American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M)

The American Academy of Anti-aging Medicine provides a forum for exploring the current theories on aging, research on the aging process, possible interventions and outcomes. Aging itself is generally NOT considered a disease, but an inevitable process of life is the opinion of the reviewer. The reviewer is not up to date on science. Including the most recent Nobel prize winner's work. The reviewer's pan of the organization is interesting at best, biased at the least. Medicine is an art, based upon theory and quantified by basic science, laboratory research and finally clinical research. Research must first go through the Investigational Review Board process, follow strict federal, state and institutional protocols and rules, regulations and laws. Then once finished must undergo strict analysis, IRB review and then finally the tedious process of peer review looking for possible study flaws, biases, etc. before presentation before peers at medical mtgs for further scrutiny or before publication. The original reviewer acts as if the A4M does not participate in this process. It does. The reviewer also makes the statement that aging is not reversable. A general marker of a person's age biochemically, and a measure used by the medical research community standards, TBARS blood levels of oxidative stress can tell how old a person is generally within 18 mths of age. If aging were irreversible, as the author wants us to believe, then T-bar levels could not be changed. However, Clinical research published in the top tier medical publication, the Journal of Free Radical Biology & Medicine, published 8/2005--six yrs ago--shows that 30 days of suplementation by Protandim caused an average of 40% reduction in TBARS and the age dependent increase in oxidative stress was eliminated. Oxidative stress is not only associated with aging but is recognized to be associated with more than 200 diseases. (Sometimes these diseases are referred to as age related diseases, when in fact they should be referred to as oxidative stress related diseases.) This landmark study, available on the National Institutes of Health website, pubmed.gov, is just one example of the reviewer's misplaced bias. Many other serious published studies deal with the possibilities of reversing cellular aging processes. Also the reviewer pans hormone replacement theory without saying why. Hormone replacement treatment is standard protocol treatment for menopausal women, and is a multi billion dollar pharmaceutical industry. What the reviewer probably meant to say is that A4M presentations often promote a bio-identical method of hormone replacemnt, often made specifically for an individual instead of, say Premarin (pregnant mare urine hormones), a pharmaceutical compound. The idea of replacing hormones for men and women is not outside of the general medical standards and community norms and is well established and practiced for many yrs. Any new direction in medicine takes time to establish. I remember the debate it took and many yrs before ""gerontology"" was established as a field of medicine. Meanwhile many felt it was ridiculous to even consider such a specialty. Medicine changes and growth happens in science by people challenging what appears to be limiting, or unkown factors and looking for better treatment outcomes. Other factors considered to contribute to aging are the shortening of telomere strands (end caps of DNA strands). At conception there are approximately 15,000 pairs. At birth that number has gone down to approximately 10,000 pairs. And every time a cell replicates 50 to 100 pairs break off. When the number of telomere pairs drops to somewhere between 3,500 to 5,000 then programmed death is initiated. This process was thought to be irreversible, but has been shown in recent yrs not to be so. It is the science of recent Nobel prizes. Cutting edge science is the arena of anti-aging medicine. Are all ideas presented going to become mainstream? Probably not. But to discount the science of Nobel prize winners, and peer reviewed clinical science is not just biased, it is irresponsible.

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