What applied to Michael Douglas in his role as Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street apparently also applies to many bankers, brokers, and fund managers in Manhattan: They are constantly under pressure in order to get successful deals done. Since the start of the financial crisis, this has become substantially more difficult than back then, which has an increasing health impact on financial managers. The rising lack of humor of supervisory authorities and prosecutors in terms of insider trading gives the Gordon Gekkos a hard time. It is therefore not surprising that they are trying to find remedies?
Recently, a friend of mine asked for my opinion on a report published in the Financial Times: Since the start of the financial crisis, bankers and brokers on Wall Street increasingly let themselves get treated with testosterone. In this way, they want to improve their self-confidence and self-assertion and escape from a crisis-related compulsory retirement due to low efficiency. Allegedly, the trend is already picked up by other medical centers in theUnited States. There are reports saying that commercials for testosterone therapies are even shown on television!
In the meantime, we know that hormones play an important role in stress perception, but most of all for our strength and endurance. The production of our endocrine glands and hormone levels decline with increasing age and also in times of stress. This results in well-known age-related symptoms, such as: performance decline, low resistance to stressful situations, burnout, loss of libido and frequently also impotence and overweight.
At approximately 40 years of age, most men are having a too low testosterone level. But, since the other hormone levels also decline, it is not only testosterone that should be substituted, but also all other important hormones (growth hormone, melatonin, cortisol, progesterone, etc.) in order to achieve a regenerative and rejuvenating effect. In hormonal therapies like Hormonal Regeneration® (Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy, BHRT) it is essential that bioidentical hormones are exclusively administered. Bioidentical hormones resemble the same chemical structure as our own hormones and are not foreign to the body.
Since the hormone levels of our body are cybernetically interconnected with each other, bioidentical hormone therapies should be prescribed and monitored by an experienced physician in order to avoid unintended consequences. Thus, excess fat tissue for instance, converts testosterone to undesirable estrogens, which is why testosterone replacement has to be planned differently in overweight people in comparison with normal weight individuals. In such cases, it is often helpful to perform a combination of hormone therapy, liposuction and a tailor-made training and diet plan in order to meet patients’ needs.
A Hormonal Regeneration® therapy usually lasts 3 or 6 months. Already shortly after therapy has begun, unpleasant internal and external signs of aging and stress symptoms start to disappear. Strength, endurance, performance, sexual charisma, libido, and potency increase, skin becomes firmer and even wrinkles disappear. Depending on the objectives, bioidentical hormone therapies can be repeated after some time upon patient’s request in times of high stress or as wellbeing treatment.
A monotherapy with testosterone is not recommendable for otherwise healthy men, since the supplement for a single age-related hormone deficiency leads to hormonal imbalance. This is particularly significant, if signs of aging are already visible that have nothing to do with testosterone: The treated individuals often look like senile bodybuilders. However, the result of a balanced hormonal regeneration should be that the patients treated look remarkably younger than their actual age. In addition, unpleasant side effects such as testicular shrinkage are to be expected when high amounts of testosterone are used as monotherapy. Therefore, please analyze all important hormones and supplement them!
Do you want to know another reason why a monotherapy using only testosterone would be hardly advisable to Wall Street bankers and brokers? Let’s think of Gordon Gekko: Testosterone does not only enhance endurance and strength, but also increases aggressive behavior, risk tolerance, egoism, and the tendency to break the law – according to my opinion, such characteristics seem to be undesirable in a global financial crisis.
DDr. Heinrich, MD