To repair the outrage of the years, to delay the agingIt is the oldest dream of Man...and the obsession of women. Hence the high hopes raised by the discoveries of the anti-aging hormone, DHEA, hopes that have now been dashed.

That's according to a recent Mayo Clinic study in the New England Journal of Medicine. Discovered by Professor Etienne Emile Beaulieu, this hormone that we all have is produced by two glands located above the kidneys, the adrenals. What alerted the researcher was that with age the level of the hormone in the body decreases. In fact, from the age of 30, the production curve follows the physiological aging.

Studies have shown that longevity in healthy primates and humans is associated with high levels of DHEA. Hence the logical idea at the outset: if we maintain DHEA at the level of our 20s throughout our lives, our organs will not age. To verify this idea, experiments were conducted on rodents, which have almost no DHEA. The result was that the administration of the hormone did have beneficial effects on certain aging parameters. Hope was there.

And very quickly the sale of this hormone on the Internet exploded. Faced with this uncontrolled market, the health authorities were concerned and pointed out the lack of scientific proof of the effectiveness of DHEA and especially its potential risks with the appearance or aggravation of certain hormone-dependent cancers and increased cardiovascular risk. A new study was conducted over two years in people over 60 years old, men and women; as in any scientific study, a group of volunteers took either the hormone or a placebo, a fake drug.

First finding: all those who had taken the real drug returned to hormone levels identical to young adults. Unfortunately, there were no differences in clinical outcomes between those who took DHEA and placebo. The quality of life evaluation criteria have not changed at all.

For the authors, it is clear that taking DHEA to keep from aging serves no purpose other than to stimulate cell divisions and precipitate the mitotic depletion of our genetic heritage (each cell divides 70 times in a lifetime) with accelerated aging and often cancer as a result.

Not since Dr. Faustus, who made a pact with the devil, has there been a method of approaching eternity.