ABCs Dr. Mehmet Oz, America’s iconic health expert and purveyor of natural therapies, squared off today with Dr. Alex Martin, the country’s Number One Advocate for Anti-Aging Therapy, over the SAFETY of HGH, Human Growth Hormone in a so-called HGH CONTROVERSY and 21st Century TECHNOLOGY DISPUTE.
The questions looming about Anti-Aging Therapy are, Do we use so-called, home-remedies of limited effect for the sake of safety as Doctor Oz would propose? or Do we embrace the NOW, take a deep breath and plunge into the sea of 21stCentury Technology to take advantage of all that the New Century has to offer?â€
When you hear your doctor say, Well, we just don’t know if HGH is safe to use. The fact of the matter is he is saying HE doesn’t know the facts about HGH. Multiple studies dating from 2004 forward indicate that HGH is NOT related to breast cancer despite what earlier data suggested.
As further evidence of this coming from our day-to-day experience, people with HGH producing tumors, called Acromegalics, in which their bodies are flooded with 100 times the normal amounts of HGH do NOT have breast cancer. Interesting observation, isn’t it?
What about Prostate Cancer? Similar, common sense observations support the clinical findings that HGH does NOT cause Prostate Cancer. The so-called link in earlier data is a substance called IgF-1, Insulin-like growth factor-1. It is found to be elevated often in patients with Prostate Cancer. It is also somewhat elevated artificially when people are given HGH. More importantly, as we grow older the IgF-1 levels naturally FALL while the incidence of Prostate Cancer INCREASES. From a pure common-sense and statistic viewpoint, there can be no connection between the two.
Dr. Oz, however, sees things differently. While the strongest message he has to say is that HGH has NOT been shown to be harmful but that we just don’t know enough about it, my response is, but, yes, we do know a great deal about it.
There are over 200 studies on HGH, both on-going and completed, since 2001. Some of these studies are retrospective and compilational analyses, meaning they are studies of studies. These have concluded by and large that there is no statistically significant evidence that HGH is related to either breast or prostate cancers, the two most common cancers once believed to be related to taking HGH therapy.
So what does this mean to you, the cautious consumer, and to the clinician administering HGH? Â It means that, while research continues with study after study on HGH, we have to make the choice either to tremble and to shun the advances of the New Century in which we live “OR“ we can bravely go forth and embrace the riches of what the Future is now offering us.
The HGH Controversy is really one of choosing between the horse and buggy of yesteryear and the Space-Age advances of Modern Living. It all boils down to where and how you choose to live. For many of us, we are not content to be destined to the fate of our parents and grandparents while we have the SAFE and EXCITING advantages of the 21st Century at our fingertips. Ask yourself, Why not live better and longer, healthier and happier than those who came before us?
Copyright © 2011 Alex Martin MD, Los Angeles
