USA Today

November 15, 2000, Wednesday, FINAL EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A

LENGTH: 1778 words

HEADLINE: Boomers believe they've found a fountain of youth in a syringe

BYLINE: Ann Oldenburg

DATELINE: NEW YORK

BODY:
NEW YORK -- Twice a day, fashion designer Diane Gilman fills a
small syringe with an expensive clear liquid and injects the needle
into her hip. She also takes 10 pills: six supplements and four
prescription drugs.

At 55, an age when many people are feeling the inevitable aches
and pains of getting older, Gilman insists she has never felt
better. She's muscular, has tons of energy and doesn't have a
wrinkle on her face.

"It's a miracle. People will say, 'So, you're 32?' " she boasts.
"People that have known me and haven't seen me in five years,
honestly, they'll stop in their tracks. They'll say, 'What's happening
to you? We're aging, and you're going in the other direction."

Actually, what she's doing is injecting bioengineered human growth
hormone (HGH).

It's a practice more closely associated in the public mind with
Olympic athletes trying to enhance their performances than with
baby boomers trying to keep Father Time at bay. It's also a practice
that many doctors consider highly risky.

That doesn't seem to matter. Gilman, who appears regularly on
the Home Shopping Network, is at the forefront of a national anti-aging
revolution that has HGH as its elixir and Hollywood as its epicenter.

Oliver Stone, Nick Nolte and Dixie Carter are a few of the show-biz
celebrities who acknowledge using HGH.

"I think I look younger," says Stone, who has been attempting
an anti-aging program, on and off, since the early '90s. "But
feeling better is the issue."

"It's 21st century medicine," says Alan Mintz, an HGH user and
founder of Cenegenics, a Las Vegas-based anti-aging clinic with
1,200 patients, the largest such clinic in the nation.

Paul Jellinger of Hollywood, Fla., president of the American Association
of Clinical Endocrinologists, calls it something else. "Personally,
I think it's misuse," he says of the HGH injections. "Or let's
say inappropriate use, off-label use -- with exaggerated expectations.
It is an interesting hormone, and we're learning about it, but
the full effects of it as we age are far from known."

How it works

What is known is that the body's natural HGH levels begin to drop
at age 25 or 30. With the injections, advocates claim, growth
of muscles and bone density begins anew, energy is restored, memory
is enhanced, a sense of well-being is instilled, and, in general,
you feel like you're 25 or 30 again.

Although the Food and Drug Administration approved HGH for "deficient"
adults in 1996, many conventional doctors say that using HGH simply
to return to age 25 doesn't properly constitute the correction
of a deficiency.

Anti-aging began to develop as its own area of research about
15 years ago, and Harvard University proctored the first medical
board examination for anti-aging practitioners in 1997.

It's the edge of a futuristic field of medicine that promises
biomedical breakthroughs as efforts to prolong life make progress
in a variety of ways: cryogenics, regeneration, gene mapping,
cloning and more.

The anti-aging phenomenon holds a special fascination for Ken
Dychtwald of AgeWave, a think tank in Emeryville, Calif. He estimates
that 250,000 Americans are injecting HGH regularly. "I'll be
at a conference, and people come up to me -- usually the rich
ones -- and say, 'Are you on the program? Doing anything to keep
yourself young?' It's become an in-thing among the rich and powerful."

Generally, the program begins with a comprehensive evaluation
of nutritional, metabolic, immune, hormonal and mind-body-spirit
connections, followed by hearing and vision screenings, bone-density
scans, treadmill stress tests and mind/brain assessments. The
cost for the complete work-up at Cenegenics is $ 1,750. At Lifespan,
a clinic with offices in Beverly Hills and Dallas, the price is
closer to $ 5,000.

The testing reveals weak spots or deficiencies in any number of
areas -- maybe early signs of osteoporosis, maybe a thyroid condition,
maybe a blood-sugar imbalance. Prescribed regimens range from
taking supplements, which a patient can buy or get packaged through
a doctor, to injecting HGH, which can cost more than $ 1,000 a
month.

Gilman's anti-aging supplements and injections cost $ 1,500 a month
and, like most such regimens, are not covered by health insurance.

What exactly is HGH?

Produced in the body by the pituitary gland, it's what the name
says: the hormone that makes us grow. Doctors began prescribing
it about 35 years ago for children who were in need of a growth
boost.

It first was extracted from cow carcasses, but several incidents
of children contracting mad-cow disease prompted synthetic production.
In 1985, Genentech, based in San Francisco, introduced one of
the first bioengineered human growth hormones, Protopin.

Now five drug companies sell HGH in the USA; top seller Genotropin,
from Pharmacia & Upjohn, had sales totaling $ 461 million last
year.

Thicker hair, sore joints

Considered potent only when prescribed by a doctor and injected,
as opposed to pills or sprays offered over the Internet or through
other advertising, HGH promises to lower blood pressure, build
muscles without extra exercise, increase the skin's elasticity,
thicken hair, sharpen vision, help ensure restful sleep and heighten
sexual potency -- among other things.

Skeptics point out, however, that potential side effects include
joint pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, fluid retention and insulin
resistance. Such problems, however, are generally corrected by
adjusting the dosage.

HGH skeptics also fret that there's something inherently scary
about putting things into our bodies that aren't naturally there.
Think fen-phen, breast implants, thalidomide.

"This is exciting as a research area, but there continues to
be no proven clinical utility as an anti-aging compound," says
Stanley Slater, deputy director of geriatrics at the National
Institute on Aging.

Ronald Klatz, head of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine
(A4M, for short), gets exasperated with such talk. "This is something
that we have studied and studied and studied," he says. "It
has been in clinical use for the last 50 years, common use for
the last 35 years. There are tens of thousands, if not hundreds
of thousands, of people who have received growth hormone -- whether
they be children or adults. This is not secret information.

"You hear these boogeymen out there, and these naysayers saying
it can cause this and that and cancer -- it scares the heck of
out people."

Murray Susser, a Los Angeles-based physician who counts Dixie
Carter among his patients, says: "It's off-label use, it's legal,
and people have the choice. It's only misuse if I lie to them.
I say to people who are taking it, 'It's experimental, it may
help, but I don't know for sure.' "

Gilman began shopping for an aging remedy when, at 50, she was
approached to sell clothes on TV.

"I thought, 'This is a little late to start a television career,'
" she says. "When I looked at myself in the mirror, I was not
thrilled with what I saw. So I went ahead and got some plastic
surgery, like every other good person in America. But then I found
my energy was really flagging. I thought, 'How could I possibly
do this?' "

HGH's poster girl

She heard about HGH, called a doctor and has injected the drug
daily for 2 years.

Holding the syringe for a photo, she jokes, "I feel like I'm
going to appear in Junkie Monthly."

But the designer says she is happy to be the HGH poster girl.
"My energy level is superb. My skin looks like a 20-year-old's.
I dropped 25 pounds. I used to have aches in my back and my knees,
and they are completely gone because I have more muscle and my
bones are building back up. Every single thing it promised, it
has delivered."

Any side effects?

"Absolutely zero."

She remembers the first day she injected it. "My body felt just
like a clock. I felt like all the gears were grinding to a halt.
Then on the second day, it felt like they started up again, going
in another direction."

Klatz, the A4M president and author of Grow Young With
HGH and other anti-aging books, has used HGH. He says his
pants size fell two notches, and his chest size increased 2 inches.
"That was without changing my diet at all." He says he's 44,
but "biologically" he's 34. He adds: "I expect to see 150.
I'll be disappointed if I don't."

Dan Yaffe, 52, a mortgage banker in Las Vegas, is another believer,
even with the high cost. "There are some years that I've paid
almost $ 800,000 in federal taxes. So $ 24,000 a year for this isn't
that much."

Besides, he confesses, "I like the idea of living forever. Who
doesn't? As long as I'm living, I want to be as healthy and physically
fit as possible. What better thing could I put my money into?"

Before you tussle with Father Time

In the next five years, as nearly 20 million baby boomers turn
50 and another 22 million turn 40, more and more products and
programs are bound to pop up, offering the next best way to beat
back signs of age. Anti-aging medicine is new, exciting -- and
controversial. Among questions you should ask yourself:

* Can I afford it?

Out-of-pocket expenses range from $ 1,000 to $ 5,000 for the initial
evaluation. Human growth hormones (HGH), if prescribed, can run
another $ 1,000 or so a month. Generally, costs are not covered
by health insurance.

* Where can I find an anti-aging doctor?

The Web site of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine --
www.worldhealth.net -- offers an area where you can put your address
to find a nearby anti-aging doctor. The academy (A4M, for short)
offers a certification exam to doctors who have at least five
years' experience treating patients and 200 hours of study, with
a strong emphasis on the endocrine system. Though the field is
not recognized as a specialty by the American Board of Medical
Specialties, anti-aging certification does establish standards
for treatment and dosage.

* Should I take growth hormone?

Anti-aging doctors insist that HGH is not effective unless injected.
You need a doctor's prescription and should be under a doctor's
care so that hormone levels can be properly monitored, they say.

The American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, which says
that clinical use of HGH "as an anti-aging treatment is not recommended,"
posts prescription guidelines at www.aace.com.

"You should wait until more is known," advises Stanley Slater
of the National Institute on Aging.

GRAPHIC: PHOTO, color, Stand Godlewski for USA TODAY; PHOTO, color, Marion Curtis, DMI; PHOTO, color, Reuters; Youth is always in fashion: For Diane Gilman, plastic surgery wasn't enough for her to feel comfortable appearing on the Home Shopping Network. She turned to human growth hormone, prescription pills and supplements, a regimen costing $1,500 a month. The prince of time: Nolte, 59, takes HGH. Jennifer Lopez: Uses skin cosmeceuticals." Profile at 50: I was not thrilled with what I saw," Gilman says of herself before surgery and HGH.

LOAD-DATE: November 15, 2000