Is There A Male Menopause?

By Author: Steven Johnson
Total Articles: 490
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When we look at the same question for women, there's no doubt they experience a change. They stop ovulating. A physical process that's been a monthly part of their lives just slows down and then stops. Perhaps more importantly, it's not just a physical termination. If it's true women have a biological drive to breed and become mothers, then there's a need to readjust psychologically when that ceases to be possible. The only equivalent change in men is a slow drop in the level of testosterone from whatever represents an individual's high point to about 50% of that original figure. So unlike women, men don't suddenly stop having or wanting sex. The drive to have sex remains. There can be a slight reduction in the volume of sperm produced but, if the body is healthy, men can continue to father children into their 70's or 80's.

Yet, if you talk to men, they can all list a basket of symptoms. They start to feel tired more of the time. Their muscle tone fades and, comparatively, they grow weaker than they were as youngsters. They start to put on more weight. Some even become "fat". There can be problems of erectile dysfunction ...
... and, not confusing cause and effect here, there can be depression. Ask an older doctor and this will all be diagnosed as "getting old". Ask a spokesperson for the pharmaceutical industry, and this is a severe case of andropause - that's the new word Big Pharma has coined to stand in for the menopause (shame "men" are mentioned in an entirely female "complaint"). Now that this has been named a major disease, there are treatments. Just as women have been sold on the idea of hormone replacement therapy, now the same marketing message is coming our way. All our problems will be solved if only we take these pills, guaranteed to bring back our levels of testosterone to previous levels. We can then all go back to being proper men again.

In the midst of all this male thing, our hair starts to drop out and, almost without exception, we start to go bald. Why does our hair drop out? Because every time we shed a hair and it regrows, it comes back slightly thinner than it was before. What starts off thick slowly becomes thin, and there's absolutely nothing that can be done about it. There can be one or a hundred products on the market, but none of them can stop our hair from thinning and falling out as we age. It doesn't matter whether Big Pharma tries to link the male menopause and hair loss with their latest pills, but it should not deceive us. Nothing can turn back the hands of time.

If you are suffering premature male pattern baldness, Propecia is the answer. You have to start taking the pills as soon as your doctor diagnoses the problem. It will stop the loss and, in many cases, prompt regrowth. But there always comes a time when your hair will thin and drop out. All you do is delay the loss in your own case. So never start taking Propecia as an older man. By the time you are old, your hair is beyond the help of modern medicine. You just have to accept it as the price of growing old.