Doctor uses technology to help patients manage age
SANDRA GUY sguy@suntimes.com September 30, 2011 8:40PM
Dr. Mark Rosenbloom of Glencoe uses a DEXA body scanner to measure patients’ body fat, muscle and bone down to the molecular level.
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Updated: November 11, 2011 5:17PM
Does age management medicine work?
Janice Goldman Picker, a Buffalo Grove financial planner, thinks so. She is a happy newlywed at age 60.
“I met my husband when I was 57, and he is the love of my life,” says Picker, owner of an Ameriprise financial planning firm in Buffalo Grove.
With such a happily busy life, Picker said she sought ways to “be forever young,” as do most baby boomers.
“I want to have lots of energy, and keep up my diet, my attractiveness and my workouts,” said the West Rogers Park native who now lives in Glenview.
Picker found her answer at the Chicago Age Management Medicine Institute in Evanston (ChicagoAMM.com), a practice that Dr. Mark Rosenbloom of Glencoe started in February featuring a cutting-edge DEXA body scanner to measure patients’ body fat, muscle and bone down to the molecular level.
The results pinpoint health problems that checkups, MRIs and other tests may miss, and, combined with genetic, metabolic, blood forensics and other tests, identify abnormalities, said Dr. Rosenbloom, 58, a Northwestern University Medical School graduate and former Northwestern Memorial Hospital emergency-room physician whose early career was spent as a “life master” bridge player in his native Canada.
Age-management medicine has sparked controversy. Critic S. Jay Olshansky, a professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of The Quest for Immortality: Science at the Frontiers of Aging, said a statement on Rosenbloom’s website that the practice’s preventive medical approach is aimed at slowing down and even reversing the aging process is misleading because no one can reverse the aging process biologically.
Rosenbloom said the discussion is one of semantics and that his goal is to “get people feeling as good as possible as soon as possible.”
Seventeen years ago, Dr. Rosenbloom founded PEPID, an Evanston-based IT company that created software to enable the first disease-treatment database that doctors could access with a handheld device. The technology debuted on the Palm Pilot and provided doctors and nurses instant mobile access to disease diagnosis, treatment, dosing, and allergy and drug-interaction warnings. PEPID, with 35 employees, has evolved into an international company that supplies information for WebMD and content for professional medical journals.
A few years ago when Dr. Rosenbloom’s workouts weren’t proving as effective as before, he saw an ad for the Cenegenics Education and Research Foundation, extensively studied the field while he obtained certification in Age Management Medicine, and became convinced that the science backing the field was “fabulous.”
“It means reducing fat and building muscle — and that’s not necessarily about weight loss,” he said.
Picker, the financial planner, takes hormonal treatments and supplements to ease her inflammation, and follows a low-glycemic diet that the institute provides. Dr. Rosenbloom sends patients recipes and products he has found, ranging from low-carb-balanced protein bars to gluten-free bread he deems the world’s best.
His patients undergo an initial exam comprising in-home blood tests, a questionnaire, the body scan, consultations with a dietitian and exercise physiologist, tests for balance, flexibility, strength and oxygen consumption that measure heart and lung function, among others, and a one-on-one session with Dr. Rosenbloom. They take blood tests every three months to keep tabs on their cholesterol, blood levels, hormone levels and thyroid function, among other indicators.
The regimen, which no medical insurance covers, costs $2,995 for the testing, lab fees, supplements, prescription medicines, and diet, fitness and physician evaluations and training sessions, followed by a first month’s fee of $1,295, plus $995 each month thereafter.
Dr. Anna Cabeca, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Brunswick, Ga., who is certified by the American Board of Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine, said the bottom line is there’s no reason we cannot all age well if properly motivated.
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