I came across this article from Florida Trend about "anti-aging medicine" and the MDs who practice it (apparently the Sunshine State has the most anti-aging practitioners in the country.) The piece likened the trend to plastic surgery for your insides—doctors promote hormone supplementation such as human growth hormone (HGH), intravenous vitamins, and other off-label treatments for what mainstream doctors consider the normal effects of aging. It's also similar in that doctors are able to practice it without having to deal with insurance companies and can make truckloads of money—it's an entirely consumer driven specialty.
But it's one that the AMA does not recognize, and some in the medical field are worried that anti-aging doctors are a bit too casual and prolific in writing prescriptions, and the effects of using HGH, for example, can be dangerous. "We have an anti-aging industry and other areas of the market that do an unbelievably good job of marketing an incredible false sense of safety and an incredible false sense of tremendous benefits from these drugs — and out of that comes a huge amount of money," Dr. Thomas Perls, attending physician in the geriatrics section at Boston Medical Center said in testimony before Congress last year.
So what do you think? Should the body be left to age naturally, perhaps with the benefit of good diet and exercise? Or should it be treated medically, if it makes people feel like they're in their 20s again? Please comment below.