| The Future of Anti-Aging Medicine By Dr. Ronald Klatz |
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Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) is more than the most powerful
anti-aging therapeutic that we have today. It is also the bridge to
the future, the means by which we can buy another 20 to 30 years of
youth. There are three rules in anti-aging medicine: don't die,
don't get sick, and don't get old. By adding a multihormone
replacement program, you greatly increase your chances of living a
healthful and productive 85 years or more.
This should be long; enough for you to benefit from advancing biotechnology for treating disease and extending life even further. With the advent of genetic therapies in the 21st century, all bets are off as to maximum life span, the trick is to stay healthy and alive long enough to benefit from these emerging age-reversing therapies.
Getting Rid of Age-Related Disease
Anti-aging medicine is the next great model of health care for the new millennium. This model is based on the very early detection, prevention, and reversal of aging-related diseases. All diseases fall into four categories: the first three -- inherited genetic disease, infectious disease and trauma, account for only 10% of the cost for treating all the disease in America . The fourth category, the degenerative diseases of aging, accounts for 9096. One hundred million Americans are currently being treated for one or another degenerative disease at a health care cost of over $700 billion per year. If we really want to make an impact on health care in the country and in the world, we must focus on the degenerative diseases of aging. If we can slow aging, we can eliminate over 50% of all disease overnight.
The Impact on Society
The new clinical science of anti-aging medicine can drastically alter dire predictions about aging in America :
• By 2020, 60 million Americans will be disabled by arthritis; • By 2034, Social Security trust funds will be exhausted; • By 2050, 14 million people will have Alzheimer's disease.
We can alter this dreadful course by preventing, delaying, or reversing the diseases associated with aging. Regular exercise, a nutritious diet with at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, not smoking, and maintaining ideal body weight can greatly reduce the chances of developing heart disease, stroke, diabetes, arthritis and many cancers. An example on the power of exercise: when 20 weak and sedentary 90+ year old men began weight lifting, they improved their energy, their independence, and outlook on life. Anti-aging medicine programs are a tremendous boon for society. According to a 1998 Boston Globe article, "there is abundant evidence that prevention pays off in avoiding diseases of old age." Just extending the productive, healthy human life span by one year could boost the U.S. economy by $2 trillion and solve our heath care cost problems almost overnight.
Life Spans of the Future
Animal research proves that mice can live an equivalent human life span of UP to age 160 on a calorically restricted diet. Adding anti-oxidant therapy increases their life span to 220 and with genetic interventions, 300 years are possible. Generic tinkering with worms bumped up their life span fivefold. Imagine how these studies might translate to human beings. Predicting maximum human life spans of only 150 years could prove to be a colossal underestimate. It is almost as thinkable to imagine living to 150 to 200 years of age, or more, as it must have been for someone born at the turn of this century to imagine dancing at the Millennium. But yet that is exactly what some 100 year-olds will be doing on New Year's Eve 2000. Life holds such unexpected marvels. Who could have envisioned cellular phones, the World Wide Web, or cash machines as ubiquitous as pay telephones just 25 years ago!
Life Expectancy Average life expectancy in the U.S. has increased to 76 years from 49 years since the turn of the centaury, a 55% increase. Soon, scientists may be able to understand the aging process enough to alter it. The prospect of a longer life generates an abundance of possibilities. Toddlers today are playing computer games and cueing up their favourite movie on the VCR. If I were to propose that in 30 years, computers would talk, see, think, and fit on a wristwatch, no one would raise an eyebrow. Why then, shouldn't we expect similar advances in the biotechnology of aging!
Predictions for the Next 30 Years
I believe that within 30 years, we will have a shot at immortality. In a new book entitled Immortality (Avon Press) by Ben Bova, science writer for USA Today , Bova predicts that many of these new technologies will be on stream within the next 20-30 years and that virtual immortality will be within reach in the next 50 years. Why do I agree with Bova's assessment! Because medical knowledge doubles every 3.5 years. In the coming decades, we may expect to see such life-extending innovations as:
• Implantable artificial hearts; • Foetal cell transplants that grow new heart tissue, brain tissue, and pancreatic insulin-producing cells; • Implantable hormonal pumps that sense when we need a hormonal boost and deliver complex hormonal formulations automatically; • Gene therapy that corrects most of the genetic defects and weaknesses that we all inherit; • Smart drugs for memory and mental function, including effective treatments for Alzheimer's Disease.
Farther down the line ate even more incredible advances like nanosurgery - using instruments smaller than the size of a human cell to surgically comet any bodily defect; bionic devices to restore vision, hearing, and lost limbs; and cloned human body parts that can be transplanted without rejection. Computerized backups of the accumulated memory and experiences stored within our brain may one day be available when our own had neurons fail. Going even further, beyond a half century from now, human cloning techniques, regeneration and nanosurgery will almost certainly achieve physical immortality for those who want it - perhaps not limitless life span, but one lasting 200-300 years now seems possible - in fact, probable! Generation X may have to be relabelled as "Generation Lex," for life extension beyond all reasonable expectations. Trying to predict the future is a perilous adventure for anyone who values their reputation as a physician and scientist. Still, I am confident that even these seemingly fantastic predictions may well prove timid given that technological advances 50 years hence will be the equivalent of today's technology as seen in the year 1850. Who, during the years of the industrial revolution, could have possibly predicted our world of leisure, abundance, instant communication, unlimited education, space travel, thinking machines, submarines and average life spans twice that of their day in 1850! Even the fantastic fantasy science fiction writings of H.G. Wells fall short of our own everyday reality.
Start Planning for the Future Now
Think of what you could do. Go to school or start a new career at age 75. Have a second family at an age when most people are enjoying their grandchildren. Do all chose things you always planned but never got around to, like learning to paint, fly a plane, or roller blade in your 80s or 90s. You might become passionately involved in environmental causes if you knew that not just your grandchildren, but you yourself, would still be here to suffer the consequences of pollution. Extended life spans will make another of humankind's most impossible dreams possible: manned space travel to other worlds. And while we are planning this brave new world, why not be rich, or at least financially secure. You can be if only given enough time and discipline. Using a long-term investment Strategy, by placing just $300 per month in an S&P index fund, you'll join the ranks of the Millionaire's Club in less than 33 years. Why not stay around to enjoy these wonders as they happen? You probably can if you start today by finding an anti-aging physician who will help you devise an individually tailored hormone replacement and anti-aging nutritional supplement plan. Every year you stay alive and stay healthy allows you to take advantage of each new advance and get that much closer to the vastly extended life spans of the future. I hope to see you at the New Year's party for the 22nd Century.
The Bottom Line
Assuming you are willing to commit yourself to an anti-aging medical program of anti-oxidant vitamins, regular mild to moderate exercise, risk factor reduction, twice per year medical diagnostic exams, and HRT when needed, you should be able to extend your own life span 10, 20, 30 years beyond what nature had planned for you. The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine now predicts that over 50% of today's healthy baby boomers and their children will see age 100 and beyond with their physical and mental faculties intact. Beyond this, if you can remain alive and healthy for the next 30-50 years, advanced technologies (such as cloning cell transplants and nanotechnology) will come of age, which could offer mankind its longest held wish - immortality - or at least a caste of it, say 200-300 year lift spans and maybe more. HRT and anti-aging medicine is the bridge to that brave new world. Anti-aging medicine offers us the freedom to live out lives and choose our heath destinies as we see fit and possibly even choose the time and place of our final passing. Ultimately, anti-aging medicine is a quest for personal freedom. I hope you will choose to join us in that ageless society.
Your Personal Anti-Aging Program
• EXPECT A MIRACLE We live in miraculous times and you need not be pious, religious, or even especially spiritual to witness modern-day miracles. Just open the today's leading newspapers to the science and health sections, and guaranteed every week, you will read about exciting major breakthroughs in the treatment, prevention, and curing of one or more of the degenerative diseases of aging. With medical knowledge expanding almost as rapidly as the computer revolution, it's hard to imagine any current disease process that won't be treatable -- or outright eliminated -- within the next 30-50 years. Anti-aging scientific information is doubling every 3.5 years so, in twenty years, we will know 64 times more about human aging, its, causes, and its cures. In 23.5 years we will know 128 times more and in 27 years our information base will have expanded by 248 times. So it is illogical not to be gleefully optimistic about our futures and our prospects for a very long and happy lifespan. Thirty years from now, technology will have advanced medicine to an equivalent of comparing today's heath science with the archaic methods of an l880s-style country doctor.
• EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
• Plan to stay alive, healthy, and youthful for longer than you ever imagined would be possible. • Surf the age wave: Every year your life brings you closer to the reality of the ageless society, a time and place where you'll scarcely be able to tell the difference between a healthy 55-year old and an athletic and youthful 105-year old. • Keep up with the latest developments with Anti Aging Therapeutics. They might just save your life. • Save as much as you can on a regular basis: Bad news : Do not expect Medicare and Social Security to be there when you reach the age at which you can collect its benefits. Good News : Save $300 each month in a retirement annuity plan (earning 10% interest) and in 33 years you too are a Millionaire.
According to the American Academy of Anti Aging Medicine and the United Nations World Health Organisation, 50% of all Baby Boomers alive today will probably see their 100 th birthday – continuing to be lively, healthy and productive.
MAY INFINITY BE YOUR DESTINITY! President American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. "Human Immortality Is Achievable By The Year 2029," Proclaims Ronald Klatz, M.D., Pioneering Biotech Guru And
Founding Physician Of Anti-Aging Movement |