August 23, 2010

By Paul Briand

The bad news for Baby Boomer men is that male menopause is not a myth. It exists and has a name – late-onset hypogonadism. And it’s accompanied by some of those same symptoms that plague women during their menopause years: hot flashes, low libido, and fatigue.

But the good news is that it does not affect large numbers of men of Baby Boomer age and older.

Whereas menopause affects 100 percent of women, it’s male counterpart affects only 2 percent of that population, according to research published in the New England Journal of Medicine. University of Manchester researchers measured the testosterone levels of 3,369 men between the ages of 40 and 79 years from eight European areas and asked details about their sexual, physical, and psychological health.

Researchers concluded that for someone to have late-onset hypogonadism, he had to have low testosterone levels in combination with three sexual symptoms: decreased frequency of morning erection, decreased frequency of sexual thoughts (sex drive), and erectile dysfunction.

They said other physical symptoms, such as an inability to engage in vigorous activity, and three psychological symptoms (loss of energy, sadness, and fatigue) were only weakly related to low testosterone and were not considered as part of male menopause.

Those symptoms were often associated with obesity and poor general health, not male menopause.

Researchers quoted in an article in Science Today cautioned about testosterone therapy, which has increased about 400 percent in the U.S. since 1999. Said lead author Professor Fred Wu, from the University of Manchester’s School of Biomedicine:

“Our findings have for the first time identified the key symptoms of late-onset hypogonadism and suggest that testosterone treatment may only be useful in a relatively small number of cases where androgen deficiency is suspected, since many candidate symptoms of classic hypogonadism were not associated with decreased testosterone levels in older men.”

The WebMD.com section on male menopause said a man’s testes, unlike a woman’s ovaries, do not run out of the substance it needs to make testosterone. A healthy male may be able to make sperm well into his 80s or longer. In some men, however, changes in the function of the testes may occur as early as 45 to 50 years of age, and more dramatically after the age of 70.

While testosterone replacement therapy might be called for in some men, doctors often consider other treatments having to do with lifestyle changes, such as a new diet or exercise program, or other medications – an antidepressant, for example or viagra online – to help with some of the symptoms of male menopause.

Read more health news articles on AccessRx.