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HORNSWOGGLED
Mary G. Barry, MD
S
Louisville Medicine Editor
[email protected]
ome of my patients end up at local
anti-aging clinics. They look in the
mirror in horror. They find themselves
sweatier and moodier and fatter and limper
and more tired, and they cannot stand it.
They go in search of miracle cures, and often
they find them – expensively, and at their
own risk.
Local doctors who run these places
advertise all kinds of services, but nearly
all require a high-priced excursion to the lab
first. Every known measure of metabolism
must be “baselined” as one patient called it.
Insulin growth factor, ACTH and cortisol,
estradiol, progesterone, several kinds of
testosterone measurements (in both men
and women), CBC, complete metabolic
profile, every possible thyroid function
test, individual vitamin levels, insulin levels,
prolactin, and fancy lipid profiles with all
the small dense and the large fluffy and
the lipoprotein subsets: all are ordered and
discussed in detail, with little notes on the
reports exclaiming over minute deviations
as well as actual abnormalities.
After that, they really get down to business
(and business is the main theme here: this
is quite a profitable undertaking across
the country). Patients receive all kinds of
compounded creams, and men may receive
FDA approved preparations of testosterone.
Some get growth hormone; many get small
doses of T3 (liodothyronine); nearly all
the women get bio-identical estrogen and
progesterone and testosterone creams;
B12 shots or drops are standard. Many get
“adrenal support” pills; some get small doses
of antidepressants, but in my patients that
is rare. Mostly it is a cocktail of vitamins,
sex hormones, and sometimes low doses of
phentermine, if they are on the weight loss
plans. The vitamins are frequently bought
there and are of course, costly but “purified”
and “individualized.”
But the lab expense does not end there.
Depending on the prescriber, many times
a year more hormone levels must be done
to keep the patient “balanced.” Often these
are urinary or salivary and sometimes they
require blood draws. No more creams would
be forthcoming without this cost, so patients
ante up regularly.
But they like it. The ones who are not
scared by the whole thing and ask me about
it up front, tend to go back until they run
out of mone K Z\