He looks 42, but he is actually 51. The youthful-looking German pharmacist leads a lifestyle that includes daily sports and relaxation exercises coupled with a regular intake of vitamin-rich drinks which he has devised himself.
In contrast to the pharmacist, a 65-year-old smoker already looks closer to 71.
Both men underwent age scans at a recently founded anti-ageing institute that is affiliated to the private Euromed Clinic in Fuerth, a city near Nuremberg, in southern Germany.
The Prevent-Age Institute opened up in June offering preventive healthcare services to clients wanting to wind back their biological clock – at least by a few years.
The institute offers to give clients an age scan that reveals their “true” age and tells them what to do to slow down the ageing process. The idea is to teach them anti-ageing methods to make their biological clock tick slower.
“Our institute is used by healthy clients who want to become even fitter,” says gynaecologist Bernd Kleine-Gunk, who heads the institute together with urology professors Thomas Ebert and Bernd Schmitz-Draeger.
The patients are tested for 12 so-called biomarkers to evaluate their reactions, hearing, sight, sense of touch, lung capacity and memory. The computer-based analysis was “standardized” in the United States, based on the outcome of tests carried out on 2,800 people.
Doctors also measure bone density, hormone levels and the body’s makeup of water, fat and muscles.
Doctors say that with the appropriate measures the biological clock can be wound back by up to 10 years.
However, anti-wrinkle creams made out of animal placentas and injections of fetal animal cells are out as successful means to slow the ageing process.
Instead doctors advise their patients to adopt a healthy lifestyle and take hormones in the battle against wrinkles, loss of hair and memory and a declining general fitness.
Sexual hormones do not only counter the effects of menopause, says Kleine-Gunk. They also had a rejuvenating effect on both men and women. Other hormones, including growth hormones, also play a key role in the ageing process, he says.
The body generates high levels of growth hormones between the age of 25 and 30 when production declines rapidly.
“The question is if the hormone output drops because of the ageing process or whether one ages because the hormone production drops,” says Kleine-Gunk.
A key factor in the ageing process, he says, is the damage done to the body’s cells by so-called free radicals. Free radical have the ability to oxidize neighbouring cells and create abnormal changes in the genetic material and other important parts of the cell.
A diet rich in vegetables and fruit containing high levels of vitamin that act as so-called anti-oxidants, however, can render the aggressive molecules harmless.
Most clients frequenting the new anti-ageing institute come from the well-heeled walks of life. Managers and “people who are constantly on the fast lane” make up the core of the clients.
He says statistically members from this group already had a higher life expectancy even though so they are exposed to a high level of stress at work.
“Most people from the upper class have a health-conscious lifestyle,” he says. Smoking and obesity are increasingly associated with the working class, he says.
Most doctors agree that the maximum human life expectancy is about 125 years and that it cannot be extended.
Even the new genetic technology could not stop the ageing process since a cell’s division capacity is limited, making it inevitable that wear and tear will set as time goes on.
But medical progress makes the ageing more agreeable, says Kleine- Gunk. “Anti-ageing is not only meant to prolong life but also to make life better in the years to come,” says Kleine-Gunk, summing up the goal of his institute.
