Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones (32 page)

SS:
That’s important for men to know. Now, let’s talk about iodine.

ES:
The linkage between hormones and iodine is fascinating. Iodine is trapped and concentrated in the thyroid, so most doctors are focused only on the iodine relationship to the thyroid gland. But the second and third most concentrated areas are in the breasts and in the ovaries. Our glands concentrate iodine, and the breast tissue is very, very sensitive to iodine. You can mimic the model for fibrocystic disease in animals by making them iodine-deficient. They’ll get fibrocystic changes in breast tissue just like the women today with fibrocystic disease. Dense breast tissue will go away with iodine, and so will cystic tissue.

SS:
Is iodine something you would supplement daily?

ES:
Yes. The Japanese, who have one-eighth the prostate cancer and nearly as little breast cancer and bowel cancer, have iodine levels about eight to ten times the American levels.

SS:
I remember when we were kids, our mothers bought iodized salt. Did they know the importance of iodine replacement back then?

ES:
Yes. Iodine deficiency was associated with goiter, so at that time they thought that putting a little iodine in the salt would be the end of it. And again, they set the RDA level …

SS:
Let me guess, very low?

ES:
Way low. But the daily intake of iodine of the Japanese is eight to ten times higher than ours from eating a lot of miso, kelp, seafood, and other foods very high in iodine. In our country, we get less than 1 mg a day.

SS:
So do you think iodine, as we age, is a must?

ES:
Yes, it’s absolutely critical to get more iodine. We are depleted of iodine in many ways. For instance, our water contains fluoride, and our swimming pools contain chlorine, so we are surrounded by “iodinelike molecules” that get brought into the body by these chemicals. If you don’t have enough iodine, these iodinelike molecules build up in the various tissues, causing a buildup of larger levels of
bromine, fluorine, and chlorine where there should be iodine. These chemicals won’t activate the cellular functions the way iodine does. In fact, they lock it. Every single hormone receptor in the body has iodine residue in it.

SS:
Naturally?

ES:
Yes. There is an amino acid in every hormone receptor, insulin receptor, androgen and estrogen receptors. All of these hormone receptors have tyrosine residue with amino acid. Tyrosine is the building block for thyroid hormone. Tyrosine becomes iodinated very easily, and tyrosine residue is in every receptor researchers have ever studied. So we really need trace amounts of iodine in all of our hormone receptors for our hormones to work right.

SS:
So when you supplement iodine, how much do you give to a person on a daily basis?

ES:
You take a 50 mg dose. If your body needs it, you will latch on to that iodine, and it’s not going to come out in your urine. You can get an accurate reading from a iodine-loading test that will tell you if you are deficient and by how much. This test also measures the excretion of bromine, which is clogging up the iodine residue. You’ve got to get rid of the bromine and put iodine in. It takes a long time. It takes six months to a year to get rid of the buildup of all these other compounds and to get iodine back in your system. But people will start feeling better within days, weeks, or months of going on iodine supplementation.

SS:
Why are we feeling so bad? Why do we need to do all this?

ES:
It’s from our poor diets and the chemicals in the environment.

SS:
Are we living too long?

ES:
No, it’s not that we are living too long. We are living past our hormonal health. Hormones are the cornerstone to preserving age-related decline. I don’t think they reverse aging. They just make the landing a lot softer with more working parts.

Preserving age-related decline is not for everyone. It takes commitment. There are so many experts and so much misinformation that only a few people will ever really find their way to the doctors who are thinking this way. This is an evolving area of specialty. People ask me what I specialize in. I’m not an endocrinologist. I’m
not an internist. I’m a doctor interested in the endocrine changes of aging. That’s a separate health specialty that has never been designated.

How do you best take care of aging people with different drug demands and different physical and nutritional demands? Not to denigrate the specialty of geriatrics—it’s very important—but the geriatricians are really just modifying and helping people who have degenerative disease.

Those of us in the antiaging movement—the doctors who are coming to the surface and studying aging—will really have a chance at intervening at early enough stages to prevent many of the age-related declines and diseases.

SS:
What I love about you and the other doctors in this book is that you are excited about what you are doing.

ES:
I’m more excited now about what I do than ever before, and I am doing my best work because I have more tools at hand. But there is a learning curve. I find it fascinating that in the next seven years, the total knowledge that we have from the beginning of time to now will be doubled. That means that there is no specialist who can keep up with his or her own specialty.

There is no multispecialty doctor who can possibly keep up with all of the interactions that are going on in different parts of the body. The problem with traditional medicine as we know it is that the specialists are getting more specialized and focused and less integrated in their thinking. They are dealing only with the kidney or the heart or the brain, or they are neurologists or renal specialists or cardiologists. They do a great job focusing on their one organ, but they are missing the forest by focusing on the trees.

SS:
I agree.

ES:
The specialty of the antiaging community says that if we really do integrative medicine and start looking at all the systems of the unit, it becomes a total endocrine system integrated with the immune system, integrated with the cardiac system, circulatory system, and neurological system. They are all one system, but with different instruments in the symphony that all have to be tuned together to play the music properly.

SS:
Well put. And if people embrace this new medicine and take steps in their lives to replace declining hormones—focus on iodine, vitamin D, and functioning of the brain, eat right, avoid chemicals, and exercise—can they expect to live and die healthy?

ES:
I’ll tell you this: They’ll know in their heart of hearts that they are healthier. They will not want to go back to where they were. Would you want to go back to where you were?

SS:
Never. Wouldn’t consider it.

ES:
It’s a pervasive sense of health that you know intuitively. Unfortunately, so many sit and listen to the lady next to them at the hair salon who says estrogen causes cancer and all these horrible things, so she throws her hormones away. Or somebody else who says testosterone causes prostate cancer so that person immediately stops hormone replacement. These messages can come from a specialist or layperson, but one comment can destroy the confidence a person has towards moving in this area.

But once you experience the positive effects of this new medicine, when you get really fine-tuned on your hormones, you won’t ever give it up, because you’ll know intuitively that you are healthier. It’s not as though you are going to be healthy for a short time and then pay a horrible price with things exploding at the other end of the line.

The vast majority of studies show that with balanced hormone replacement, there is improvement in overall mortality. When those hormones are in their best balanced levels, you are your healthiest. Will you live longer? I think so, but I know for sure that you will certainly feel better while you are alive.

SS:
Well, let’s end it there. That’s fantastic. Thank you so much.

DR. SHIPPEN’S TOP FIVE ANTIAGING RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Four important antiaging supplements to include in your regimen are selenium, vitamin D
₃
, iodine, and a multivitamin/mineral supplement. Speak with your doctor about exact dosages for your situation.

2. Certain structures of the brain require adequate hormones, particularly progesterone and testosterone. Bioidentical hormone replacement can keep the brain young and healthy.

3. In men, estrogen and testosterone have to be measured. Some men are high in estrogen and low in testosterone, and some are low in both. High-estrogen men are at greater risk for stroke and heart attack.

4. Sex hormone binding globulin increases with age, resulting in a decreased concentration of free testosterone. Testosterone deficiency is likely to be a primary contributor to erectile dysfunction. Talk to your doctor about the connection, as there are some natural products to lower sex hormone binding globulin, and there are also drugs that will lower it.

5. In addition to bioidentical hormone replacement, the way to keep your hormones elevated is to eat real food, keep your weight in check, avoid sugar, stay active, and exercise. Being a winner will raise your testosterone levels. Winners, whether in sports, business, or personal life, get a buoyant surge of testosterone from being victorious.

CHAPTER 15
D
R
. J
OE
F
ILBECK:
M
EN AND THE
E
FFECTS
OF
A
GING

An eloquent and passionate proponent of antiaging medicine and its marvelous rejuvenating effects on the human body, Dr. Joe Filbeck works with men and women of all ages. His patients are profoundly changed by his approach to medicine. Dr. Filbeck has a biography pages long, with accomplishments including line officer in the U.S. Navy; BA and MA in psychology; MD of surgery at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena; anesthesiologist at L.A. County Hospital; medical director of Longevity Life Extension, West Lake Village, California; and medical director of the Palm La Jolla Medical Spa, San Diego, California, where he is currently seeing patients. His passion for antiaging medicine is infectious, as you will see in this interview
.

SS:
Good evening, Dr. Filbeck. I appreciate your time. I know you are very busy, but please tell me about your kind of medicine.

JF:
For twenty-five years, I was an anesthesiologist. About ten years ago, I decided to specialize in what I call “quality of life medicine” because I felt there was a gap between disease-based medicine and medicine that focused on optimizing health as a first line of defense against disease and degeneration. The gap is wide, too, since the methods and treatment are quite different from what traditional medicine would consider to be appropriate.

SS:
Do you find yourself at odds with other doctors who have not chosen to embrace antiaging medicine?

JF:
Yes, I do. Take me as an example. I’m sixty-nine years old. Let’s say I went to a urologist and had my testosterone levels checked but was not taking testosterone at the time. Suppose my results came back low but fit into the range for a man my age. The doctor would probably say to me, “There is no way under the sun you are going to get testosterone because it would put me at too great a risk for a malpractice lawsuit.”

However, at age sixty-nine I like to continue to fly my plane, sail my boat, chase my wife, and do all the wonderful things that I do because I have restored my testosterone levels to that of a gentleman who is probably thirty to thirty-five years younger. This is critical. I see changes like that which occur every single day, thanks to the presentation you made in your book
The Sexy Years
. That book didn’t affect just women; it drove a lot of men into my office as well—men who never really got introduced to the concept of bioidentical hormones for men until you included that information in your book.

SS:
Thank you very much. I know men are vitally interested, but they need a little prodding to go to the doctor about aging. Once they get there, they become wildly enthused.

JF:
Yes, men want to get their lives back. But here is the big problem: They go to their physician and are often dismissed as hypochondriacs or unqualified for the kind of treatment that you and I know is absolutely essential to improve the quality of life. That’s sad. On the other hand, I can happily say that 45 percent of my practice is composed of men. They are coming to me because they watch their buddies do so well in the gym, and they are impressed with that.

SS:
Do you ever find a wall with men who see testosterone replacement as an assault against their manhood, as in “I have no problem there”?

JF:
It’s a delicate balance, but a lot of my patients come in as couples. Thankfully, they are able to discuss their sex life with me quite openly, and as a rule, that gives me an opportunity to be able to address the issues that are important to them.

It’s also great for a couple to come in together because they can
act as advocates for each other. There is so much new information being thrown at them during an office visit or checkup. If one is sitting there with a notepad and writing everything down, it helps a lot. Now they are in this together. I talk to them about the opportunities and where I see their deficiencies, plus their strong points. They begin to see the possibilities. That usually puts an end to “manhood” issues.

While I am getting their hormones back in balance, I am able to offer them not only testosterone replacement, but also Viagra, which has opened up men’s eyes to a whole new world. It allows men in the second half of their lives to enjoy the same sexual satisfaction they had in their youth.