The Truth About Antiaging Drugs

To believe most of the claims about antiaging drugs that are
sold all over the Internet—slimmer waists, better memory, stronger sex drive–you’d have to be born yesterday, an event that may be goal of people who buy
the stuff. Bottom line, says this piece
in the Boston Globe, the ads are bull, and the stuff they sell you is likely to
be a bunch of useless amino acids. One thing that does build muscle mass, the
story reports, is human growth hormone, but human growth hormone does not work
in pill form. It works only  when injected, and it can only be injected
legally for a few medical conditions. Normal muscle loss from aging is not one
of them. How well does human growth hormone work? The Globe cites a
randomized, double-blind six-month experiment conducted at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine that looked at 136
healthy men and women who were given regular injections of growth hormone only;
various hormones; and placebos. Everyone who got the growth hormone saw
increases in lean body mass and decreases in fat, but only the men who were
given both testosterone and human growth hormone actually got stronger. For
them, the increase was about 13.5 percent — a bit less than what they would have achieved with a hormone-free, conventional weight
lifting program. Save your money. Lift iron. Read more.