14 DAY TRIAL // Men's menopause is actually called late-onset hygonadism, and it is rather controversial as it is a very different syndrome than menopause in women.
This middle-age event is inevitable in women and lately something very resembling starts to happen to men.
There is an increasing number of men that go to the doctor's office with the same health problems: sexual dysfunction, weight gain, fatigue, depression and other unpleasant and quite vague symptoms.
Some of these men have a lower testosterone level, which can be revealed by a simple blood test, and a testosterone prescription is usually the doctor's answer.
Like Dr Robert Brannigan an attending physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and an associate professor of urology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago, many believe that testosterone replacement changes the patients' lives:
“It helps many, many of these individuals to have overall improved quality of life, [as] it not only affects them, but very often their partners and their intimate relationships.”
But the testosterone replacement is not the universal answer to this, and as Dr. Thomas Walsh, an assistant professor and director of male reproductive and sexual medicine at the University of Washington's School of Medicine in Seattle, said “the question that arises is how much of this is related to hormones and how much of it is the facts of life that we experience as we age.”
He is also a urologist and he only prescribes testosterone after the informed patient gives his consent.
“There is still a lot of controversy, and I don't think we have all the answers yet,” he says, adding that every case is different, depending on the individual.
Walsh adds that there are possibly up to four million men with low testosterone, mostly caused by age, still only a minority receives treatment.
Between menopause and the problems that some men can have there are differences and this is why the term “male menopause” is rather controversial.
“Nobody doubts female menopause, and nobody doubts the mechanism by which it happens, that's not the case for male menopause,” says Dr. Ike Iheanacho, editor of the journal Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin.
First of all, menopause is inevitable and it happens to all women, as it marks the end of fertility, which is not the case for men.
Menopause occurs when progesterone and estrogen production cease and the symptoms can last for several years, according to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Testosterone levels can decrease by 1 to 2 percent a year in men after the age of 40, but not all men experience this testosterone level drop.
Furthermore low testosterone level is also associated with other factors besides aging, like obesity or injury.
Brannigan says that during the past four years, there was an increase in patients he said suffered from late-onset hypogonadism.
“Certainly, there is no question we are seeing more patients, and the question is, and I don't think we know, is it due to increased public awareness or is it due to increased prevalence,” he added, nevertheless estimating that 95 percent of cases are undiagnosed.
Today, taboos on men's sexual health problems are lifting, so the number of those visiting Brannigan's practice for example is expected to increase, as well as the number of prescriptions.
Between 2005 and 2009, there was a 65 percent rise in testosterone prescriptions dispensed by pharmacies in the United States, according to a LiveScience analysis of data from IMS Health.