The 10% Club

A very wise man once sang, "It's only life, it's really fine, so don't believe all you read in the headlines". Nothing can be truer than that when you are reading all the conflicting statements about male menopause. More and more discoveries and information lead to the conclusion that yes, there is a male menopause, but (and here's the tricky part), it is much different from your lady's menopause.

Before I go any farther, I would like to cast my vote for the term Andropause. "Male Menopause" sounds tentative and a bit icky doesn't it? "Andropause" sounds a bit sleek and futuristic, and since I'm the one at the keyboard, Andropause it is.

Back to the menopause we're all much more familiar with, that is, a lady's kind. This is a quite well defined period in a woman's life when the main female hormone, estrogen, takes a great big dive and hot flashes, changes in body and emotion takes place, and as a grande finale, periods get rarer, and then cease. After the periods stop and the hormones have a chance to right themselves, symptoms ease, and a new phase of life begins.

It's a pretty sure bet that nearly everyone who has lived with a peri-menopausal (starting or in the midst of) menopausal to post-menopausal woman could give you a pretty accurate description of what the symptoms were and how it affected the family. But, millions of family members who lived with a man going through andropause could probably not give you a blow-by-blow account of what Dad went through. He was just being dad, wasn't he, wandering around in his robe wondering why no coffee was made.

Well, unbeknownst to everyone, mostly Dad, at an age as young as thirty, his testosterone level begins to drop, and it keeps on dropping through his life without much notice. And why is this? The drop in his hormone level can be as tiny as 1% a year. By the time fifty rolls around, dad may officially have a low testosterone count, but it can be as late as seventy that he becomes testosterone deficient.

The easy answer would be testosterone replacement therapy. There is serious study being done on the subject, because, adding testosterone willy-nilly can cause a whole host of problems on its own. Health professionals are still working on the right way to test blood to get a true reading of testosterone levels. With the aging of the Baby Boomers, science is rushing to understand and successfully address the problem of testosterone deficiency that also safeguards bodily health.

Holistically, it has been shown that even though male and female menopause are so very different, the same modalities in herbs, vitamins, massage and more work for both men and women to relieve menopausal symptoms. That can make Dad happier and more comfortable, but does little to significantly address the testosterone level.

But then again, maybe Dad is happy wandering around in his robe, watching sports and having a microbrew, surfing the web and maybe enjoying an afternoon with the kids or even the grandkids if he's gotten that far. It's only life, and it can be really fine, testosterone be damned. He can always go the doctor if he's bothered.

Recommended Reading

1. Big Boy Toys
2. Impotence And Male Menopause
3. Number Crunching In Andropause
4. Menopause For Males And Females
5. Male Menopause And Sexual Activity