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Youthfulness an American Obsession - At What Cost?

He sounds a little sad when he talks about it.

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to look better. We want to look young. We want to look great,” he says. “But part of that feeling has to come from within.”

For those going to even greater lengths to try to keep aging — and ultimately death — at bay, there also are no guarantees.

Calorie restriction guru Dr. Roy Walford succumbed to complications from Lou Gehrig’s disease at age 79, closer to the average than the “extraordinarily long life” his followers talk about on their Web site.

Meanwhile, Dr. Alan Mintz, founder of Cenegenics, died at the relatively young age of 69 due to complications during a brain biopsy.

Some research has suggested that human growth hormone injections can cause cancer. They’ve also been linked with nerve pain, elevated cholesterol and increased risks for diabetes.

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)

Even so, Life, now the chief medical officer at Cenegenics, remains steadfast. Among other things, he points to studies that suggest that human growth hormone in low doses poses no cancer risk if there is no preexisting cancer.

“Within the next 10 years, maybe less, this is going to be thought of as mainstream medicine — preventing disease, slowing the aging process down, preventing people from losing their ability to take care of themselves when they get older and ending up in nursing homes,” Life says. “This is really the cutting edge of medicine.”

Detwiler is betting on that.

“There are those who might think I’m cheating God’s way. I don’t know,” he says. “But I don’t want to regress. Why should I?”

He says his overall body fat has dropped from nearly 17 percent to less than 10 percent. He can’t remember the last time he had a cold or the flu. And he says he’s had the stamina to work long hours, putting him on pace to earn more than a million dollars this year.

That’s what he knows now. The future, he says, will be anyone’s guess.

“People might ask, ‘Hey, what’s happened to these people? Was it cutting edge? Or did it cut it short?’” he says, as he walks into a gym for another workout.

“I think only time will tell.”

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