As people live longer thanks to improved healthcare and better nutrition, the desire to look younger is also increasing, but what is the secret of eternal youth?
On tonight’s Dateline at 9.30pm on SBS ONE, Nick Lazaredes looks at the growing ‘age management’ industry in the United States.
74-year-old Dr Jeffry Life is a specialist in the field, but his therapy involves a highly-controversial cocktail of drugs, prescribed from his clinic in Las Vegas.
He instructs his patients to inject themselves with human growth hormone (HGH) and testosterone… a potent combination he believes staves off disease.
“We've been treating thyroid deficiencies for decades because we know it improves people's quality of life. It improves their longevity, so why not do it with the other hormones?” he says.
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“I think it's important for people to know today, that they don't have to follow the same path as their parents did, that they don't have to age like their parents.”
And for more than a decade, that's exactly what the Kleppes from Arizona have been doing. 70-year-old Steve and his 67-year-old wife Shirley say it’s changed their lives.
“I spend no money on going to doctors,” Shirley tells Nick. “Can you imagine the amount of money people spend going to doctors and hospitals and medicine? We don't do that.”
But while Dr Life’s patients are lining up to endorse the treatment, the trend has sparked a debate over whether it’s effective or even safe.
“These individuals who run these anti-ageing clinics… I consider to be charlatans and hucksters,” says Dr Glenn Braunstein, who’s a hormone expert from Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.
“[They’re] selling an effect at a very high price. There's a population out there that says ‘hey, who wouldn't want to be young?’"
So who’s really profiting from the desire to stay youthful?
See Nick’s story on Dateline tonight at 9.30pm on SBS ONE, and read more now on the Dateline website.
