Why Age?

Growth Hormone: Fountain of Youth?

September 1, 2007 – 7:31 am | by admin

“Among the islands on the north side of Hispaniola…in which there is a continual spring of running water, of such marvellous virtue that the water thereof being drunk, perhaps with some diet, maketh old men young again.”

Pietro Martire d’Anghiera
1472-1528
Italian geographer and historian
(In a letter to Pope Leo X in 1513)

When Sylvester Stallone came to Australia recently to promote his movie “Rocky Balboa“, about an ageing ex-champ miraculously turning back the clock in the ring, he was detained by Customs due to the presence in his luggage of a large number of mysterious vials. He told the press it was a storm in a teacup and that the substance in the vials was harmless and something he had been taking for years to improve his health and appearance.

He certainly looked great for a man approaching 60.

When his lawyers were obliged to fly to Australia later to attend court, it was revealed that the mysterious elixir was human growth hormone, something his fellow aspirants to youth and good looks have been injecting for years, generating billions of dollars for the doctors who skate around US laws and attract the ire of the FDA as they prescribe it in staggering amounts.

Amazing claims are made for hormones in reversing ageing. People who shell out up to $1200 per week and inject it daily swear they have packed on muscle, lost body fat, boosted their libidos and immunity, and have sharper minds.

Cenegenics, under its founder Alan Mintz MD, sings the virtues of human growth hormone at a fever pitch not heard since Ponce de Leon set out from Puerto Rico in 1513 in search of the legendary island of Bimini. Arawak Indians told him it was the home of miraculous waters later chroniclers decided must be the River Jordan.

It seems today’s searchers for the fountain of youth may be as confused about it as 16th Century travel writers were about their geography.

Cenegenics founder Alan Mintz promised Americans on “60 Minutes” that his company’s unique combination of hormones, nutraceutical supplements and iron-pumping regimes would make them smarter, healthier, and richer. And hornier.

Countless numbers have followed his siren song, but a large, independent study of human growth hormone use in older, healthy people has raised some alarm bells.

The first objective evidence

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that even sedentary subjects aged in their 60s to their 80s packed on up to10 pounds of muscle and lost significant amounts of body fat.

However the study also raise the ugly spectre of side effects and has prompted scientists to declare human growth hormone a tantalizing but potentially dangerous blind alley in the search for prolonged youth.

Almost half the subjects developed pre-diabetes or diabetes, and suffered the aching joints and swollen tissues associated with arthritis. This ground-breaking study is the first objective evidence established in the growth hormone debate, and Mintz, whose Cenegenics system purports to be evidence-based, disputed the findings.

In animal studies, growth hormone, the same drug used illegally by athletes and bodybuilders, actually sped up ageing and reduced life span. Further, scientists fear its use in humans could promote cancer growth and conclude growth hormone should not be used outside controlled clinical trials.

The nasty side effects experienced by the subjects in the JAMA-published trial disappeared when the trial concluded and drug use was stopped.

Tonsillitis and testosterone

I’m going to throw in my two cent’s worth gleaned from anecdotal experience both as a bodybuilder and personal trainer.

Today’s crop of bodybuilding pharmaceutical freaks laugh and sneer at the paltry doses of anabolic steroids I took under medical supervision as an aspirant bodybuilder in the 70s and 80s. The amount of black market hormone they take today would have terrified me back then. In those days I steered well clear of testosterone preparations and human growth hormone. My instincts told me they were not compatible with health.

Prior to 1985 human growth hormone was extracted from human cadavers and hindsight shows that those who took the pre-‘85 synthesized version live with a ticking time bomb of potential disease, ranging from Creutzenfeldt -Jacob (human mad cow) to brain cancer, hepatitis C and HIV-Aids, due to the contamination of often illegally-obtained pituitary tissue. Several prominent athletes of that era have died from conditions associated with these diseases.

Over the years I trained two men whose perspective sheds light on the issue of hormone and steroid use for ageing management.

One was a young bodybuilder with HIV-Aids. Together, we monitored his diet and training regime with spectacular results. We were both hopeful that this might keep his disease at bay. It was when the doctors insisted he bombard his body with the early, crude swathe of retro-viral drugs that he showed the ravages of the disease as his immune system took a beating and weight training sessions were cancelled for weeks at a time. When he went off these experimental drugs his health recovered and he was able to resume training, and felt and looked good again.

As his T-cell count declined however, the doctors offered him anabolic steroids to build him up. I did not agree their use was appropriate in his case, and told him of the immunity-suppressing properties of steroids I had experienced. It seemed I could not go on a course of steroids without getting a bout of tonsillitis. Ultimately it was his body, his decision but my advice was harsh: “Go on steroids and you’ll be in a pine box in six months“. He took the doctors’ advice, went on steroids and we lost that sweet young man four months later.

Years later, I trained the Australian medical director of one of the world’s largest hormone companies. I had used an inject able version of their most efficient muscle-building steroid and naturally some lively conversations took place. By this stage, my anti-steroid stance had firmed, and the medical profession were prescribing them wholesale to those with HIV-Aids to counter the muscle-wasting properties of that disease.

“They have so spread this rumour for a truth throughout the court, that not only all the people, but also many of them whom wisdom or fortune hath divided them from the common sort, think it to be true” (d’Anghiera)

I argued with him that this was a cynical, money-making strategy to offset the loss in revenue from the disappearance of the non-medical market following the Australian government’s ban on non-medical use of steroids in 1991. He disagreed, of course, and said there were no trials to support my hypothesis that steroids were bad for immunity and that their use was hastening the death of people with HIV-Aids.

The point of these two examples from my history is that, despite lack of evidence beyond the apocryphal, I believe the use of hormones to enhance life is a bitter, empty chalice that may in fact harm life.

Rapid, accelerated cell growth of the type promoted by human growth hormone is akin to the rapid, uncontrolled cell growth of cancer. Dip one’s toes into the tempting waters of a pharmaceutical fountain of youth and you can only spiral into a vicious cycle of drug addiction and declining health.

“Rocky, you’re a bum!”

Rocky looks great, but take away his drugs and he will soon look like any other pensioner on the subway. As external sources of testosterone and other hormones are dumped into the system, the body’s own production shuts down. The analogy here is of an eternal life seeker, a Dorian Gray whose true hidden image withers as he puts up a bold, but ultimately false and unsustainable public face.

I won’t get an argument from Alan Mintz.

The man who used growth hormone himself for almost twenty years and sold it to thousands of others told “60 Minutes” he had no idea if its long term use was detrimental.

He died aged 69, five years shy of the average US male’s life expectancy.