30 Days Part Deux

I just saw the second episode of 30 Days. In this one, a fairly young man tries to recapture the body he had when he was on the high school swimming team. In the intervening time he had not been exercising much and had gained weight and felt tired.

He was given a replacement therapy of testosterone and Human Growth Hormone (His counts were low). He was also assigned a personal trainer.

Three weeks into it he started showing problems with his liver and sperm count. His wife had a fit and started berating him about how they would never have any kids because he had done this (she must have meant "any more kids" since the had two already).

This was Spurlock's cue to splice in a bit about abuse of steroids among high school athletes. He gave the clear impression that replacement therapy under a doctor's supervision was the same as abuse by high school kids.

The segment ended with the subjects making statements about the body being a temple and no place to experiment. Spurlock ended with some homilies about growing old gracefully.

As expected, the entire episode was structured around a planned outcome - it's wrong to fight age. The choice of a 32-year-old trying to be 18 was bizarre. You are not fully grown at 18. You continue to gain muscle tone and mass for a few years past that age. An adult cannot turn back into a teenager.

Also, he was working out regularly when he was a teen - something he no longer did.

A more realistic choice would be a 50-year-old trying to feel like a 30-year-old.

There were some statements about the drugs being a shortcut. From what I heard on the show, his levels were lower than normal for a man his age. This would constitute a treatable medical condition.

But Spurlock never let the truth get in the way of a good rant. Here's a woman who lived on Spurlock's McDonalds diet and lost weight. How - she quit eating when she got full.

Next week someone who knows nothing about Islam becomes a Muslim for a month. The message will be that Moslems are the true victims of 9/11.