The death of Grichka Bogdanoff raises questions about his impressive physical transformations: did he suffer from gigantism or did he practice cosmetic surgery?
- Also known as “gigantism”, acromegaly is a rare condition that affects one in 25,000 people.
- As its evolution is slow and the signs not very specific, acromegaly is often diagnosed very late.
Grichka Bogdanoff, best known for having hosted the science fiction show “Temps X” with his twin brother Igor, died of Covid-19 on Tuesday December 28 in Paris, at the age of 72. “Surrounded by the love of his family and loved ones, Grichka Bogdanoff died peacefully to join his stars”, his family wrote in a statement sent by his agent. “He was not vaccinated”, for his part explained to RMC his lawyer Me Edouard de Lamaze.
Grichka and Igor Bogdanoff have fascinated crowds for many years, especially because of their amazing physical evolution. So much so that the journalist Maud Guillaumin returns to it in her book The Bogdanoff Mystery (Edition l’Archipel).
A rare hormonal disorder
While many people think the Bogdanoff brothers suffered acromegaly, a rare hormonal disorder responsible for an abnormal increase in the size of the feet, hands and deformity of the face, it is not so. In The Bogdanoff MysteryDoctor Christophe de Jaeger, a relative of the twins interviewed by the author, bluntly denies this information.
Especially since this disease most often occurs between the ages of 30 and 40, while the famous twins began their metamorphosis around the age of fifty. So much the better for them, we can therefore say to ourselves, acromegaly being a very dangerous disease, beyond the physical inconvenience it causes.
“A very complicated relationship with the idea of aging”
“I never tried to find out what it was. (…) they are looking for a form of eternal youth. And since it is impossible to rejuvenate without changing, their metamorphosis is straightforward […] People prefer to think of an illness than a deliberate decision. But it’s wrong !”, explains the editor Jean-Paul Enthoven, another close friend of the Bogdanoffs to Maud Guillaumin. And their sister to add: they “obviously have a very complicated relationship with the idea of aging, with death.”
Thus, although Igor and Grichka themselves liked to speak of “experiments” to evoke their progressive physical transformations, cosmetic surgery remains the most plausible explanation.
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