Male Menopause: Study Says That Testosterone Is The Cure

Trending News: Groundbreaking Study Finds Cure To Male Menopause

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

LONG STORY SHORT

Male menopause actually affects a lot of men.

Has your sexual desire hit rock bottom? Are you getting the blues? Sweating like a pig? The bad news is that you might be experiencing the ‘male menopause.’ The good news is that the world’s biggest study into testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) says that TRT could be the cure.

LONG STORY

Much has been made of how the ‘male menopause’ is just a figment of the media’s imagination — y’know, because lots of men start feeling sh*t around the same time that women do (those golden middle age years), and it’s damn catchy to stick masculine words in front of a thing usually associated with femininity (see: brosé, broga and man bags). But the fact that many men experience testosterone deficiency, or the andropause, is a very real thing.

Symptoms include joint pain, night sweats, hot flushes, low libido, lack of morning erections, low moods and ‘brain fog.’ Although middle-aged men don’t experience a sudden drop in testosterone (contrary to women experiencing a sudden drop in estrogen when they hit the female menopause), men’s testosterone levels do decline steadily, giving rise to the aforementioned symptoms.

This is where testosterone replacement therapy comes in. Today, the world’s longest clinical study of TRT of all time (*Kanye voice* OF ALL TIME) publishes its findings in the Journal of The Aging Male. And they’ve discovered that TRT — often thought to have negative health impacts — can in fact be safe and effective when taken over long periods. This is great news for the estimated 1-in-5 men in the UK (around two million guys) who could benefit from TRT but have been prevented from accessing it due to outdated safety concerns.

The researchers, from both the UK’s Centre for Men’s Health and the Department of Urology at University College London, studied more than 2,000 patients with an average age of 54, who underwent testosterone treatment over 26 years. They found that nearly all the men saw improvements to their health after a prescription of TRT: “In most cases with complete resolution of their symptoms,” says Professor Malcolm Carruthers, one of the scientists working on the study. Importantly, they also discovered that seven different kinds of TRT were equally safe and that there were no changes — negative or otherwise — to key health parameters.

The researchers also suggested that every man has a different level of testosterone that is individually healthy to them, and that it is changes to this level that affects them, rather than the existence of a ‘normal range.’

What they hope is that the current approach to diagnosing testosterone deficiency is reviewed, as millions of men are going untreated who could benefit from TRT. “This study proves TRT’s effectiveness in relieving the symptoms of thousands of men from across the UK, but most importantly supports the safety of testosterone treatment — even over prolonged periods,” says Professor Carruthers.

To check whether you might be experiencing testosterone deficiency, check out this quick symptom checker.

OWN THE CONVERSATION

Ask The Big Question: If testosterone replacement therapy enters the mainstream, what limitations will be placed on sportsmen and women trying to access it?

Disrupt Your Feed: The testosterone used in TRT comes from my sweat.

Drop This Fact: Adding together all of the patients’ treatment periods tracked in this paper amounts to over 4,500 years.