EXCITING NEWS!

Healthcare Retail '06 Conference

First Time EVER!
Conference for Hospital CEO's
April 10th-11th - Orlando, Florida

Cheryl Whitman
CEO & Founder of beautiful forever Consulting

Mac Fadra
Senior Consultant, MBA
Monday April 10th

1:30 pm Day Spas, Wellness & Fitness Centers

Is your hospital ready for a Day Spa/Wellness Center? Medical spas can be a highly lucrative business whether they stand alone or are integrated into the healthcare system.Important additional benefits are realized by employees and patients alike. Proper planning can mean the difference between the success or failure of your medical spa.

For information on attending:
www.healthcareretail06.com
1-407-566-1017

The anti-aging industry is offering a dizzying array of
hormones and supplements.
Business is booming.

But some remedies are risky, and the benefits are unproven.

MARCH 20, 2006

Business Week
By Arlene Weintraub

As Dr. Ron Rothenberg bursts through the door of his anti-aging institute in Southern California, a cell phone pressed to his ear, his nurse warns him of the busy day ahead. There will be four-hour consultations with each of three prospective patients, she says. They're all coming to hear the 60-year-old Rothenberg's pitch about how his tailored regimens of diet, exercise, and hormones will make them feel younger and live longer.

As 77 million baby boomers approach retirement, the relatively new field of anti-aging is racing to keep up with them. Anti-aging medicine goes way beyond Botox, Retin-A face creams, and medical spas that offer plastic surgery and laser-based cosmetic procedures. In fact, only a small portion of what these new medicine men and women do is aimed at making patients look younger. Instead, anti-aging doctors seek to turn back the internal hands of time by prescribing megadoses of supplements that they believe prevent the body's organs from deteriorating and dying.

Controversies
The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M) sponsors conferences and it also waves around research showing that the industry pulls in $56 billion a year now -- and that number could swell to $79 billion by 2009. The promise A4M and its members dangle before patients is summed up perfectly in the title of Rothenberg's self-published book: Forever Ageless. According to A4M, 1,500 doctors have sought board certification in anti-aging medicine since 1996.

Rothenberg and other practitioners in the field have precious little scientific data to back up their claims that the potions extend life. But they insist the regimens will guarantee what Rothenberg calls "rectangularization" -- years of healthy living followed by a short, acute decline, as opposed to a slower, triangle-like descent toward the grave.

HGH is by far the most controversial weapon in the anti-aging arsenal. A substance produced in the body, it was synthesized by several biotech companies in the early 1980s. The first products were approved by the FDA in 1985 to help short children grow taller. Lately the anti-aging industry has latched on to HGH as a tool for boosting immunity, memory, heart function, muscle mass, and more.

Rothenberg, who has taken growth hormone himself, believes it could help people live to be 125. But it's illegal for anyone to distribute HGH for anti-aging purposes, and critics believe many players in the anti-aging industry who prescribe it are violating laws and endangering patients in the process. The drug industry formally opposes the efforts to link HGH with anti-aging, but behind the scenes, companies may not have done much to douse the enthusiasm.

Then there are concerns that anti-aging promotions may be more like scams. Because aging is not actually a disease, very little of the expense is covered by insurance. That leaves patients paying often substantial fees out of pocket.

Through the Cracks
More recent studies have downplayed the heart disease risk, but in the meantime, anti-aging doctors have stepped in to fill the void, promoting natural, or "bio-identical," hormones as safe alternatives. Critics take issue with these products for several reasons. First, bio-identical hormones are made by so-called compounding pharmacists. Historically, they have been permitted by law to customize medications for individual patients -- for example, people who react adversely to certain ingredients. But under FDA rules, they should not be manufacturing or selling drugs to a mass market. To get into that business, they would have to submit to strict supervision of their facilities, the quality of their products, the claims on their labels, and the like. Critics blast the FDA for letting too much activity slip through the cracks.

The second big complaint involves the very term "bio-identical." The hormones prescribed by anti-aging doctors are generally derived from plants such as soybeans and sweet potatoes, and combined into proprietary recipes, which may never be tested in human trials. Anti-aging proponents say the substances are natural, safe alternatives to FDA-approved hormones such as Premarin and Prempro, which are derived from the urine of pregnant horses. But many doctors are leery of the bio-identical pitch. "Yams do not make hormones like humans do," says Dr. Bruce Bouts, an internist in Findlay, Ohio.

What's missing amid all this excitement, though, is any firm scientific proof that these regimens actually slow down or reverse the aging process. That proof may never come. A truly scientific study would have to span several decades and include a control group that's taking a placebo. Imagine how difficult it would be to persuade patients to participate in such a trial, knowing that they could end up taking a sugar pill for 50 years, rather than the pill that might actually extend their lives.

Some patients are aware that anti-aging is controversial, but they say they must answer to how they feel. Paul's patient Suzi Tillman first went to see him after a hysterectomy left her feeling that her entire body had simply shut down. "I wasn't sleeping, I couldn't think straight, I called my children the wrong names," says Tillman, 51, a former professional ballroom dancer who now teaches dance and works with senior citizens. "I felt ugly. For an empowered woman, this is scary." Now she is taking 15 supplements a day and rubbing a cream made of compounded estrogen into her skin. She feels like her old self. "Oh, the relief to have that cloud gone."

For more of this article visit: www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_12/b3976001.htm