Interview with Dr. Ronald Klatz
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Let's talk about health. Dr. Gupta, we have paged him. He is here, you see, and this morning, he has got a topic that hits pretty much all of us -- close to home with us, those of us who are concerned about how long we are going to live.</s>DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, you can't avoid it unless, you know, the alternative to getting older.</s>HARRIS: Which is not a good thing.</s>KAGAN: Not exactly desirable. And we have Dr. Sanjay Gupta here with us.</s>DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Aging or getting old, maybe not entirely the same thing here. Dr. Ronald Klatz is with us from Chicago. Let's bring him in right away, the president of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine -- Dr. Klatz, welcome, thank you for joining us.</s>DR. RONALD KLATZ, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ANTI-AGING MEDICINE: Thank you, Dr. Gupta.</s>GUPTA: Thank you. Aging and getting old, they are not the same thing, are they?</s>KLATZ: No, not at all. Aging is a factor of the amount of birthday candles on your birthday cake. Growing old is really a degenerative process that leads ultimately to disease and finally to death.</s>GUPTA: You know, Dr. Klatz, there has been so much interest in this topic, I'm not sure if it is people want to live longer, or they just don't want to grow old as fast. We have got tons of questions. I want to get right to some of the e-mail questions, and read you one about a topic that has come up over and over again, and it is about growth hormone. The question is, "What are your thoughts on the latest human growth hormone craze? Is it really a fountain of youth, or just a hoax?" This is a big topic, isn't it, doctor?</s>KLATZ: Absolutely. A huge topic. This is a multi-billion dollar drug. There are tens of thousands of children on growth hormone for the reasons of short stature, growth hormone clearly works in young children to make them -- help them grow to be normal-sized adults. But growth hormone doesn't stop working when you hit your full size at maturity. It goes on to work throughout life to keep the organs of your body healthy and well functioning. It also maintains lean body muscle mass, and helps to keep that youthful figure to the body by preventing the accumulation of fat around the abdomen, which is the most dangerous fat. Does growth hormone work? Absolutely, it works. Injectable pharmacologic growth hormone works. But for the public, there are some marketeers that are selling growth -- supposedly, growth hormone spray in a bottle. These are supposedly homeopathic products. There has been very little research on these things, and what research has been done is really not very impressive at all. The spray growth hormone products, to the best of my knowledge, do not work. There is also amino acid supplements that called growth hormone secretagogues, they help the body to produce natural growth hormone, and to release natural growth hormone. A lot of the athletes have been using these amino acids for the last 20, 30 years with good success. Now, growth hormone secretagogues, amino acids do work, but they only work if you are athletic, and generally, they only work until about age 50. If you are really athletic, maybe up to 60, and then the body no longer has the ability to produce its own natural growth hormone.</s>GUPTA: It...</s>HARRIS: That still includes us.</s>GUPTA: Yes, right. Hey, doctor, so seriously, the safe forms of injectable human growth hormone, is that something that people could just take, and why doesn't everyone take it? It sounds like a great thing.</s>KLATZ: Well, it is a great thing, just like insulin is a great thing. If you are diabetic and you don't take insulin, or you don't get insulin or an insulin-like substance, you are going to die 20 years prematurely. Well, if we look at adults that are growth hormone deficient, they develop degenerative disease much younger than they would otherwise. And when you give growth hormone supplementation to adults who have degenerative disease, some very interesting things happen. The degenerative diseases seem to abate. Growth hormone injection has been shown to be effective in people with arthritis, some forms of arthritis. With congestive heart failure...</s>KAGAN: Dr. Klatz, I am sorry. I am just going to -- it's Daryn Kagan. I am just going to jump in here real quick because we have so many e-mails and only a couple -- a couple minutes left, so that we can a couple more topics on here. This one is from Sandra. She wants to know, "If you could have only one anti-aging treatment" -- only, only one product, Dr. Klatz, "what would it be, and why?"</s>HARRIS: I think we just heard it.</s>KLATZ: Well, I would have to choose my grandparents wisely. That's always good to have.</s>KAGAN: But that is good point. How much are we fighting genetics here?</s>KLATZ: Quite a bit. Genetics accounts for at least a third, and maybe half of the degenerative diseases that we see in aging, but the good news is that if you are really aggressive about it, you can beat your genetics. For example, I have high cholesterol. My dad had his first heart attack at age 42. I, on the other hand, have his genetics and I have whistle-clean coronary arteries. Why is that? Well, I found out about it early, and I took steps to intervene. I took the right anti-oxidant nutrients, I took lipid-lowering drugs, I exercise regularly, and my arteries are clean and they are going to stay that way, and I hopefully will never succumb to a heart attack. You can beat your genetics, but you have to be aware, you have to take interventions.</s>HARRIS: How about this, doc: this next question is about "how can you do it without medicine? Is there any natural way?" This comes from Goldstein.</s>KLATZ: Well, you know, 80 percent of an anti-aging medicine program is diet, lifestyle, and nutritional supplementation, so 80 percent of an anti-aging medicine program is done without medications already, so you can get quite a bit of benefit from diet, exercise, and antioxidant supplementation in the form of vitamins such as vitamin A, C, E, selenium, the B vitamins, things such as that.</s>GUPTA: Who would have known that diet and exercise actually would pay off?</s>KAGAN: This just in to</s>CNN. GUPTA: Final question, though, doctor. Coffee, something that is consumed in great amounts here at CNN, what effect does that have on the aging process?</s>KLATZ: Well, we don't really know for sure. On the plus side, there has just been some research published showing that caffeine is good for memory, good for the brain, and also may -- some analogs of caffeine may be protective against certain forms of cancer, slow down the growth of certain cancers. On the downside, too much coffee can raise your cortisol levels. Cortisol is a naturally occurring hormone. If have you too much of it, it leads to premature aging. So like everything, there is two sides to the story, and I wish I had the whole answer for you yet, but I just don't. But when I do, you will be the first to know.</s>KAGAN: You have an open invitation to join us once again.</s>HARRIS: If you want a coffee study, this is the place to be.</s>KAGAN: Come to CNN. Dr. Klatz, thank you so much. Dr. Gupta...</s>KLATZ: Thank you. May I...</s>KAGAN: Go ahead. You wanted to say one more thing?</s>KLATZ: I just wanted to talk about my latest book if that's possible.</s>KAGAN: Well, get your plug in fast.</s>KLATZ: OK. It's "Stopping the Clock," and it's available at Amazon.com, it is really the premier anti-aging 101 for people who are interested in it.</s>KAGAN: There you go. All right.</s>KLATZ: Thank you.</s>KAGAN: Dr. Klatz, thank you so much. 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