Anti-Aging Medicine

The newest medical specialty.

by Khalid Mahmud, M.D., F.A.C.P.

Anti-aging medicine is a new medical specialty that started in the early 1990s when 12 forward-thinking physicians assembled in Chicago and formed the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M). They recognized that aging and age-related diseases are caused by multiple factors that erode our youth and health as we advance into our 30s, 40s, and beyond. They reasoned that these factors can be recognized, controlled, and even reversed. Therefore, aging, once considered inevitable, cannot be accepted as such. We can retard it, stop it, and even reverse certain aspects of it. Age is OK, aging is not! In 2005, A4M has more than 12,000 members from 70 different countries, and the majority of them are M.D.’s and Ph.D.’s. It is the fastest growing medical society in the world. It offers AMA-recognized continuing medical education credits and has established its own Medical Specialty Board.

Anti-aging clinics have sprung up in many cities of the United States and across the globe and are reporting thousands of patients/clients who feel, look, and act younger, and who may very likely live longer. One such clinic reporting at the A4M 2002 meetings revealed that of the 4,000 patients receiving anti-aging treatment for the last several years, only one patient had developed cancer. Although one cannot claim this as absolute and conclusive evidence, this certainly is a remarkable trend.

Innovative Directions in Health is Minnesota's first clinic fully dedicated to Anti-Aging and Preventive Medicine

How does Anti-Aging Medicine Differ from Conventional Medicine?

Conventional medicine relies very heavily on pharmaceuticals. Since most pharmaceuticals are synthetic compounds - foreign agents to our bodies - they often end up causing harmful effects. An example is the use of the horse derived estrogens and synthetic progestins that finally proved to be more harmful than helpful for women in menopause. Another example is the occurrence of heart attacks in patients who have received COX-2 inhibitor drugs. That is not to say that all pharmaceuticals are bad. There are many that are beneficial and have stood the test of time.

Conventional medicine pays attention to the quantity of life (survival time) and very little to its quality. Almost 90 percent of the published cancer treatment studies report in terms of length of survival and fail to address the quality of survival.

Anti-Aging Medicine takes advantage of scientific evidence that has been well documented in peer-reviewed journals to control the underlying causes of aging and age-related disease...

It seeks to detect, stop, or reverse the pathological process which can result in a heart attack, cancer, or stroke in a given patient
It does so by using nutritional and lifestyle approaches, hormones, vitamins, minerals, and other targeted supplements, with minimal use of pharmaceuticals
It focuses on enhancing a patient's vitality and quality of life, without ignoring the quantity of life
It is not "alternative" or "elite" or "cosmetic" medicine and not just "growth hormone therapy"
Nothing is more valuable than vigor, vitality, productivity, and its result: happiness. No treatment of a disease, however advanced, can be as meaningful as its PREVENTION!

To learn more about A4M, please visit the Academy's web site at www.worldhealth.net.