplement everybody with growth hormone, until we discovered that it caused a variety of problems from pain in the feet to changes in the composition of the body that were actually detrimental rather than helpful, so I think that we should look at hormones as important to restore to the level that they should be at, at a given age, but not to use excessively,” Lewis Lipsitz, director of the Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife in Boston, Mass., told Ivanhoe.”Our approach should be evidence-based, and I would caution people about jumping on the newest bandwagon before an intervention is properly tested,” Dr. Lipsitz added.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Dr. Thomas Perls
thperls@bu.edu
