An impassioned but unconvincing argument for a medical treatment.
A urologist proposes a new approach to treating aging in women.
In this follow-up to Ageless Man (2017), Debled theorizes that many of the negative symptoms that are associated with aging and menopause in women can be attributed to a decline in testosterone production. The book reviews clinical evidence for such a decrease in testosterone and other hormones, and it goes on to draw connections between lower hormone levels and symptoms generally associated with menopause and aging, including muscle loss, Type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Debled discusses each symptom in detail and talks about how it may be the result of androgen deficiency. As the book addresses existing research, it also makes suggestions for new areas of study with a focus on androgenic hormones in women. Debled concludes that the aforementioned physical conditions, which he calls the “androgenic diseases of menopause,” can be best treated with mesterolone supplements, though he acknowledges that mesterolone is not approved for use in the United States. He also discusses ways in which standard hormone replacement therapy, with its focus on estrogen and progesterone, is harmful. Over the course of this book, Debled presents a thought-provoking interpretation of clinical evidence that runs counter to accepted scientific practice. However, he doesn’t make a convincing case for his fundamental upending of conventional wisdom. Readers who are inclined to treat women’s aging as a natural process are sure to find the author’s perspective challenging. Throughout, Debled treats the symptoms of aging as extremely negative (“If you are over forty, don’t you believe yourself to be sick?”). In particular, he presents them as distasteful from an aesthetic perspective; his descriptions of older women (“Old, frustrated obese women often deploy ingenuity and diet-program calculations, generally without result”) are extremely unflattering. In addition, the book’s description of women’s sex organs as their “male genitalia,” because they respond to androgens, isn’t linguistically or conceptually standard.
The goal of the author’s method of treatment is the elimination of aging (“mature human beings will no longer know the inexorable decrepitude that leads to death at around age eighty”). To that end, Debled generally does a good job of explaining physiology in chapters detailing conditions associated with getting older and how they may be connected to decreases in hormone production. In the book’s conclusion, he links his advocacy of mesterolone treatment to an episode in his past, when his approach to treating impotence resulted in the end of his teaching career and his establishment of a private clinic. The observations and recommendations in this book are based on the author’s work there, which includes the use of mesterolone. The book does include research citations, although readers should be advised that many of the papers are in French and refer to Debled’s own work. The book is enthusiastic about reevaluating the aging process, but it does not provide enough evidence to persuade readers to try the treatment that it endorses, which isn’t approved by U.S. government regulators.
An impassioned but unconvincing argument for a medical treatment.Pub Date: June 29, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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