Turning Back the clock: the anti-ageing boom

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
7.30 program
Broadcast: 14/07/2010
Reporter: Deborah Cornwall

As the first wave of baby boomers enter official retirement age, the demand for anti-ageing medicines continues to grow. Yet despite promising everything from an improved sex life to eternal wellness, there is little evidence these treatments actually work.

Transcript

TRACY BOWDEN, PRESENTER: With the first wave of baby boomers already into official retirement age there’s been a steady growth in demand for so called anti-ageing medicines that promise to turn back the clock - or at least hit the pause button - on some of the indignities of ageing.

Next month Melbourne will host the country's fourth conference on anti-ageing medicine showcasing a whole welter of therapies now being pitched to the so called 'worried well’, from vitamin supplements to growth hormone treatments

Despite some of the more extravagant promises - like a revived sex life or eternal wellness - so far there’s little hard evidence any of these therapies actually work.

But it's perhaps not surprising that the generation which rewrote the rules in the 60s and 70s is now hoping to cheat old age.

Deborah Cornwall reports

KATE MARIE: I woke up at 40, I saw the door of youth go slam. I lost my libido, I will libido was key, I looked like s**t. I wasn't sort of energetic like I used to be so I thought I need to do something about it.

DEBORAH CORNWALL: 47 year old Kate Marie was an early starter in her quest for a kinder, sexier old age.

KATE MARIE: Sex has been a driver for me, like a lot of people, maybe they don't talk about it. I'm young, not a cougar that's going racing around trying to find a younger man for the sake of it. But I have ended up with relationships that were much younger and it's been beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

DEBORAH CORNWALL: A former nurse turned marketing consultant, Kate Marie swears by her daily cocktail of vitamins and hormones.

Backed up by a punishing regime of exercise and diet and the occasional cosmetic procedure.
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