Male Menopause, Is It For Real?

There are a lot of people out there that like to claim that men experience menopause. The term male menopause is often used to try and describe the levels of testosterone that are beginning to lower due to aging. However; it truly is nothing like what women go through with female menopause. These are two entirely different things. With women, the ovaries stop ovulating and production of their hormones falls in a very short amount of time. As for men, their production of hormones will gradually decrease over time and sometimes without a man ever even noticing, unlike that for women.

Probably the better way of referring to this so called men menopause is what a lot of doctors call andropause, which is a way of describing the hormone changes in men due to the aging process. Other ways of describing it would be testosterone deficiency or late onset hypogonadism.

Levels of the hormone testosterone is going to vary from man to man no matter how old they are. But, older men do tend to have a lot lower levels than that of younger men. The levels of testosterone tend to decrease slowly, around one percent each year after the age of 30. So when a man reaches the age of 70 he’s lost about 50 percent of his levels of testosterone.

It’s important to note however that a man should get a complete medical exam before they begin believing that the low levels of testosterone is due to the aging process. There are some things if gone untreated, certain medical problems, like sleep apnea that could actually decrease these levels.

There are ways that a man can recognize whether or not their levels of testosterone are lowering. One of these would be changes in their ability to function sexually. This might include less desire, less erections and the testes may even begin to become smaller.

If there are some unusual and unexpected changes in a man’s sleep habits could be a sign that the levels of their testosterone are low. Low levels of testosterone can cause sleeplessness and other sleep disorders.

If there are any changes that are physical like increased fat, loss of muscle and strength a long with the loss of bone density. If there are swollen and or tender breasts a long with sudden hair loss. There also might be less energy and sometimes hot flashes just like women.

Emotional changes might occur in severely low levels of testosterone and this could lower a man’s confidence in himself as well as giving them feelings of unexplained sadness and bouts of depression.

It is also important to notate that a lot of these symptoms are also part of the normal process of growing old. Others on the other hand could be caused from other things like side effects of medications, problems with their thyroid and excessive use of alcohol.

It’s easy to detect low levels of testosterone. All any man has to do is go into their doctors and they can take a simple blood test that will calculate the levels of their testosterone.