The Cenegenics program is based on hormone optimization, nutraceutical supplementation, exercise, and a balanced low glycemic diet.

The author of the article below thinks that aging is all hormonally related.

He's just figuring this out? His idea? - Cenegenics has been treating patients with hormone optimization for the last 13 years.

What makes you feel old? Studying aging at Scripps Florida

By By Eric Sauter for the Scripps Research Institute

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Roy Smith says aging is "all hormonally related."

The head of Scripps Florida's Department of Metabolism and Aging says "there are the good hormones — testosterone, estrogen, growth hormones, and there are the bad hormones — cortisol, stress hormones, inflammatory cytokines. My idea is to find a way to replace the good hormones depleted by aging in a physiological way."

Stress hormones, for example, are substances set loose in times of anxiety. When you're young, they get shut off quickly once the stress recedes. But as you age, the feedback pathways get sluggish and the bad hormones tend to hang around. Not good.

Smith's basic thesis is that if we could understand how to restore our body's hormonal patterns to what they were when we were young adults, then we might really have something worthwhile. There is ample scientific evidence that this is the right approach, he argues. If you transplant young tissue into older animals, you restore the older tissue. Young cells implanted in old brains will establish links to other parts of the brain and restore lost neuronal function.

"What this tells you is that there are circulating factors that can help reprogram tissues," said Smith, 66. "The animal work on this is very encouraging.'"

At Merck, where he was a senior director, then vice president for basic research for 11 years, in collaboration with medicinal chemists Smith developed a small molecule, named MK-0677, that increased the amplitude of episodic growth hormone release.

Smith and his colleagues closely monitored the impact of MK-0677 on a population of frail, elderly patients.

According to Smith, "The results of this study were quite encouraging, as these subjects exhibited modest improvements in strength at the large muscle groups of the knees and shoulders. Meanwhile, their placebo-matched cohorts continued to decline at the normal physiologic rate. Likewise, the MK-0677-treated subjects showed increases in lean-body mass and decreased fat deposition."

Although Merck placed the project on hold, Smith continued to pursue the research at Baylor College of Medicine's Huffington Center on Aging, which he joined as director in 1998.

'A great combination here'

At Scripps Florida, Smith's department will initially have 12 faculty members plus laboratory staff, which will mean a department of somewhere between 120 and 150 people.

"It's very exciting because this is the beginning of a unique science campus, with the Max Planck institute next door," he said. "We have a great combination here — the ability to do high-volume screening, the chemistry support, and the close collaborations with Scripps in La Jolla. The focus of the campus is very timely, considering the NIH is focused more and more on taking discoveries in basic science and carrying them through to the clinic."

Smith's focus will be on metabolic diseases such as diabetes and obesity; as well as prevention of age-dependent functional decline caused by loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength, osteoarthritis, stroke, and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

"We're taking more of a preventive approach," he said. "We have some good leads and are looking at how to actively develop them."