Why Health Advice on 'Oprah' Could Make You Sick

Note to Reader: I will never blog about this nonsense again, but, as a good citizen of the world, I am duty bound to comment

Whenever my schedule is congested, I suffer from a mass disconnection from everything else that is not on my 'to do list'. Hence, this sometimes causes me to be ignorant about important events precipitating in the world at large. (Or, otherwise put: When I am busy I pay limited attention to things I should focus intensely on.)

For instance, when I saw the cover story on the current edition of Newsweek, which is entitled Why Health Advice on 'Oprah' Could Make You Sick, I skimmed through it in a hasty fashion, and failed to distill key insights from the article, which were subtly emitting hints about an industry that is manifesting itself in our midst: the life extension industry.

Ever since the dawn of civilization, people have had an atrocious obsession with preserving their youth. Underlying this obsession, are deep desires for vitality, strength, aesthetic finesse and immortality. This seemingly primordial desire, has, over countless millennia, fueled quests for youth potions, and it has also created mythological realms and landmarks, like the fountain of youth, that supposedly possessed the powers to restore one's youthfulness.

However, until now, the promise of everlasting youth could only be satiated by myths (and not reality).

As you know, exponential technological progression, which has been a quintessential feature of the majority of the 20th century, has given us the knowledge and means to manipulate the aging process. Most of the technological breakthroughs that gave us this power occurred less than 30 years ago, and understandably, there is currently a spectre of uncertainty surrounding them. Hence, everything that has been written and said about them is largely speculative.

Having said that, I have some views that I have to state, and it is my sincere hope that they'll help someone.

Most of my comments are centered on this part of the said article:

• "Each morning, the 62-year-old actress and self-help author rubs a potent estrogen cream into the skin on her arm. She smears progesterone on her other arm two weeks a month. And once a day, she uses a syringe to inject estrogen directly into her vagina. The idea is to use these unregulated "bio-identical" hormones to restore her levels back to what they were when she was in her 30s, thus fooling her body into thinking she's a younger woman. According to Somers, the hormones, which are synthesized from plants instead of the usual mare's urine (disgusting but true), are all natural and, unlike conventional hormones, virtually risk-free (not even close to true, but we'll get to that in a minute)
  

• Next come the pills. She swallows 60 vitamins and other preparations every day. "I take about 40 supplements in the morning," she told Oprah, "and then, before I go to bed, I try to remember … to start taking the last 20." She didn't go into it on the show, but in her books she says that she also starts each day by giving herself injections of human growth hormone, vitamin B12 and vitamin B complex. In addition, she wears "nanotechnology patches" to help her sleep, lose weight and promote "overall detoxification."

That quoted part made me pause for a while, and after a few moments of suspended animation, I realized that Ms. Somers' beauty regimen has a lot of similarities with the demented 'buffing' regimen used by professional bodybuilders. The only difference being that she uses estrogen in her regimen, whereas professional bodybuilders use testosterone and testosterone mimicking substances (otherwise known as 'anabolic androgenic steroids' or just 'steroids').

If you'd like to see the effects of this kind of lifestyle, you only have to look at what has happened to professional bodybuilders of the steroid generation, i.e. from 1975 onwards. Most of them never made it past 55 years of age; the major cause of their deaths is cardiac arrest during sleep; and, the use of human growth hormone has caused most of them to have health problems that are associated with having enlarged internal organs (HgH causes internal organs to grow as well).

Thus, what I am simply saying, in layman's terms is: "beware of celebrities bearing/peddling miracle solutions".

Usually, when man fights nature, he may win a few battles, but he inevitably loses the war. If you love life, and being healthy, stay away from the 'Somers mania' and use the tried and tested methods: a balanced diet, exercise with progressive intensity, laughter and a productive 'labor of love'.

Otherwise, you're just f***ing (read: messing) yourself up.