Bombshell: Explosive Medical Secrets That Will Redefine Aging (17 page)

Now I’d like to
introduce you to three doctors who will give you their perspective on achieving a good quality of life and longevity. These outstanding, highly educated Western doctors are
hormone specialists
, along with having expertise in other medical areas.

Dr. Abraham Morgentaler is an associate clinical professor of urology at Harvard Medical School and the founder of Men’s Health Boston, a center focusing on sexual and reproductive health for men.

Dr. Prudence Hall is a graduate of the famed Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California and is the founder of the Hall Center in Santa Monica, California.

Dr. Jonathan Wright has degrees in cultural anthropology and medicine from Harvard and the University of Michigan, is the medical director at Meridian Valley Lab, and is the founder of the Tahoma Clinic, both in Renton, Washington.

All these doctors, along with the other physicians and professionals presented in this book, understand not only hormone replacement but also the
art
of hormone replacement for both men
and
women. Replacement is an art, because it takes a doctor who is able to finesse an
individual’s biochemical makeup and work with it. If your doctor has not chosen to specialize in bioidentical hormone replacement, then find one who does. It truly is a specialization, and going to a doctor who does not understand it is like going to a plumber for a heart bypass. It’s that important. These doctors also understand the daily dietary and lifestyle habits that hamper your efforts at achieving optimal hormonal balance.

Read on and let them teach you what you are unknowingly doing that is taking away from your health and also learn the benefits that come from having a balanced body.

Living longer with an efficiently working brain and robust health will keep you productive, allowing you to reinvent yourself as many times as suits you. Because I embraced antiaging medicine, my health and energy have allowed me to pursue an entirely new career. My writing endeavors are rewarding, and my age has become my asset. I am a productive member of society, and part of that is the wisdom I can bring to the table. If I were all “pilled up,” if my brain was foggy from lack of hormones, and if I had been eating nonorganic food all these years, mine would be a completely different story. I cannot tell you how great it feels to be alive. I feel upbeat, healthy, energetic, and sexy. I am so busy there doesn’t seem time in each day to do it all, yet I never feel worn out. There is a difference between worn out and tired, by the way. It all started with replacing my depleted hormones. Bioidentical hormone replacement keeps my brain sharp, my bones strong, my joints limber, my energy at peak, and my libido rockin’!

I set out to have these doctors answer the following: (1) How can we create a line of defense that allows our bodies to outsmart the present overwhelming environmental toxic assault? (2) How do we live with quality and optimal health in this new longer life that technology has afforded? and (3) What’s new? Get ready … this is a fast-expanding science and what you will learn will give you the “edge” you are looking for to stay feeling young, healthy, and relevant.

The first signs of deterioration are when your doctor might say something like “Your thyroid is a little off.” A little off? The thyroid is a
major player; it governs and regulates the minor hormones, although why they call estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone
minor
, I’ll never know. Those of you who have low hormone output know that it is no minor thing.

To have a greater understanding of low hormonal output, think of your father and testosterone deficiency: out of gas, sleeping in his easy chair at all hours of the day, his big belly heaving, shoulders no longer straight but sloping, and, no small thing, notice his grumpiness. These are all indicators of testosterone deficiency.

But it’s not the outward physical look of testosterone deficiency or the state of his mood (albeit not pleasant) that is alarming relative to aging successfully. Instead, it represents what is happening internally, in particular, the depletion of the pumping power of the heart, the largest muscle in the body, the muscle with more testosterone receptor sites than any other organ in the body. According to Dr. Abraham Morgentaler, whom you’ll hear from next, lowered testosterone levels lead to an enlarged prostate. That is how important hormones are to our health and quality of life. It is very clear that testosterone depletion accelerates aging, and testosterone replacement in the right individualized dosages is a powerful player in aging well.

Your mother wouldn’t have believed that, compared to who he once was, that same guy would end up being the guy she is married to today. The guy she fell in love with “back when” was a testosterone machine; he had energy, muscle tone, virility, sharp thinking, strong bones, a strong heart, and he was full of life, love, and passion. Where did all that go? Unfortunately, it drained out, as his testosterone drained from his body. But the good news is that now, with what we understand in antiaging medicine, he can get it back. Keep reading. It’s reversible. This is the exciting aspect of new lifestyle medicine, and it’s available to everyone who is interested. What an exciting notion.

I had the pleasure
of meeting Dr. Morgentaler at a dinner party outside of Salt Lake City several years ago. To my delight I was seated next to him and was so impressed with his relaxed charm. I found him to be the most unpretentious, affable, lovely man who, in spite of all his success at Harvard, still had boyish curiosity. We talked hormones all evening, and as you can imagine I was in heaven
.

Dr. Abraham Morgentaler is an associate clinical professor of urology at Harvard Medical School and is the founder of Men’s Health Boston, a center focusing on sexual and reproductive health for men. He is the author of a number of popular books including
The Male Body, The Viagra Myth,
and the one I devoured, the life-changing breakthrough book called
Testosterone for Life.

This book put the medical community in a quandary. For once he couldn’t be called “one of those quack doctors” for stepping outside the orthodox beliefs. Here was a prestigious doctor from Harvard, on the faculty, saying the impossible: testosterone replacement was necessary for men’s health!

Up until now, the inaccuracies and lack of understanding of this vital hormone have put so many men at a disadvantage. Without this vital youth-giving, bone-building substance, their lives get robbed of the very thing that gave them their male “edge.” What Dr. Morgentaler has to say in this chapter is, I believe (along with many others), the greatest advancement in men’s health in decades. I appreciate deeply that he called me to deliver the important news you are about to hear
.

SS:
Thank you for your time, Dr. Morgentaler. Harvard is an unlikely place for someone such as yourself to come out with cutting-edge
information about testosterone replacement, particularly in light of the fact that most orthodox information promotes the theory that testosterone gives you cancer, or at the very least, raises the possibility. How important is it for men to replace testosterone as an antiaging ingredient?

AM:
Thank you. It’s nice to speak with you again, Suzanne.

Our ideas about testosterone are evolving rapidly. We now know that having a normal level of testosterone keeps men healthy. But, like many things in health, science, and medicine, we get “stuck” with very old ideas, and once they take root it’s difficult to change the thinking.

SS:
Why has traditional medicine been so conservative in its ideas concerning testosterone?

AM:
Part of the reason is that there are so many myths and misconceptions about testosterone that are pervasive even at the highest level of academia. Early in 2012 there was a study reported in the
Wall Street Journal
about a group of young Filipino men. Testosterone levels of this group were obtained as young men, and then again several years later when some of these young men had become fathers. When they compared testosterone levels between the men who were fathers and the men with no children, the fathers had lower testosterone levels. That was kind of interesting.

But what was flabbergasting was the interpretation of this study. I gather it was done by a number of anthropologists. They concluded that there must be an evolutionary reason that fatherhood lowered testosterone, and when interviewed, the authors and other researchers made comments like “The lower testosterone levels in men with children means these men are less likely to leave the marriage and they will be better fathers.”

Whereas with the higher-testosterone guys the thinking was, “If he goes out for drinks he may see some woman who interests him and he will be a worse father.”

SS:
Really, this is the thinking in academia?

AM:
Right, this idea that men are just a function of our testosterone is misinformed. The big problem with the field of testosterone is that nearly everyone thinks they know all about it, but in this case what we think we know is often incorrect. In this study I mentioned, the authors appeared to believe that those men with lower testosterone are more domesticated and more likely to be faithful. What the authors seem to be unaware of is that testosterone levels can fluctuate
widely even from morning to evening, especially in young men, yet our personalities don’t change hour by hour.

To me, the likely explanation for the lower testosterone in young fathers is that they were sleep deprived! Any kind of sleep disorder drops your testosterone. The proof was the men with the very lowest testosterone were the ones whose babies had arrived within the last month.

SS:
It’s good to know that the men are not sleeping after the arrival of the new baby either!

So why is testosterone a good thing for long health?

AM:
All men have testosterone, and our levels decline as we get older. When it gets below a certain point, men start having symptoms. However, lower levels of testosterone also affect some biological systems. For instance, studies show that men with low testosterone are at an increased risk of developing diabetes.

SS:
Thank you. I’ve been saying this in my books … why do diabetic doctors not understand that testosterone replacement is so important relative to treating older diabetic male patients?

AM:
I don’t know why this is, but they haven’t connected the dots, which is amazing. Some of them are starting to get tuned in, but not many. I work with the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, which is one of the premiere diabetes care centers in the world, and through our work together the physicians there have started to pay attention to the link between diabetes and low testosterone. A number of studies have now shown that between 40 and 50 percent of men with adult diabetes have low testosterone levels. It’s one of the greatest risk factors for low testosterone. Other studies have shown that men in the lowest 25 percent of the group with low testosterone ended up with more than double the risk of developing new onset of diabetes. In other words, having diabetes means that a man is at high risk of having low testosterone, or “low T” as I like to call it, and low T itself is a risk for
developing
diabetes down the road.

Also, in separate studies they found men in the lowest 25 percent had two to three times the risk of getting fractures because testosterone is crucial for bone density in men.

SS:
Because testosterone is an anabolic steroid?

AM:
Yes. Testosterone is good for bone in men just as estrogen is good for bone in women.

SS:
Because anabolic steroids build bone and muscle?

AM:
Right. Furthermore, in four population studies involving a total of several thousand men, men with low testosterone died sooner than men with normal testosterone.

SS:
That’s quite significant … and I’m sure they were a lot grumpier while they were alive.

AM:
You’re funny! Yes, low testosterone can make men grumpy. Within the conservative medical establishment there is a way of thinking that’s, “Let’s wait until we see all the data as proof before we move on this.” As a physician who sees patients, there are some situations where the evidence may be less than perfect, but my patient is sitting right in front of me, and I have to make the best judgments based on what I do know.

Here’s what we know so far. When you give testosterone to men with diabetes, their blood sugar control gets better. Testosterone changes the body’s composition from fat to muscle, which not only sounds good but also helps with blood sugar metabolism and probably atherosclerosis, too.

SS:
Then it’s tragic that older men are not given testosterone routinely. It just doesn’t make sense not to. We’re talking not only health but also quality of life.

AM:
It just hasn’t gotten into the mind-set of a lot of doctors; they have funny feelings about testosterone. That’s part of the challenge.

SS:
The medical establishment has funny feelings about hormones in general. Yet the men and women who have embraced replacement all say (myself included) that it’s life altering.

AM:
Why do
you
think there is resistance?