Posted on 08/19/2007 1:41:36 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
Baby boomers pay for six pack in a syringe
By Philip Sherwell, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 1:00am BST 19/08/2007
With his six-pack stomach, bulging chest and bull-like shoulders, the muscleman in the newspaper advertisement displays the sort of rippling torso that adorns the cover of men's fitness journals.
But there is one difference. From the neck up, Dr Jeffry S Life is a balding 67-year-old physician.
His physique is the product not of a computer touch-up but a controversial American "ageing management" technique, that often includes a cocktail of human growth hormones and testosterone.
Some 13,000 clients have so far spent thousands of dollars on a technique known as Cenegenics (from the Greek for "new beginning"). As post-war baby boomers enter their 60s, it promises to boost performance from the office to the gym to the bedroom.
The initial one-day $2,995 evaluation at the Cenegenics Medical Institute (CMI) in Las Vegas, has already attracted a handful of unnamed Britons seeking the secret of Dr Life's remarkable torso.
However, unlike many other health fads, there is one reason why it may not prove popular.
advertisementCenegenics was the brainchild of Alan Mintz, a radiologist, whose own buffed body also used to be the best advertising for his business - until he died in June, aged 69, five years short of the average male American life expectancy.
His death prompted internet speculation that he paid the ultimate price for using human growth hormones. But the CMI has been at pains to assert that Dr Mintz's passing was the result of a brain haemorrhage. His decline was due to an accident in the gym, according to Dr Life, his friend and personal physician, who also works for Cenegenics in Las Vegas.
After the initial evaluation, clients spend up to $13,000 on exercise and diet regimes, supplemented by vitamins and, in most cases, hormone replenishment such as testosterone.
Approximately 20 per cent are also prescribed injections of human growth hormones if they are diagnosed as demonstrating adult growth hormone deficiency (AGHD).
Critics say that it is unproven and potentially dangerous. Tom Perls, a professor of medicine at Boston University, expressed surprise at the number of Cenegenics clients diagnosed with AGHD, as he said the condition normally affects three people in 10,000.
In an interview outlining his philosophy last year, Dr Mintz listed a panoply of positives that he attributed to human growth hormone. They include a decrease in fat and skin wrinkling, an increase in muscle and improved mood.
"Next year does not have to be worse than this year," Dr Mintz said. "How about good sexual activity with your loved one once a week, twice a week, feeling good about it?"
bflr.
Yeah, look at all the time and money spent on trying to stay young - that’s time that could just be spent on living well.
Hey, this story isn’t about beer!
I know...
The “six pack” is what lured me to the story in the first place!
Recommended by Barry Bonds!
Well?
Well?
They're not. Their customers are at or near age 60 which does fall into the age range of baby boomers.
Prostate cancer is also a possible side effect of birthday cake with a "50" written on it.
I have seen this ad in the Houston Chronicle and always thought it was photoshop.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Not necessarily, I have changed almost that much in the last 5 months and I don’t take hormones or steroids of any kind. I am 63 and men much younger have started to ask what it is I am doing. The answer is just hard workouts and good nutrition.
PM the secret. I need all the help I can get.
Not a good thing to mess around with hormones like that...
At advanced age when hormone profiles have naturally migrated toward the typical profiles of the elderly, I’m not sure this is any worse than the alternatives. You’re dealing with a cohort with a very limited number of years left (excluding a statistical small minority) to be physically ‘virile,’ and many of which just have a very limited number of years of any sort. I have a hard time begrudging the elderly their attempts to do something other than slip away into obsolescence and death, regardless of their generation - so long as they’re of sound enough mind to understand what they’re doing, what the trade-offs may be, etc. I suspect younger people turning their noses up at this sort of stuff will not be so strident when their time comes and they’re faced with future ‘treatment’ possibilities.
Well what?
Take your case up with the editor of the news article or the reporter.
Write a letter to the editor about it.
I just posted the article and link to FR because it was interesting.
I think the point of the article is that these “six pack” syringe products are marketed to Baby Boomers...
It don't.
Like wigs, hairpieces, weight loss drugs etc were all pre-boomer products.
If I could take a pill that would not lengthen my life but would make me feel vital and improve the way I feel in my later years, you bet I’d take it.
I’d pay a lot of money for it.
I don’t want to live forever but I also don’t want to spend my last 10 years in a nursing home with a bad hip, drooling into my jello cup.
You also put an insulting addendum onto the headline. That’s “well, what.” Getting tired of this routine bash-the-boomers stuff, and I’m talking to you, not to the author.
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