Nearly 80 million baby boomers have long fought off the aging process with fierce determination. It seems only fitting, since this war on aging isn't about simply living a long time, but doing it with vigor.
John Bellizzi's routine is like a lot of ours, but this 51 year old is willing to go a lot further than most of us to keep fit. Twice a week he gives himself a shot. "The one that I take is made from urine from pregnant women."
Bellizzi is part of a growing group of men who are using human chorionic gonadotropin or hcg, an injection of testosterone.
"I've had people come up to me and say, 'What? Are you nuts?' With the added testosterone in my body, I build muscle mass quicker. I have more vigor. I'm thinking faster."
His stats prove something is working. In two years he's dropped and kept off 16 pounds, lowered his body fat by 13 percent and dropped 50 points off his cholesterol. It's the latest trend at the Cenegenics Medical Institute in Las Vegas.
"We can manage the way we age, so at the age of 68, Ii can do the same things I did when I was 20," explained Dr. Robert Willix.
Patients go through a seven-hour physical and then have a nutrition, exercise and supplement plan designed for them. But some worry what's being practiced here is taking us down a dangerous road medicine has traveled before.
Dr. Lewis Lipsitz is the director of the Institute for Aging Research Hebrew Seniorlife in Boston. "We used to think that by replacing estrogen, we would rejuvenate women, and lo and behold, we found the opposite. we actually created more heart disease, blood clots and cognitive impairment than we prevented."
When it comes to hcg, there's still uncertainty.
"I think that they are advertising a toxic soup for you, and it's really something to avoid at all costs. it's really modern-day quackery and hucksterism in my opinion," said Tom Perls, Ph.D., director of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston Medical Center.
But these men say they're living proof it works.
