In recent years, hundreds of anti-aging clinics have sprouted up across the country with the tantalizing promise of enabling people to live decades longer and healthier. The concept appeals to many doctors. About 2,500 physicians nationwide have established specialty practices in longevity medicine over the past 10 years, according to the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, a Chicago-based organization of 10,000 physicians and scientists.
Broadly defined, anti-aging medicine involves the use of any technique, technology, medication or intervention for early detection, prevention, treatment or reversal of age-related disease.
"The demographic is the largest in medicine," says academy president and founder Ronald O. Klatz, M.D. "We offer something for everyone age 45 and older. Once you start the process of aging, anti-aging medicine has something for you."
Some doctors have turned to anti-aging medicine as patients. "The results are remarkable," says Donald Kozil, M.D., a 68-year-old suburban Chicago ophthalmologist, who has been taking human growth hormone and vitamin supplements as part of an anti-aging program since August 1999. "I'm not saying I'll live one day longer than the good Lord intended, but I want to be as healthy as I can for the time I'm here," he said.
One of the goals of the anti-aging organization is to refute the view that aging is natural. "Our motto is: `Aging is not inevitable,'" Klatz said. "There are effective treatments and interventions for memory loss, visual impairment, slowed gait and speech, wrinkling of the skin, hardening of the arteries and many of the maladies we call aging."
2001, American Medical News, Los Angeles Times Syndicate
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