Would you like to be able to jump out of bed, play tennis with your grandchildren, or have the best sex of your life? Antiaging doctors say they've finally found the secret. heir go-to treatments are steroids, human growth hormone and bioidentical hormones, which they believe offer a natural way to regain youth. Many aging Americans believe it too, which is why the antiaging business has boomed into an $88 billion industry.

But mainstream scientific researchers say these treatments are unproven and may raise the risk of cancer and other diseases. And watchdog groups accuse antiaging doctors of promoting dangerous treatments without warning patients of potential risks.
Arlene Weintraub, who spent 10 years as a science reporter at Business Week, first wrote about antiaging in 2006. Her new book, Selling the Fountain of Youth: How the Anti-Aging Industry Made a Disease Out of Getting Old — And Made Billions, takes readers behind the scenes at the aging clinics, compounding pharmacies and for-profit businesses that are working to legitimize antiaging medicine. (Read an excerpt from Selling the Fountain of Youth.) Prepare to be scared — and challenged — by what she discovered.

Q. What started the modern antiaging movement?

A. In 1990, scientist Daniel Rudman published a sensational study. He gave human growth hormone (HGH) to about a dozen healthy men over 60. They significantly increased their lean body mass, including muscle, and they lost about 14 percent of their fat.

Q. How did we get from a single splashy study to an entirely new industry?

A. A small group of doctors latched on to the idea that if you replace your hormone levels to where they were in your 30s, you'll feel as great as you did back then. Rudman's study inspired the formation of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine and has been cited on the Web something like 50,000 times.