The World Menopause Day challenges calls on every nation to make menopausal health a principal issue in their research and public health agendas in order to help women prevent unpleasant symptoms that can affect productivity and quality of life as well as reduce osteoporosis, heart disease, colon cancer and other aging-and hormone-related diseases.
Women may not be the only ones who suffer the effects of changing hormones. Some doctors are noticing that their male patients are reporting some of the same symptoms that women experience in perimenopause and menopause.
The medical community is currently debating whether or not men really do go through a well-defined menopause. Doctors say that male patients receiving hormone therapy with testosterone have reported relief of some of the symptoms associated with so-called male menopause.
What Is Male Menopause?
Because men do not go through a well-defined period referred to as menopause, some doctors refer to this problem as androgen (testosterone) decline in the aging male, or what some people call low testosterone. Men do experience a decline in the production of the male hormone testosterone with aging, but this also occurs with conditions such as diabetes. Along with the decline in testosterone, some men experience symptoms that include fatigue, weakness, depression, and sexual problems. The relationship of these symptoms to decreased testosterone levels is still controversial.
Unlike menopause in women, when hormone production stops completely, testosterone decline in men is a slower process. The testes, unlike the 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 eighties or longer.
However, as a result of disease, subtle 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 in some men.
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