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Youthfulness an American Obsession - At What Cost?

But for a generation of adults who’ve been weaned on the modern marketing message — that for a price, you can have it all — the quest is taking on a new urgency.

There is, of course, much to be said for taking good care of yourself. Eating healthy 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 teeth 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. In doing so, they wonder if some people are actually jeopardizing their chance at a long, healthy life, both physically and emotionally.

Dr. Jeffry Life when he was 67, after being on the Cenegenics program for about two years. Life, the chief medical officer at Cenegenics, will be 70 this Christmas day. (Source: AP)

“The quest to live forever and the desire to avoid diseases and not suffer” is understandable, says S. Jay Olshansky, a public health professor and longevity researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

But it can make people vulnerable to far-fetched and potentially dangerous scams, he said, with some of the more bizarre including fetal cell injections, inhaling radon gas, even cutting off 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,” he says.

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 young people, 12 to 19 — and a third of girls in that age group — are interested in having cosmetic surgery to improve their appearance.

Michael Wood, vice president and director of syndicated research at TRU, was a bit startled by the results.