His death of a heart attack while jogging at age 52 stunned the country.
The verdict: Fixx got Americans running. His passion, book and story helped launch a running industry that gave rise to shoe stores and magazines devoted entirely to running. He had inherited a congenital risk for heart disease, which even running couldn't cure. Some say that if he hadn't been a runner, he would have died even younger.
Durk Pearson (1943 - **)
and Sandy Shaw (1943 -**)
This husband and wife team were among the first to popularize the notion that it is possible to extend life with supplementation. They used their science backgrounds -- Shaw has a chemistry degree from UCLA, and Pearson has a degree in physics from MIT -- to study aging, then began recommending vitamins and supplements to combat age-related disabilities and illnesses.
Today they are the primary formulators of supplements for Life Extension Products, a company based in Petaluma, Calif. They also write the Life Extension Newsletter, available online with their supplements at www.life-enhancement.com. They built a profitable empire, wrote a couple of books, and fell from public view. They now live in central Nevada.
The verdict: While many people still place a lot of faith in supplements, "No single vitamin or mineral that has undergone a well-designed clinical trial has ever shown any effectiveness," Ordovas says. None has proved to extend life. Not even vitamin D, calcium and fish oil, which many doctors still believe are beneficial. You need vitamins and minerals in context. You need them to come from foods that contain those nutrients -- not pills.
"All people who buy these vitamins and supplements wind up with is very expensive urine," Olshansky says. "Pearson and Shaw have aged like everyone else," he adds, "and don't look any better than a lot of people their age."
Alan Mintz
1938-2007
A controversial proponent of using human growth hormone to combat aging, Dr. Alan Mintz founded Cenegenics Medical Institute, a Las Vegas-based clinic, with satellites around the world, that promotes injecting human growth hormone as an anti-aging therapy. Himself a user of human growth hormone, he often showed off his ripped physique as evidence of the benefits. He died at age 69 from complications of a brain biopsy. The verdict: "HGH is a dangerous idea," says Laurence Rubenstein, a geriatrician at UCLA Medical Center. "It may make your muscles bigger, but it brings with it other serious problems." Growth hormones can improve certain aspects of the aging body, such as skin elasticity, muscle mass and bone density, but it makes diabetes and vascular disease worse and can encourage cancer cells to grow. (Brain cancer seems to be a particular risk.) The same benefits can be had via diet and exercise, without the considerable dangers.
