Gina Kolata, Chasing Youth, Many Gamble on Hormones nytimes.com
[ My understanding is that the only thing that's been show to be really effective on the longevity front is eating a lot less, but more on that later. Americans tend to prefer techno-fixes, though. This article should be compared with the "endocrinology 101" angle of nytimes.com ]
The treatment is expensive: $1,000 a month for the panoply of drugs and dietary supplements, including human growth hormone and testosterone for men and women, estrogen and progesterone for women (the doctors say their "bioidentical" hormones are safe), melatonin, DHEA, vitamins and antioxidants. . . .
Human growth hormone has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use by people with medical deficiencies, and once a drug is on the market, doctors can legally prescribe it for any reason.
"I was thrilled by the concept," said Dr. Maxine Papadakis of the University of California in San Francisco. But Dr. Papadakis said she worried about the sweeping conclusion about reversing aging. It was a small study, she said, and the men who took part knew who was taking growth hormone and who was not.
Dr. Papadakis set out to test growth hormone in 52 healthy men from 70 to 85. She designed the study so that the men did not know if they were taking the drug or a dummy medication.
Reporting in 1996, she found that growth hormone slightly increased muscle mass and decreased body fat but, paradoxically, did not make the men stronger. People had claimed it improved their mental clarity, but she found no such effects; if anything, those taking growth hormone did slightly worse on memory tests. They also suffered swollen legs and feet and achy joints, making them so uncomfortable that a quarter taking growth hormone had their doses reduced during the study.
Dr. Papadakis said her results were ignored by growth hormone enthusiasts. "They can't let go of the hypothesis because they like it," she said. |
