Male menopause

So the news, according to a widely-hyped study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is that the condition commonly referred to as “male menopause” does exist, and that’s something that might comfort a lot of people who, for some reason want to believe that there is a male equivalent to that drastic drop in hormones that hits women in midlife.

The bad news for those “male menopause” believers, though, is that this research also claims the condition is quite rare, affecting perhaps 2-3 % of men.

That’s because these researchers took a very narrow view of what would make up a male menopause, namely 3 defined sexual symptoms (erectile dysfunction, reduced sex drive, and decreased frequency of morning erection), and all that accompanied by a marked drop in testosterone levels.

Anything else, says these researchers, especially that nebulous constellation of a drop in energy, sleep problems, and mood alterations, which is the main reason that most aging men are given testosterone therapy (TRT) these days (and it’s a huge and growing market) is not really male menopause and should not, these researchers insist (and I agree with them) be treated with testosterone because we still don’t know the true long-term effects of testosterone therapy (especially its effects on prostate cancer) in men who don’t really need it.

But if anyone thinks that this kind of cool reasoning will have any cooling effect on the huge TRT market, they’re quite mistaken.

Men like going on testosterone and doctors like giving it to them, so this study is very unlikely to put even a sight dent into that huge market.