Sometime after her 43rd birthday, Dawn Foley noticed she was beginning to look her age.
And she didn’t like it one bit.
A former beauty queen turned sales professional in Los Angeles, the blue-eyed brunette is used to turning heads.
“I just did not want to look older,” she says.
“You end up with wrinkles.
Your skin starts to sag.
She even had her breasts lifted.
“I’m happy with those,” she says.
“But I wanted to look younger without any more surgery.”
Getting old and fat is no longer inevitable, they said.
It’s only a glandular disorder caused in part by dwindling hormones.
A little more digging brought Foley to Suzanne Somers’s best-selling books extolling the virtues of hormones.
Somers, 62, takes daily shots of human growth hormone (hGH).
Using a plastic applicator, she shoots a so-called bioidentical hormone called estriol directly into her vagina.
“But when you put the hormones back in the right template, everything perks up again!”
Foley bought the pitch.
“I thought, This is it!
This is the magic potion!”
Leading endocrinologists would call it something else: dangerous.
The FDA has not approved any of the substances for antiaging.
“That’s one of the first things I learned,” Foley says.
“I don’t think there’s anything illegal about the way it’s being prescribed to me.
I’m taking it because of a hormone imbalance,” she says.
“I’m absolutely going to stay on it forever.”
Some of these physicians operate out of clinics with names like the Center for Clinical Age Management.
“you’re free to’t make money on laser hair removal anymore.
you’re free to’t make money on cosmetic injectables.
you’ve got the option to’t even make money by antiaging consultations or weight management.
But they can charge whatever they want for hCG and hGH.
That’s why they’re pushing them so hard.
And in a lot of [states], there’s no regulation.
It’s the Wild West.”
(See “Stay Safe at the Med Spa.")
Dr. Friedman says about 10 percent of his patients use human growth hormone.
“It makes you feel like someone’s blowing back your hair all day long.
Like this…whoosh.
Like you could do anything!”
Foley says hormones had a dramatic effect on her.
She claims the sun damage and fine lines on her face started to fade.
She slept better and had more energy.
“Whatever dangers they say it has aren’t a concern for me.
The benefits outweigh them,” she says.
Such glowing anecdotal testimonials have never been replicated in scientific studies, however.
“If I had my druthers, I would take away their license.
Estriol increases the risk for uterine cancer, she adds.
The hormone hCG, while seemingly more benign, can cause birth defects if taken while pregnant.
“Science has never identified a harmless hormone,” Dr. Fugh-Berman says.
“It’s one thing making an informed decision about risks when there are proven benefits.
This is a case of unproven benefits and known risks.”
“I’m talking real food!
Mashed potatoes loaded with butter and cream!”
The medical director at Green Valley is Gordon Reynolds, M.D., a gynecologist with a specialty in endocrinology.
The doses prescribed for weight loss, however, are roughly half of those used for fertility.
“For a period of three weeks, is it going to cause cancer?
I don’t know,” Dr. Cobin says.
They never tested me for that in the other place!
What if I had been [pregnant]?”
This was where Marla, a boutique owner in Phoenix, first discovered hGH.
“I was looking for youth and energy,” she says.
“So I found a doctor on the Internet.”
But after three months, the daily shots hadn’t done anything to make her feel youngeror more energetic.
“After a while, my legs swelled up, and they looked terrible.
I didn’t feel comfortable taking the hGH after that.”
A new doctor diagnosed Marla with edema, swollen tissue due to water retention.
I realized it might even be dangerous,” she says.
How did an unproven and risky treatment become such a burgeoning industry?
Ten years erased in six months!
No one knows the long-term effects of growth hormones for antiaging, Dr. Friedman concedes.
“But there are no studies showing that it definitely causes cancer,” he adds.
Of course, more studies should be done.
But do we have outcome levels for 50 years for Prozac?”
(SeeSELF’s plan.)
“All of this antiaging nonsense goes back thousands of years.
That’s why I call it the world’s second-oldest profession.”
Photo Credit: Bill Diodato
