Anti-Aging Treatments

What Anti-Aging Medicine Actually Means Here

The single largest influence on how well you age is not a prescription. It is the accumulation of cardiovascular risk, insulin resistance, sarcopenia (age-related muscle loss), poor sleep, and untreated depression or anxiety. These are unglamorous, they are measurable, and they respond to intervention. Any clinic that skips past them to sell you an injection is selling you the wrong thing first.

So a plan at AMI begins with the foundation and adds therapy on top of it, not instead of it. Where a therapy has a clear evidence base and a clear indication, we use it. Where it does not, we say so.

The elements we assess in nearly every patient:

• Blood pressure, lipid panel, and cardiovascular risk
• Fasting glucose, insulin, and hemoglobin A1c
• Thyroid function, and sex hormones where symptoms warrant testing
• Vitamin D, B12, iron studies, and kidney and liver function
• Body composition, strength, and current activity
• Sleep quality, alcohol use, mood, and stress
• A full review of your medications and supplements, including anything you buy online

Hormones: Where the Evidence Is Strong and Where It Is Not

Hormone therapy is the part of anti-aging medicine with the most real data behind it — and the most confused marketing around it.

For women, hormone therapy remains an effective treatment for moderate to severe hot flashes and night sweats, and the benefit-to-risk balance is generally more favorable for women who begin near menopause rather than many years after it. Important clarification: several FDA-approved products, including estradiol and micronized progesterone, are already bioidentical in molecular structure. "Bioidentical" and "compounded" are not the same thing. The 2020 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine review of compounded bioidentical hormone therapy concluded that prescribers should restrict the use of non-FDA-approved compounded preparations to specific circumstances, and found insufficient evidence to support claims that compounded versions are safer than approved ones. We follow that: an FDA-approved product first, a compounded preparation only when there is a documented reason — an allergy to an excipient, or a dose or route that is not commercially made.

For men, FDA-approved testosterone products are labeled for hypogonadism associated with a medical condition, not for the gradual decline that accompanies normal aging. Diagnosis requires symptoms plus confirmed low morning testosterone on repeat testing, because a single low result is often not reproducible. Treatment carries real considerations — effects on fertility and sperm production, red blood cell count, and prostate monitoring — that we go through before you start rather than after.

We do not offer human growth hormone for anti-aging purposes. It is not an FDA-approved use, and federal law restricts its distribution to approved indications.

Regenerative and Wave-Based Therapies: An Honest Assessment

Patients ask us about stem cells, exosomes, and acoustic wave therapy more than any other category, usually because of something they read online. Here is our plain reading of where those stand in 2026.

Acoustic sound wave therapy, marketed under brand names including GAINSWave, is not FDA-approved for erectile dysfunction. The American Urological Association's erectile dysfunction guideline states that low-intensity extracorporeal shock wave therapy should be considered investigational, a conditional recommendation supported by Grade C (low-certainty) evidence. Published trials have been small, methods have varied widely, follow-up has often been short, and some have lacked adequate sham controls. That is not the same as saying it does not work — it is saying the evidence is not yet strong enough to promise that it will. If you pursue it, you should do so understanding that it is elective, self-pay, and unproven, and we will not tell you otherwise to close a sale.

Stem cell and exosome products sit in a similar position, with an added regulatory point worth knowing. The FDA's consumer guidance on regenerative medicine therapies notes that the only approved stem cell products are blood-forming stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood, used for disorders of blood production. Products marketed for joints, neurological conditions, or general rejuvenation are not FDA-approved, and the agency has documented serious adverse events, including infections, in patients who received unapproved preparations. Registration on a clinical trial registry does not equal FDA approval.

Compounded peptides are a related caution. Several substances widely advertised for anti-aging have not been evaluated by the FDA for this use, and some have been flagged in the agency's review of bulk drug substances for compounding as raising safety questions. Be skeptical of anything sold without a prescriber, a diagnosis, and follow-up.

Are You a Candidate?

Candidacy depends on what is actually driving your symptoms, which is why we test before we treat. Patients we commonly help include adults with documented hormone deficiency, men and women with persistent fatigue or low libido that has not been explained elsewhere, women with disruptive menopausal symptoms, and people whose metabolic markers are worsening year over year.

Some situations call for a different path. Hormone therapy is generally not appropriate for people with active or recent hormone-sensitive cancer, unexplained vaginal bleeding, active liver disease, a recent cardiovascular event, or a history of certain blood clots. Testosterone is generally deferred for men actively trying to conceive, and for untreated severe sleep apnea or elevated red blood cell counts. Pregnancy and breastfeeding rule out most of what is described on this page.

If your evaluation points somewhere else — a cardiology referral, a sleep study, a mental health referral, or simply better management of an existing condition — that is what we will recommend. It is a reasonable and fairly common outcome of a first visit.

What to Expect, Step by Step

Your first visit runs longer than a typical office appointment. Expect a detailed history, a physical examination, and a lab order. Bring a current medication list, any recent labs from other physicians, and the specific symptoms that brought you in — described concretely, not as a diagnosis you have already given yourself.

Labs are usually drawn before or at that visit, with hormone testing timed appropriately (morning draws for testosterone, cycle timing where relevant). You return to review results with your physician, and that is the visit where a treatment decision gets made. If something is prescribed, we go through how it is taken, what side effects to watch for, what we will recheck, and when.

Early follow-up typically falls within the first several weeks to a few months, depending on the therapy, with repeat labs and a symptom review. After that, monitoring settles into a regular interval. Improvement in energy, sleep, mood, or libido is usually gradual rather than sudden, and varies considerably between individuals. Averages reported in clinical trials describe groups, not predictions for you.

Safety, Monitoring, and How This Fits With Our Other Services

Ongoing monitoring is not an upsell — it is the condition under which these therapies are reasonably prescribed. For testosterone that means periodic hematocrit, testosterone levels, and age-appropriate prostate surveillance. For estrogen and progesterone therapy it means attention to bleeding, breast health, and cardiovascular and clot risk, reassessed over time rather than set once. We reduce or stop therapy when the reason for it no longer holds. Tell us promptly about chest pain, shortness of breath, leg swelling or pain, severe headache, vision changes, or unexplained bleeding.

Anti-aging care at AMI overlaps with several of our other programs, and many patients end up combining two or three. Related pages on this site:

• Hormone therapy: /services/bioidentical-hormone-replacement-therapy, /services/hormone-replacement-therapy, /services/low-testosterone-treatments
• Menopause symptoms: /services/menopause-treatment, /services/hot-flashes-treatment
• Metabolic and weight care: /services/weight-loss-atlanta-ga, /services/obesity-treatment
• Joint pain and regenerative options: /services/arthritis-treatment, /services/stem-cells-exosomes-therapy
• Men's sexual health: /services/erectile-enhancement-ed, /services/gainswave, /services/acoustic-sound-wave-therapy
• Meet the physicians: /about/dr-elbridge-bills, /about/dr-jeff-semel, /about/dr-leslye-pace