10 Questions

Populations in countries throughout Europe are progressively getting older, raising fears of the financial burden this aging generation will place on the state. But aging does not necessarily have to raise health bills, according to Dr. Monika Golková, a neurologist and the country’s leading advocate of anti-aging medicine, a new and sometimes controversial medical field. Golková, who founded and runs a private clinic focused on anti-aging, talks to The Prague Post about food intolerance, the state’s lack of support for preventative medicine and how long she expects to live.➊ Anti-aging care is a relatively new medical field. Can you give me an example of treatments that fall within its bounds? Anti-aging focuses on optimizing quality of life, promoting physical and mental health, improving longevity by slowing senescence and reversing age-related diseases.For example, we have a food intolerance test. People who display high levels of Immunoglobulin G (IgG) may have certain foods that their bodies do not tolerate well. Removing this food from a diet would improve the health of a large number of people with digestive, respiratory or joint problems. It can also solve issues with obesity, fatigue, depression and migraines. We also offer “bio-aging,” where we test the biological age of your inner organs, since you’re as old as the oldest part in your body. And we have genetic testing, where we analyze your DNA and tailor individualized preventive treatment to it, which could help you avoid cancer or cardiovascular disease in the future. ➋ It’s been said that anti-aging medicine looks to treat aging as a disease. How can a natural process be considered a disease? First of all, we don’t look at aging as a disease. It’s normal that everybody and everything in nature gets older. We cannot treat the process of aging but we can effectively prevent age-related disease and improve quality of life even into very old age. Our medicine is not only about prolonging the human lifespan but also about total aging management — achieving active, physical, mental and inner health into old age. ➌ Tell me about the demographics of your clients. Do people sign up for treatment to gain an edge in the workplace? You’re right. Anti-aging does give them an edge in the workplace. We call it the “edge effect.” Our clients are both men and women, young and old, from 4 years old to 85 years old — anyone who cares about his or her health and needs to be effective and active in their lives. ➍ You talk about extending life spans, but will the quality of living extend with it, or can people look forward to spending more time in nursing homes? The main target of anti-aging medicine is absolutely quality of life with a longer lifespan. But it depends on all of us, because prevention is the key to continued good health. ➎ How well is the government doing in supporting preventive medicine, which, like anti-aging, is focused on treating the causes of illness? Anti-aging medicine is the most modern form of preventive medicine. And it’s becoming more and more focused on prevention because the health care system does not encourage typical people to avoid sickness. The contemporary system still promotes medicine that focuses on after-the-fact treatment of disease. ➏ Can anti-aging medicine help mitigate the financial cost of aging populations? It is widely known that prevention is less expensive than disease treatment and spending on nursing homes. That’s why anti-aging medicine was founded in the United States 15 years ago. Rather than saddling people with incurable diseases, we can diagnose who’s prone to these diseases and effectively prevent the illness and their expensive treatments. ➐ A2C offers hormone replacement therapy, which is targeted at patients with deficiencies in hormones like estrogen or testosterone. Except for use in menopause, the effectiveness of these therapies has been questioned by some medical authorities. How useful are these treatments? We offer “bio-identical” hormone replacement therapy. That means we use natural hormones, like progesterone, testosterone and estrogen. These hormones have the same molecules as our bodies and interact best with our systems. Chemical hormones have different molecules, like medroxyprogesterone, and more side effects. Blood testing before the treatment is obligatory and we prepare the hormone replacement based on results from the client’s blood. If there is any hormonal deficiency that’s impairing their quality of life or causing health problems, hormone replacement is the indicated treatment. ➑ You also offer chelation therapy, which uses chemicals to remove heavy metals from the body. Some studies have found this therapy no more effective than placebos in preventing heart disease. Why do you offer it?Chelation therapy represents a safe, effective and relatively inexpensive treatment to restore blood flow through atherosclerotic [thickened] blood vessels. The heart-related conditions currently treatable with chelation therapy include atherosclerosis, angina pectoris, hypertension and type II diabetes. [She cites Walker, 1990 and Powell et al., 1999—editor.]Some other studies have shown no benefit from the therapy. Chelation supporters refer to [some of these] reports as sham science, citing statistical errors and patient disparities as compromising factors. The U.S. Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute have launched the first large-scale clinical trial to determine the safety and efficacy of chelation therapy in individuals with coronary artery disease. Plans for the five-year study, which will involve over 2,300 patients at more than 100 research sites across the U.S., are currently being finalized. ➒ How much do your treatments require patients to sacrifice their day-to-day joys for the payoff of adding a few years to the end of their life? We advise people on proper lifestyles, finding balance and optimal living customs. For a simple example, if you sacrifice your smoking habit, you can avoid an illness like lung cancer. Or there are smaller sacrifices. If you eat only a small piece of chocolate for your pleasure instead of a whole package every day, then you’ll have more energy and nicer skin. The list goes on. ➓ How long do you think you yourself and children born today will live? Without any serious age-related disease, the human lifespan is estimated to be about 120 years. The oldest human ever — Jean Calmet in France — lived to be 122 years old. We expect children born today will live to at least about 100 years old and more. Myself, I expect to live to 97 years or more.

Source:www.praguepost.com