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Human Growth Hormone - The Key to Living a Sharper, Longer, Healthier Life?
In this article:
- Dr. Anderson's view of human growth hormones
- Hormones and your age
- Adding hormones back into your system
For the last 30 years, Dr. Rexford Anderson, Jr. has treated nearly every type of neurological disorder one can imagine, from epilepsy to Alzheimer's, and many others that are so rare that they lack their own moniker. Over the years, as his neurology practice grew in Abilene, Texas, and as he saw more people with degenerative diseases, he realized that the occurrence of those diseases simply reinforced the perception that as we grew older, we become more susceptible to diseases which break down the body in some way.
Osteoporosis and bone disease can cripple a skeletal system, and make the physical process of getting around impossible, if not painful. Dementia and Alzheimer's attack the brain. All of these diseases were thought to be an unfortunate and inevitable part of the aging process for those that didn't have the luck to have better genes.
As he treated patient after patient, Anderson did what he could to alleviate the harsh symptoms, but couldn't make their problems go away.
At nights and on the weekends, after putting in punishing16-hour days, Anderson pored over research that had to do with aging. When he found a 1990 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, he found what he was looking for -- a study that showed that after one group of elderly men was given growth hormone shots over a six-month period of time, along with an exercise regimen, compared to a similar group who only exercised, the men lost an average of 13 percent of body fat, and gained 9 percent in lean muscle mass. The study also showed that the men felt better physically and sexually. Patients on human growth hormone have reported an increase in memory and improved cognitive skills.
And so Anderson wondered if growth hormone shots would also help prevent some of the diseases that had been, until then, associated with aging? "If we could replace hormone levels and maintain them where they were at optimum health, could we prevent or delay what we used to call 'the aging process'?"
Anderson explained it like this. "A lot of the aging process is probably a deficiency type of syndrome, where you're missing the thing that you need to maintain optimum health. We don't know what age is. All we know is that as we age, our systems break down. Is it a disease process that makes your systems break down or is there something lacking in the systems that make them break down?"
As we get older, Anderson said, our bodies produce less estrogen, testosterone, and human growth hormone (hGH). All of these hormones, in fact, begin to decrease around age 40, which, not coincidentally, is when we begin to lose our edge - physically, cognitively, and sexually. With lower hormone levels, our immune system is weakened, it puts out faulty cells, fewer cells and, as a result, overall health is compromised because it can't fight the disease process. So if hormones are added back to an aging body, could diseases like Alzheimer's be prevented or delayed?
It's too early to tell, because mass produced hGH has only been available for use in age management medicine for only a short period of time. But this much we know, said Anderson, 61, who has been taking HGH himself for nearly a year. "I have more energy, I lost 15 percent body fat and my overall body mass is leaner. And there's an overall improvement in how I feel."
Anderson said that hGH's role in maintaining the body's functions can't be underestimated. "It keeps calcium in the bones, it helps the interaction of other hormones, and cellular reactions in the body," he said. "It's like the oil in your car. If you never replace the fluids, the car eventually comes to a halt. In this case, if you don't replace the hormones which facilitate the chemical reactions that your body needs to survive, your body halts."
So by adding back hormones - estrogen, testosterone and HGH - in theory, our bodies can return closer to their optimum levels, too. "The idea is to keep your fluid levels up and hormone levels up and do the proper things to allow your body to repair itself and to fight disease processes," he said.
The idea of restoring our bodies' hGH levels long after they've declined isn't as far-fetched as it may sound. Hormone therapy - estrogen, testosterone, and thyroid - has been prescribed for men and women for over 50 years. Insulin has been given to diabetics for decades. Declining thyroid levels have been boosted, too, in order to prevent hypertension and premature death.
"Hormone therapy will help maximize your daily potential," he said. "It's not going to make you live longer than you should have, but it will keep you, hopefully, from dying before you ought to."
Anderson offers hormone therapy as part of his overall program for maximizing health at his newly opened practice, the NeuroMedical Institute for Age Management in Dallas. In addition to hormone therapy, he prescribes supplements, as well as dietary and exercise programs to help slow or reverse the effects of symptoms which are often misdiagnosed as simply 'aging".
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