In the gym, trying to work the years off

LAS VEGAS — It’s one of those photos that make you do a double-take.

Dr. Jeffry Life stands in jeans, his shirt off. His face is that of a distinguished-looking grandpa; his head is balding, and what hair there is is white.

But his 69-year-old body looks like it belongs to a muscle-bound 30-year-old.

The photo regularly runs in ads for the Cenegenics Medical Institute, a Las Vegas-based clinic that specializes in “age management,” a growing field in a society obsessed with staying young. Life, who swears that’s his real last name, also keeps a framed copy of the photo on his office wall at Cenegenics.

“He’s the man!” patient Ed Detwiler says teasingly, pointing to the photo of the doctor who, in many ways, has become his role model.

Detwiler, 47, has been Life’s patient for more than three years. In that time, he has adopted the regimen that his doctor also follows -- drastically changing his exercise and eating habits and injecting himself each day with human growth hormone. He also receives weekly testosterone injections.

He does it because it makes him feel better, more energetic, clear-minded.

He does it because he wants a long, healthy life.

“If I were stooped over and bedridden, what kind of quality of life is that?” asks Detwiler, a real estate developer in suburban Las Vegas who says he’s doing this, in part, for his wife, who is nine years younger. “If I can get out and be active and travel and see the world and be able to make a difference in other people’s lives, then yes, I would want to have as long an existence as possible.”

It is a common sentiment in a society where many of us strive to look and feel decades younger -- to prove to ourselves and the world that we are healthier and more vital than our parents were at our age. We’ve all heard it: 60 is the new 50, the new 40 and so on.

But often we need a little help. Sometimes a lot of help.

As the baby boomers march toward retirement, Botox, wrinkle fillers and hormones have become big business. Medco’s latest drug trend report shows, for instance, that human growth hormone use grew almost 6% in 2007.

It isn’t a new quest. But experts in the field say it is taking on a new urgency as a generation of adults buys into the modern marketing message: that for a price, you can have it all.

There is, of course, much to be said for taking good care of yourself. Eating healthfully and exercising your body and your brain regularly are considered tried-and-true tactics for staying young. Protecting yourself from harmful sun rays is another. Even flossing is a habit that, according to research on people who live to 100, might extend life.

But that’s generally where the consensus ends.

Many in mainstream medicine and elsewhere worry that we’re becoming too focused on treatments with short-term benefits that have potentially dangerous side effects and scant, if any, evidence that they’ll help in the long run.

Some of the more bizarre methods include fetal cell injections, inhaling radon gas, even removing testicles, an ancient practice meant to reduce overexposure to reproductive hormones.

“There’s a large industry of people trying to sell to people what doesn’t yet exist and they’re making gobs of money doing it -- much to the dismay of those of us who are vigilant about protecting public health,” says S. Jay Olshansky, a public health professor and longevity researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

There also are concerns that this obsession is sending the wrong message to younger generations.

Surveys from cosmetic surgery trade groups suggest that sizable numbers of people, even in their 20s, are getting cosmetic procedures. And a fall 2007 survey from TRU, a research firm that specializes in the teenage demographic, found that a quarter of people 12 to 19 -- and a third of girls in that age group -- are interested in having cosmetic surgery to improve their appearance.

However, as they age, many baby boomers are far more concerned with feeling younger and extending their lives.

So while it is illegal for human growth hormone and other hormones to be dispensed for anti-aging purposes, Life’s patient Detwiler spends more than $1,000 a month to take relatively low doses prescribed for “hormone deficiency.” The idea is to bring his levels back up to those of a young man in his 20s.

“My friends say, ‘Oh, Ed’s on steroids,’ ” Detwiler says. “No, I’m not. . . . I’m on hormone therapy.”

He holds out his arms to indicate that his body is fit-looking, but not monstrous.

Besides human growth hormone, testosterone, and an adrenal hormone known as DHEA, his diet now largely consists of things like hard-boiled eggs, fruits, nuts, Greek yogurt, salads and palm-sized pieces of fish, chicken or low-fat beef. He also exercises regularly, alternating between intense cardio workouts and weight-resistance training.

“I can’t tell you in words how great I feel,” says the man who used to crack open a Pepsi to get him through the day.

Cutting on calories

For a group known as the Calorie Restriction Society, youthfulness isn’t found in hormones. It’s reducing food intake to, in some cases, near-starvation levels.

But the claims are much the same -- “lots of energy” and feeling “sharp,” says Brian Delaney, 45, a California-born writer now living in Sweden. He’s president of the group, which claims about 2,000 members worldwide and many more followers who use the method in hopes of markedly increasing their longevity.

By cutting daily calories to about 1,900, roughly half the recommended amount for someone his height and age, and exercising every day, Delaney has shrunk himself to about 140 pounds. He says his blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels have improved dramatically.

At 5 foot 11, he admits he’s “scrawny,” which he calls the main drawback.

He says he eats sensibly, replacing junk food with lots of fruits and vegetables, no meat, and two meals daily -- no lunch. Breakfast is often “a hearty bowl” of granola, with fruit, nuts and soy milk; while dinner could be fish, rice, beans, a salad and red wine.

Other than “tons of fine wrinkles” he blames on too much sun as a kid, Delaney says in most respects, “I look much younger” than 45.

It is a bragging right many strive for. But youthfulness also is seen as a means of survival in the business world, says Renee Young, 48, a public relations executive in New Rochelle, N.Y.

“It feels like you’re put out to pasture. No one wants to feel that how they look means that their ability to do anything is decreased,” she says.

In the back of her mind is the fact that her mother died at only 56.

So five or six mornings a week, even when she’d rather pull the covers over her head, Young gets up and spends two hours at the gym.

That’s more than double the hour or so a day generally recommended for optimal health. And still, for her, that wasn’t enough. She recently spent nearly $20,000 on a tummy tuck, which she says has inspired her to take better care of herself overall.

Using a cosmetic procedure as a motivator is worthwhile -- and lucrative for doctors, to say the least, says Dr. Jonathan Lippitz. He’s an emergency room physician in suburban Chicago who does cosmetic procedures, such as Botox and skin fillers, in a separate practice.

But it’s also a “very slippery slope,” with patients sometimes willing to take more risk than they should and some doctors who’ll accommodate.

“We all say, ‘I want my hair different. I want my eyes different,’ ” Lippitz says. “This idea of being perfect is a problem, though, because it’s not reality.

“I have people coming in and saying ‘I want these lips.’ I say, ‘You can’t have these lips.’

“I say, ‘We’ll work with what you have.’ ”

For those going to even greater lengths to try to keep aging -- and ultimately death -- at bay, there also are no guarantees.

Calorie restriction guru Dr. Roy Walford succumbed to complications from Lou Gehrig’s disease at 79, closer to the average than the “extraordinarily long life” his followers talk about on their website.

Meanwhile, Dr. Alan Mintz, founder of Cenegenics, died at 69 due to complications during a brain biopsy.

Some research has suggested that human growth hormone injections can cause cancer. They’ve also been linked with nerve pain, elevated cholesterol and increased risks for diabetes.

Even so, Life, now the chief medical officer at Cenegenics, remains steadfast. Among other things, he points to studies that suggest that human growth hormone in low doses poses no cancer risk, if there is no preexisting cancer.

“Within the next 10 years, maybe less, this is going to be thought of as mainstream medicine -- preventing disease, slowing the aging process down, preventing people from losing their ability to take care of themselves when they get older and ending up in nursing homes,” Life says.

Detwiler is betting on that.

“People might ask, ‘Hey, what’s happened to these people? Was it cutting edge? Or did it cut it short?’ ” he says, as he walks into a gym for another workout.

“I think only time will tell.”