Is Male Menopause Real?

Author of Male Menopause and The Irritable Male Syndrome. Come visit me at www.MenAlive.com

“You’re a guy in your late 50s. You’ve just awakened and are looking at yourself in the bathroom mirror—as you do every morning. Only today you notice for the first time what must have been there for a while: the love handles, the once bulging pecs that now sort of sag. It gets you thinking.” These are the opening lines of an article in this week’s (January 15, 2007) Newsweek. The cover story is Understanding Menopause and the view of the 50-Something women and the 50-Something men couldn’t be more different.

Have you seen this issue of Newsweek?

There are a number of stories on “the change” for women and one interesting article on male menopause. The articles are full of factual information about menopause in women and andropause (male menopause) in the guys. But this is definitely a case where a picture is worth a thousand words.

Newsweek photographer Mackenzie Stroh has a picture of 10 women for the lead article on menopause with the title The New Prime Time. The women are smiling, laughing, leaning on each other in companionable support. They look like they’ve just learned the secret of how to stay happy, healthy, and orgasmic for the rest of their lives and they can’t wait to share the good news with the rest of us.

I turned to the article on men, titled Is Male Menopause Real? The 10 guys in this photo all look depressed, confused, and disconnected. They appear to be half dead--advertising, it seems, the horrors of losing your job, finding out you have prostate cancer, or spending the rest of your life with a limp penis.

Is this how men feel about moving through male menopause? Are men doomed to decline while women are surging ahead with post-menopausal delight?

I think part of the problem is the different ways Boomer men and women are portrayed in the media. The sub-head for the Newsweek article on women says, “Two of our writers explain how the years after 40 are a time for critical changes.” Looking at the accompanying picture of the women laughing with delight, it’s clear that the critical changes are going to be fun.

The men’s article, written by two Harvard MDs, has a sub-head that says “As men age, testosterone levels decline, which can lead to lots of problems.” Looking at the men, you might well believe that their changes are going to lead to disease, dishonor, and despair. The article suggests that we aren’t even sure if male menopause exists and if it does exist it is bad news for us guys.

I think the media, and many health-care professionals, are badly out of touch with the realities of male menopause. First, there is no doubt that it exists. Perhaps the Harvard MDs who wrote the article are not aware of my books, Male Menopause and Surviving Male Menopause: A Guide for Women and Men. Published in 1997 Male Menopause began with these words:

“Male menopause (also called andropause) begins with hormonal, physiological, and chemical changes that occur in all men generally between the ages of forty and fifty-five, though it can occur as early as thirty-five or as late as sixty-five. These changes affect all aspects of a man’s life. Male menopause is, thus, a physical condition with psychological, interpersonal, social, and spiritual dimensions.”

I went on to describe the research that I had conducted and other research that had been going on throughout the world demonstrating that male menopause is not only real, but can be effectively treated. I also reported our findings that proved that when properly treated male menopause can be a very positive change of life for men.

The second paragraph of the book said, “The purpose of male menopause is to signal the end of the first part of a man’s life and prepare him for the second half. Male menopause is not the beginning of the end, as many fear, but the end of the beginning. It is the passage to the most passionate, powerful, productive, and purposeful time of a man’s life.”

When I wrote Male Menopause I noted that over 25,000,000 men in the U.S. alone were going through the “change of life.” Many millions more men were going through “the change” throughout the world (That’s why Male Menopause has been translated into more than 25 foreign languages).

By 2020 I noted that the numbers in the U.S. would increase to over 57,000,000. When Male Menopause came out in 1997 I quoted a number of leading medical experts who were just beginning to do research on male menopause. Ronald Klatz, M.D., president of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine said, “One of the best-kept secrets is that men go through a male form of menopause called andropause.”

Marc Blackman, M.D., chief of endocrinology and metabolism at Johns Hopkins Medical Center said, “The male menopause is a real phenomenon and it does similar things to men as menopause does to women, although less commonly and to a lesser extent.”

Theresa Crenshaw, M.D., author of The Alchemy of Love and Lust said, “In the case of male menopause, we are still in the Dark Ages. Men have fewer guideposts to help them today than women had a generation ago. Only recently have we begun to understand the biochemistry of these events, tilting the scales toward a physiological explanation.”

In 2005, 2,300,000 prescriptions were written for testosterone. Millions more men received treatment for male menopause using other healing techniques. Although more men are recognizing that they are going through male menopause and are getting treatment, we are just scratching the surface. This is a time for men to stand up and be counted.

I believe that all men will go through this change of life, just like all males (and females) go through puberty. The question is how well will we go through it? I don’t think male menopause needs to be a time of doom and gloom. I believe it is prime time for men as well as women. Are you between the ages of 35 and 65? Have you or someone you care about dealt with male menopause? What kind of treatments have you tried? What has worked for you? Would you like to learn more about what you can do to make the “change of life” more passionate, powerful, productive, and purposeful?