I wrote an Op-Ed for the latest edition of Aging Today, the newspaper of the American Society on Aging. Here is an excerpt:
Hormones are the cornerstone of the anti-aging credo, which one doctor described to me as rectangularization (mortality compression). The idea, he said, is that patients should not have to age like their parents did, suffering a gradual increase in frailty and a slow decline towards the nursing home–triangularization, if you will. Instead they can use hormones to stay strong and healthy throughout their lives and then “fall off a cliff fast,” he said.
I find that sad. The fact is, there are no long-term, placebo-controlled studies proving that hormones extend life and that they’re safe for healthy people to take long term.