Aging In The 21st Century

This story originally aired on April 23, 2006.

Jack Benny, the late, great comedian who perpetually gave his age as 39, once said that growing old is a case of mind over matter. "If you don't mind, it doesn't matter," he said.

The problem is, most of us do mind — and the graying of 78 million baby boomers is creating a vast marketing opportunity for doctors and pharmacists who claim they can slow down that process.

This new field is called anti-aging medicine, or age-management medicine. As correspondent Steve Kroft reported earlier this year, the treatment usually includes doses of the same performance-enhancing drugs now banned by most professional sports: things such as testosterone, DHEA, and human growth hormone. Needless to say, this is all highly controversial, and may be even illegal.

But that's not stopping thousands of doctors from taking up the practice — or patients from seeking them out.

"People are looking to feel better," says Dr. Mintz. "They're tired of the answers. 'Go home. We can't do anything for you. You're really OK.' They're tired of hearing, 'I'm gettin' old. There's nothing you can do. Just live with it.'"

Mintz says age-management medicine is not about chasing the fountain of youth.

"This is not about staying forever young," he says. "It's about staying in charge of my life and being productive."

Mintz, 68, is a long-time bodybuilder and fitness freak, who prescribes a regimen of regular exercise, good nutrition, along with vitamins and supplements to manage the effects of aging.

Here comes the controversial part: Every day, Mintz and many of his patients inject themselves with steroids and hormones that would get ballplayers banned and are considered by many to be downright dangerous.

Mintz says he has been on human growth hormone for about 10 or 11 years, but maintains that he has not experienced any adverse effects because he takes "very small doses."

What benefits has he felt?

"Well, energy. More energy," he says. "Better body composition. My brain is working, my brain function, we test it, is actually quicker than it was five to six years ago."

Mintz says substances such as testosterone and human growth hormone are produced and stored by the human body, but as we get older, these natural levels taper off, creating what he claims are hormone deficiencies that may be responsible for some of the symptoms attributed to old age.

"We start to lose a lot of different hormones starting at 30," Mintz explains. "Two to three percent a year. By the time you're 40, you begin to recognize some changes. And we take it as we're just getting older."

Mintz says he's trying to replenish those lost hormones. "But always within the limit of what's considered normal," he says.

Mintz says that testosterone and human growth hormone help build muscle mass, reduce body fat, and strengthen bones against osteoporosis. His patients say they can feel the difference.

60 Minutes talked to a group of six of them, ranging in age from 34 to 74 — a businessman, a cocktail waitress, a retired school teacher, a car dealership manager, a real estate broker, and a human resources consultant. They're all injecting themselves with human growth hormone. Some also take testosterone, DHEA and estrogen.

"The real benefit of it more than anything else is the energy level. I mean, there's a difference between being 25 and 45. And I feel like I'm 25 again," one of the men told Kroft.

Asked if he feels younger, the an older male patient said, "Well, I'm 74, and I worked out two hours last night. And I recovered. I can stay up till midnight. And I have the energy and vitality."

"Big-time libido," another man remarked. "Yeah, like when you are a kid again."

One of the female patients said the hormone treatments improved her sex life.

All of them said they were exercising more and eating better.

"It is a whole way of life," one of the male patients said. "But the hormones and stuff is like cheating. It makes it so much easier to do it, and it gives you the results so much quicker."

"I mean, these are steroids, right?" Kroft asked.

"Well, we're making ourselves better athletes. That's my answer," the 74-year-old patient replied.

Cenegenics has a network of more than 100 affiliated doctors in the United States and joint ventures in Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong.

Mintz says his roster of patients includes movie stars, Las Vegas entertainers, CEOs, and the president of a foreign country, some of whom pay as much as $1,000 a month for the treatment.

How much has his business grown?

"Well, start with zero nine years ago and it'll do $20 million this year," Mintz says. "It's a very good practice."

Mintz doesn't have to deal with insurance or programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

"We don't ever wanna talk to Medicare and Medicaid," he says, laughing.

"This is like the good old days?" Kroft asked.

"Like the good old days," Mintz replied.

It's a fact not lost on many doctors, most of whom are less forthcoming than Mintz.

The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, which Mintz has disassociated himself from, recently held a convention. When it held its first gathering back in 1993, 30 physicians were in attendance; today it boasts 17,000 members in 85 countries and claims the numbers are doubling every two years. Some estimate the market for anti-aging products at $30 billion to $50 billion a year.

The academy was not eager to share this success story and declined 60 Minutes' request to attend. But 60 Minutes went anyway, with a hidden camera.

The academy's reluctance to have 60 Minutes' cameras present may have had something to do with the presence of exhibitors peddling human growth hormone. HGH is a prescription drug with narrowly defined uses that is supposed to be strictly controlled.

Just six weeks earlier, an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association warned doctors and health care professionals that the "distribution or marketing of growth hormone to treat aging or aging-related conditions is illegal," punishable by up to "… five years in prison. …" But that didn't stop one pharmacist from marketing his company's own specially-made growth hormone product to anti-aging doctors.

"We called a few people, paid some money for an attorney to give us an opinion. Everybody said we couldn't do it, that we should not do it and could not do it," the pharmacist told us.

"So, that's why we started doing it," the pharmacists added, laughing.

The pharmacist told 60 Minutes that what he was doing was perfectly legal, and that he never gives out growth hormone without a valid prescription from a doctor.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, there are very few approved uses for human growth hormone and they are listed on each product's label. The most common is "growth hormone deficiency," which is caused by disease or damage to the pituitary gland, and is thought to afflict only three out of every 10,000 adults.

If that's true, a lot of them seemed to be at the anti-aging convention.

All of this is particularly alarming to Dr. Shlomo Melmed, who literally wrote the book on human growth hormone. He says there are all sorts of reasons why its use is supposed to be carefully controlled.

"I would not take growth hormone because it's unsafe," Melmed says. "As a physician, I would certainly not recommend to my family or my patients that they take growth hormone unless they have a proven indication for pituitary damage."

Melmed, director of Cedars-Sinai Research Institute in Los Angeles, is one of the world's leading researchers on human growth hormone, and president of the International Society of Endocrinology, which is the study of hormones.

"There's no study published which shows that growth hormone administration will prolong life in a controlled fashion. There is no controlled study which shows that growth hormone administration in the long term will benefit any of the frailties of old age," says Melmed.

He says the benefits of taking testosterone and human growth hormone are often temporary and largely cosmetic, while the potential side effects, which include "joint pain," "carpal tunnel syndrome," "diabetes," "high blood pressure" and "heart failure," are very real.

But Melmed's biggest concern is that human growth hormone could stimulate the growth of undetected cancer cells, such as prostate cancer in men over 50.

"It may well be that it's beneficial for us to have low growth hormones as we age," says Melmed.

Asked why, he says, "It may be protecting us from cancer and heart disease."

"If someone has a latent cancer, is there any way to diagnosis that before you begin administering human growth hormone?" Kroft asked.

"Unfortunately not," Melmed replied. "I would be very reluctant to pour fuel onto the fire of a cancer by adding a very powerful growth factor."

Melmed says the use of growth hormone bothers him. "It bothers me that people are prepared to spend so much money on a molecule which may be unsafe for them," he says.

But Mintz is undeterred. He says his staff physicians monitor patients carefully and look out for signs of cancer. He also says he is giving human growth hormone to only seven percent of his patients, all of whom have natural levels that are below normal and symptoms that lead him to believe they are growth hormone-deficient.

Mintz told 60 Minutes he avoids using the term "anti-aging" these days because he considers it misleading and unscientific. He provided 60 Minutes with stacks of studies supporting the promise of growth hormone and testosterone supplements but acknowledged that there were no long-term blind studies, showing that they were safe or effective in age management.

"We don't really know scientifically," Kroft asked.

"Galileo didn't have double blind studies, but observation's wonderful. We've never done a double blind study on the sun, but you know and I know, even on a cloudy day it's comin' up every morning," Mintz replied.

"Are you an endocrinologist?" Kroft asked.

"I'm not. I'm a radiologist," Mintz replied. He told Kroft while he had no endocrinologists on his staff, the institute has two on its board.

"But if it's all about hormonal balance, you would think that you would have a building full of endocrinologists," Kroft said.

"Most endocrinologists deal with thyroid disease and diabetes," Mintz replied. "If you ask them, that's what they talk about. We have a disease-based system. They're rewarded for disease. It's a major paradigm. Doctors can't get paid for health."

"So you're saying that the endocrinologists, the people who study hormones, don't understand it?" Kroft asked.

"They're not ready to get there yet," Dr. Mintz answered.

Mintz considers himself a pioneer in this gray area of law and science — and there are plenty of patients, eager to follow the trail he is blazing. The ones 60 Minutes talked to in Las Vegas, all eager to remain young and vital, consider this a lifestyle choice — and they are prepared to roll the dice.

"You aren't concerned that five years from now somebody might do a study and find out that this regimen accelerates the growth of cancer cells, or causes diabetes?" Kroft asked.

"Well, that's happened with prescriptive drugs. I mean, has it not?" the 74-year-old patient replied. "In any field, you're doing this. They've taken drugs off the market because of this."

"So you'd rather feel better now, while you're living your life, than worry about the possible downside 10 or 15 years from now?" Kroft asked.

"You could get killed on the interstate tomorrow," a female patient remarked. "You have to weigh risks and rewards. You do that every day in life. You do it when you get up in the morning."

"Are you sure? Are you absolutely positive, absent any scientific studies, that the treatments that you're giving now won't prove to be detrimental to someone's health five, 10, 15 years from now when all of the evidence is in?" Kroft asked Mintz.

"If you talk about five, 10, 15 years, I'm pretty comfortable," he replied. "No, I'm not absolutely sure. Only a fool is absolutely sure. Am I confident? Do I sleep well at night? Yes."
Produced by Andy Court