The gym as a longevity clinic? How medically supervised services could reshape patient care
Industry Buzz
We only get one body. We need to always be wary of leaving it in the hands of someone who hasn't done the years of study it takes to be qualified.
—Ayana Taylor, MD
There is increased risk of this if staff is not well trained and if there is a lack of knowledge of safety regarding these devices.
—Caitlyn Mooney, MD
Longevity clinics could be coming to a gym near you. But are they reputable?
Serotonin Centers has recently launched a program that claims to bring “medically-supervised longevity services” inside fitness centers across the country.[]
Among the promised services on offer are peptide therapies, hormone optimization, medical weight loss including GLP-1, NAD+ optimization, IV therapy, metabolic support, red light therapy, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
Marketing materials for Serotonin Centers do not specify what qualifications providers must have to operate the services.
Ayana Taylor, MD, a Sports Medicine Fellow at Banner Sports Medicine, has mixed feelings about the program.
“When it comes to providing longevity services in a gym, assuming there are qualified practitioners seeing these patients, who are able to provide regular follow-up, there is potential for safer administration of wellness products to an interested population more likely to engage in harmful self-diagnosis and treatment. This is especially true if the medically qualified consultant provides education, follow-up, and emergency precautions,” she says.
But she has concerns about some of the services on offer that may lack evidence-based research.
"Prescribing incompletely researched treatments brings into question three of the four principles of medical ethics: beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice," Dr Taylor says.
“How can we be sure we are practicing nonmaleficence if we cannot prove these treatments will not cause long-term harm with use in humans?” she argues. “Is it true beneficence to provide these types of treatments, with a paucity of human research, in a setting that promotes mobility, strength, and movement, habits that have proven to actually reduce human morbidity and mortality? Are we practicing justice when we use medical resources in this way and promise patients wellness and longevity, when those claims cannot be adequately supported in medical literature? Especially in a gym setting, where there is an increased incentive to sell products patients may not actually benefit from?”
Caitlyn Mooney, MD, is a sports medicine physician at Vanderbilt University. She cautions that some of the services on offer in fitness centers have the potential to go wrong if not properly administered by a healthcare professional.
“Some of these locations will likely lack medical supervision on site. We have seen deaths from IV fluid therapy, as this can happen with contamination or if the wrong IV fluid is used. Additionally, hyperbaric oxygen chambers require diligent maintenance. There have been cases of deadly flash fires in this setting. There is increased risk of this if staff is not well trained and if there is a lack of knowledge of safety regarding these devices,” she said.
‘Longevity’—a buzz word?
Longevity is a hot topic, and Serotonin Centers is the latest to jump on the bandwagon.
Dr. Taylor acknowledges the trend. "’Longevity services’ is a very popular buzz phrase, with increasing trendiness in social media,” she says, and she also says she understands “the sentiment of living long and healthy lives, something I've trained for years to help others do.”
But Dr. Taylor is concerned that, in recent years, the concept has taken on a new meaning that may be unrealistic.
“I worry that our current trend toward optimization is causing us to prefer quick and easy fixes over the tedious lifestyle changes that decades of research have shown effective," Dr. Taylor adds.
“That doesn't mean some patients don't benefit or even require hormone replacement, medical weight loss, and blood sugar management,” she went on to say. “Medicine is certainly an art that requires nuance and individualization, as every patient is not the same. However, the incompletely researched peptides that are gaining increasing popularity may not be adding the value we hope for.”
Patients could be at risk
Serotonin Centers did not respond to enquiries from MDLinx regarding their longevity suites program, and MDLinx was unable to verify the qualifications required to provide services as part of the program.
Dr. Taylor says if services are provided from a person without adequate medical training, patients may be at risk.
“We only get one body. We need to always be wary of leaving it in the hands of someone who hasn't done the years of study it takes to be qualified," she says.
"If the provider is not qualified to perform ACLS in the setting of a cardiac arrest due to a metabolic imbalance, if they cannot assess patients with increased risk of hypoglycemia with use of GLP-1 and inform them accordingly, if they cannot reconcile the drug interactions between the treatments they are recommending and the patient's current medications, they are placing patients at significant risk," Dr. Taylor adds. "This should be incredibly concerning.”