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Carl Sagan in his role as professor at Cornell University once said, “A Scientist must hover in a strangely divided state of mind - open to all things, yet closed to anything but the most rigorously proven hypotheses. Science requires a strange mating of two contradictory tendencies – A willingness to consider even the most bizarre ideas, and at the same time, a harsh skepticism, requiring hard evidence to back up every claim.”

This book, The Clinical Application of Interventional Endocrinology, presents the key science supporting the approach and then shares how one might evaluate patients for treatment. This is by no means a textbook, but more a hands-on approach to the assessment of a patient for potential treatment.

In 1992, a handful of physicians met to start what has now become a worldwide medical phenomenon, The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, predicated on improving and maintaining wellness as a means of treating potential illness. It is practiced in over 80 countries with nearly 20,000 board trained physicians. Treatment is based upon returning the body’s homeostasis with the use of nutrition, exercise, hormones, and supplements – all of which have been developed from a scientific, evidence-based approach.

Unfortunately, all aspects of traditional medicine are in fear of the potential benefits of advancing a wellness model of medical care and fail to accept the science that supports this treatment. They reject the use of the term “anti-aging” as a metaphor for the benefits obtained to psychological, physiological, and physical health. This prompted a search for another term that would be more medically correct and better accepted by those physicians and that term is interventional endocrinology.

Many times, endocrine deficiencies have an insidious progression until that day we awake knowing that something is very wrong. In interventional endocrinology we promote the assessment of hormone levels and the early interdiction when the levels are less than optimal.

Medical literature is filled with articles pertaining to changes in both the mental and emotional status of patients, both male and female, when their levels of androgens (testosterone, dihydrotestosterone, androstanediol, dehydroepiandrosteine, and others,) are deficient or below normal. When androgen levels are low and medically restored to physiologic levels, research has shown it safely and significantly improves: energy level, depression, diabetes, mood, brain function, heart health, muscle strength and tone, abdominal fat, bone density, sexual performance, libido, and provides an overall sense of well-being and confidence.

In August 1992, the Pepper Commission Report acknowledged the apparent association between elderly individuals becoming weak and unable to care for themselves and diminished levels of both testosterone and growth hormone. It was the combined efforts of the National Institute on Aging and National Institutes of Health that published the call for research to address this condition which was affecting more than seven million Americans who were placed in extended care facilities. The government estimated that over $54 million dollars was being spent to care for these individuals since their ability to engage in activities of life such as walking and even standing for more than a few moments was deficient. Progressive muscular weakness only increased the risk of falls with the inevitable hip fracture or cranial injury. These individuals’ ability to maximize quality of life was progressively eroding as the underlying hormonal deficiencies progressed unchecked.

Traditional medicine was slow to accept the notion that hormones have a regulatory mechanism on aging, and thereafter performed millions of dollars worth of research to arrive at substantive support for the hormone association. Hopefully we will not have to wait another ten years before traditional medicine accept their findings and all physicians learn about interventional endocrinology.

The Clinical Application of Interventional Endocrinology is available at ucprx.com.

Mark Gordon, M.D. is the Medical Director of Millennium Health Centers, Inc. in Encino, California. He received both his medical degree and residency in Family Medicine from Rush Presbyterian St. Luke’s in Chicago. In 1999 he became a Diplomat of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine and in 2006 in Anti-Aging Sports Medicine.



June 2008

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