The flow of testosterone begins to gradually decrease at a rate of about 1 percent a year beginning at age 30. And for some men, the result over the years can be unpleasant or potentially life-changing.

By Sonja Isger (original Post)
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Is male menopause a true medical condition or just a good punch line when you’re 50-something and not feeling quite yourself?

You know, “Oh, that male menopause must’ve kicked in”?

Could your doctor really diagnose male menopause, or is it merely a phrase that Oprah or GQ use to hook you?

My middle-aged male editor wanted to know.

No punch lines here, my friend, er, boss.

There is such a thing as male menopause (though technically the name is all wrong – but we’ll get to that).

Is every man destined for the same hot flashes and mood swings they dread to see in the women they love?

That’s another story.

But the hormonal change is real and so are a multitude of symptoms that can accompany it – from a loss in libido or erectile dysfunction to fatigue or depression.

And, yes, sometimes even night sweats.

Every woman who lives long enough will experience menopause – a (permanent) pause in her menstrual cycle that signals the end to the steady stream of the hormone estrogen her body makes. Hence the name menopause.

Normally, this happens between the ages of 45 and 50. And the dramatic drop in hormones can trigger all sorts of physical and psychological changes.

Conversely, the hormone faucet in men never turns off.

But the flow of testosterone does begin to gradually decrease at a rate of about 1 percent a year beginning at age 30.

And for some men, the result over the years can be simply unpleasant or potentially life-changing.

While some call it male menopause, doctors often call these age-related hormone changes in men “andropause” – from the word androgen, a term to describe hormones such as testosterone.

How common is it?

It’s unclear how many men develop andropause.

A study of more than 3,000 European men published in the June 17 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine suggests the number is only perhaps 2 percent of the population.

Anecdotally, some doctors say that number seems low.

“It’s certainly higher than that one study would suggest,” said Dr. Lawrence Hakim, chairman of the Department of Urology at the Cleveland Clinic in Weston .

It may be a matter of definition, Hakim and others suggest.

Diagnosis a challenge

There is no single way to test for andropause, explains Dr. Robert Tan, author of The Andropause Mystery and founder of the OPAL Medical Clinic, which specializes in men’s health and aging.

A lab test is needed to figure out how much testosterone a man produces, plus a look at his overall health.

How low is low testosterone? It depends who you ask.

Studies have defined low testosterone in men as 250 nanograms per deciliter, while others cite 300. Men in their 20s and 30s typically have testosterone levels in the 600 range.

But a low number by itself is not enough.

“Every man is different,” said Dr. Erik Castle, a urologist with the Mayo Clinic in Arizona.

“You may have a 70-year-old who is healthy, never smoked, eats right, has low testosterone, but is fine. You have another, maybe he didn’t live so cleanly and now is unhealthy and not feeling well.”

For that guy, Castle says, you have to look closer.

What are you looking for?

Erectile dysfunction. Reduced sex drive. Fewer morning erections.

Doctors also often look for fatigue, problems walking long distances, bending or stooping.

And even if you have low testosterone and you’re tired, your problem could be something else entirely – diabetes, thyroid issues, a side effect from medication or alcohol abuse.

Hormone therapy poses risks

Doctors once addressed andropause only when a man complained that his sex life was suffering, Mayo Clinic’s Castle said.

“But over the last 10 years, the emerging evidence is that this may not just be a quality of life issue because they can’t get erections,” Castle said, “Now we think it could be a health issue as well.”

He said men with truly low testosterone levels can have lower bone density, and may be at greater risk of diabetes or coronary artery disease.

Now men and their doctors can consider replenishing the testosterone if those health risks are in play.

But proceed with caution.

Google “male menopause” and you may be steered to a screen full of “health centers” touting hormone therapy for a myriad of ills.

“You really want to seek out a center where you can work with a urologist, an endocrinologist,” Hakim of Cleveland Clinic said. “It’s part of the bigger picture. These places tend to focus on one thing – not the big picture.”

And, just as women must consider the risks of hormone therapy, so should men, advises the Mayo Clinic.

In its primer on male menopause, the clinic notes “Testosterone therapy has various risks.”

Such therapy could contribute to sleep apnea, put you at greater risk for heart disease, cause skin problems or stimulate the growth of existing prostate cancer.

Tan, the author who first published on the topic a decade ago, says he can’t help but notice how the public awareness of andropause has grown.

“There has been more interest, scientific work and certainly more patients coming forth with symptoms and treated successfully.”

When MALE

MENOPAUSE

kicks in …

Some men have lower than normal testosterone without signs or symptoms. But others may experience:

* CHANGES IN SEXUAL FUNCTION. This can mean less desire, fewer spontaneous erections, erectile dysfunction.
* CHANGES IN SLEEP PATTERNS, for example insomnia.
* PHYSICAL CHANGES. More fat, less muscle bulk and strength, swollen or tender breasts, hair loss, less energy or hot flashes.
* EMOTIONAL CHANGES. Feeling sad or depressed, difficulty concentrating or remembering things.

Source: The Mayo Clinic

I love these ’round table’ talks amongst women who compare notes on how to give their man more pleasure.

Enjoy!

Geli

Advertising for lingerie Photo: PHILIPPE HAYS / ALAMY

Ever wondered why a man can look at an advert featuring a six-pack and laugh, while a woman might look at a photograph of female perfection and fall to pieces? William Leith thinks he might have uncovered the answer ….

Plenty of guys have told me this story. The guy in question is preparing to go to a party with his girlfriend. She is trying on shoes and dresses. He is telling her how good she looks. She tries on more shoes, more dresses. And then: the sudden, inexplicable meltdown. She crumples on the bed. Something is horribly wrong. Now the party is out of the question.

The guy sits down. He hugs her. What’s the problem? Gradually the truth emerges. ‘Do you know what it was?’ the guy will say later to his friends. ‘She said she “didn’t look right”. She felt … I don’t know. Fat. Or that she was the wrong shape. It’s all about her body.’ He goes on: ‘I told her she looked great. Which she does, right?’

At this point the other guys will say, ‘Yeah – she looks great.’ And: ‘She looks fine.’ And: ‘I saw her the other day, wearing those shorts.’ And: ‘She is hot.’ Then the first guy will say, ‘That’s what I kept telling her. And that’s when she got really upset. She said, “You just don’t understand.”‘

It’s true – men, by and large, do not understand. In her book The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf made this point very powerfully. When a woman has a crisis of confidence about the way she looks there is nothing a man can do to console her.

‘Whatever he says hurts her more,’ says Wolf. ‘If he comforts her by calling the issue trivial, he doesn’t understand. It isn’t trivial at all. If he agrees with her that it’s serious, even worse: he can’t possibly love her, he thinks she’s fat and ugly.’

But it doesn’t stop there, says Wolf. What if the man were to say he loves the woman just as she is – that he loves her for her? An absolute no-no, of course, because then ‘he doesn’t think she’s beautiful’. Worse still, though, if he says he loves her because he thinks she’s beautiful.

There’s no way out. It seems to be, in Wolf’s words, ‘an uninhabitable territory between the sexes’. So why don’t men understand? And, given a bit of education, can the situation be improved?

Well, I’m a man, so let’s see. The first thing to say is that, when it comes to their bodies, men have a completely different attitude. I’m not saying they don’t think about their bodies, or worry about them, because they do. But men relate to their bodies in a simple way.

A man’s body is either fine, or it’s not fine. For a man, the body is a practical object. It’s a machine. Sometimes it works well; sometimes it needs fixing. Some guys know how to fix it, by taking up a sport, maybe, or cutting down on the carbs. Some don’t, and go to seed.

Men see their bodies as machines because, for most of their time on this earth, they have defined themselves as hunters and protectors. They equate being attractive with being strong and fast and muscled. That’s a simple concept, isn’t it? And that simplicity is hard-wired into the male brain.

When his girlfriend has a meltdown, and says she hates her body, that is not a simple concept. Unlike men, women do not have a simple relationship with their bodies. They have a complex relationship with their bodies. This is what men often don’t understand. When it comes to their bodies, women are extremely vulnerable – and, what’s more, lots of people take advantage of that vulnerability. This makes the situation worse.

Men don’t have to contend with this – the hair people, and the make-up people, and the fashion people, and the shoe people, and the bra people, and the nail people, and the eyelash people, and the Botox people, and the cosmetic surgery people, and the perfume people, and the hair-removal people. Oh, and the diet people.

Men are not at the mercy of corporate manipulation on remotely this scale. Sure, there are six-packs creeping into our field of vision every so often. And, sure, this is making us feel insecure. I know – I was fat, and it’s no fun being fat, especially with all those pictures of Brad Pitt nagging away.

And then there are the adverts for Lynx, and the Reebok advert in which a man is chased around town by a big fat hairy belly. But for men the message is very direct. Buy some running shoes. Go to the gym. Cut down on the carbs. For men there is no mystery behind the veil of the adverts. You either tackle the situation, or become a fat slob. End of story.

For men the holy grail is within reach – you just need to get fit, and then you’ll be fine; then you can think about something else. But the messages aimed at women are much more complex and confusing. As the American social commentator Warren Farrell has pointed out, women’s magazines often contain articles about being Superwoman, which are next to adverts about being Cinderella.

In other words, the words tell women how to be independent and in control. But the adverts, where the money is, tell them they have to be beautiful.

Farrell said this more than two decades ago – and, shockingly, nothing has changed. There’s a solid pulse running through everything our culture aims at women – be beautiful, be beautiful, be beautiful.

But being beautiful, it turns out, is a near-impossible task. It keeps getting harder and harder. Everybody knows that it entails being slim – and every year the ideal gets slimmer and slimmer. In 1960 the average model weighed 10 per cent less than the average woman. Now she weighs 25 per cent less. Soon she will weigh 30 per cent less. But she doesn’t have the breasts of a skinny woman – nor, as Susie Orbach has recently pointed out, the bottom. To achieve the ideal is vanishingly impossible.

And it’s getting worse. Orbach believes that we are exposed, on a weekly basis, to several thousand images that have been digitally manipulated. And this, in turn, makes more women opt for cosmetic surgery – which, of course, moves the goalposts even farther away.

When lots of people have surgery to make themselves look more beautiful this has the effect of making everybody else feel less beautiful. And this is happening on a global scale – in 2007 people spent £9 billion on cosmetic surgery; the vast majority of them, of course, were women.

So: men are told they should aspire to fitness and strength, and women are told they should aspire to something more nebulous. But that still does not explain, in terms a man could understand, why the female message is so much more powerful and disturbing.

It doesn’t explain why a tenth of women are anorexic, why a growing number are bulimic, why almost half of women, at any given time, are on a diet. It doesn’t quite explain the meltdowns. And it doesn’t explain why women want to be so skinny. Why they think they are fat, when they are not. It doesn’t explain why, when a woman’s body is perfectly attractive, she often thinks it isn’t, and can’t be persuaded otherwise.

In short, it does not explain why a man can look at an advert featuring a six-pack and laugh at it, whereas a woman might look at a picture of Gisele Bündchen and feel a sense of unease that hangs around for days.

John Updike once said that the female body is the world’s prime aesthetic object – we look at it more than we look at anything else, including landscapes, gadgets, cars. In fact, cars and gadgets are often designed to resemble the female body, and landscapes can be painted to remind us of it. When we talk about ‘the nude’ in art we are almost certainly referring to the female nude. As far as nudes are concerned, the male nude is a distant runner-up.

I once wrote the introduction to a book of male nudes by the photographer Rankin; it was a sequel to his previous book of female nudes. One thing struck me above all – male nudes were a much, much harder thing to portray than female ones.

That’s because the female body carries with it a huge weight of iconic significance – thousands of years of being looked at. The female body has meaning. Pictures of the female body can be profound, serious and complex. For thousands of years they have been depicted with reverence. Now imagine having one of those bodies. It puts a bit of pressure on, doesn’t it?

Now I’m beginning to see why women might be so addicted to perfection. They have a lot to live up to – a couple of thousand years of art history, and a couple of thousand airbrushed boobs and bums to deal with every week.

But what started this off in the first place? Why aren’t there so many airbrushed pictures of men around? Of course, these pictures do exist, and their numbers are increasing. But why are women so much more vulnerable to pictures of perfect bodies than men?

In his book The Evolution of Desire, the American psychologist David Buss goes some way towards explaining why this should be so. Since the Stone Age, he explains, men and women have had different attitudes towards sex. Men can pass on their genes with very little risk – all they need is a fertile woman.

But it’s different for women, because pregnancy is incredibly risky. What women need is a man who looks like a good provider – better still, who looks like a proven provider.

So let’s think about our Stone Age man and woman. If he’s going to settle down, and stop playing the field, he wants one thing above all – a woman who looks fertile. More than that, he wants a woman who looks as if she’ll be fertile for many years to come. In other words, he might consider being a provider and protector, as long as his mate looks young, fertile and unblemished.

And now consider his mate. What does she want? Not just a man who is a good hunter and a good fighter, but a man who has a track record as a hunter and fighter. In other words, an older man. And this is not only true of Stone Age couples. In a survey conducted by David Buss, 10,000 people, in 37 cultures, were polled. ‘In all 37 cultures included in the international study on choosing a mate,’ writes Buss, ‘women prefer men who are older than they are.’

Now I’m getting close to understanding why women are so critical of their bodies. Since prehistoric times they have had a hard-wired link to how they look. For tens of thousands of years it was crucial; it could be the difference between having a protector and not having one – between life and death, even.

For men it’s not the same at all. The odd wrinkle or grey hair doesn’t matter. Hell, it might even be an advantage. As long as you’re good at throwing spears and building shelters, you’ll be fine.

Twenty thousand years on, what has changed? Well, as David Buss points out, it’s unlikely that a Stone Age man would have seen ‘hundreds or even dozens of attractive women in that environment’. But now, when he looks at a Playboy centrefold, he is seeing a woman who has competed with thousands of other women for the part – not only that, he’s seeing the best picture out of thousands.

And it’s not just centrefolds, is it? Just look at newsreaders – mostly, it’s a pretty girl and a grey-haired man. Message to men: relax. Message to women: panic! And then there are the girl groups, and the short-skirted girl on Countdown, and even the characters in the Harry Potter films, where the boys are allowed to look like geeks but the girl must look like a model.

As the art critic John Berger wrote: ‘Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only the relations of men to women, but the relation of women to themselves.’ It’s a tough one, isn’t it?

Surely guys can understand that, at least. If it happened to us, we’d have a meltdown, too.

Vaginal plastic surgery is the fastest-growing cosmetic procedure in this country. Either there is complete ignorance about what their own private parts look like, or women go to the other extreme and start chopping them about because they didn’t look like porn models.

As a psychologist working to enhance awareness of the pure joys and beauty of intimate relationships, I am often saddened by the very poor body image ladies have, especially when it comes to their genitals.

Thus missing out on the many pleasures they were created to enjoy.

Take for example the clitoris. It has absolutely no function in the procreation process. There is no reason for its existence, yet it has double the amount of nerve endings (about 8,000) than a penis. The entire area of this female anatomy is a prime pinacle of God’s creation bestowed with a maximum amount of pleasure potential!

So it’s time to address the ignorance and shame surrounding this most exquisite private female treasure, and start enjoying, fully, what we were designed to experience!

I was particularly glad to have found a UK artists who specialises on casting the beauty of women’s vulvas as well as the magnificent and very unique variety of those beautiful private “faces”.

Enjoy reading the rest of this post … and above all, study those amazing casts and start celebrating God’s prime creation!

“For many women their vagina is a source of shame rather than pride and this piece seeks to redress the balance, showing that everyone is different and everyone is normal. I hope this sculpture will be definitive and effective in alleviating the anxiety many women feel about their genitals, just as many men do, at the same time as being a compelling and beautiful artwork,” says multi-award winning sculptor and UK’s leading lifecasting artist, Jamie McCartney.

From the Jamie McCartney’s website:

BRIGHTON BODY CASTING
Sculpture studio/gallery
7 Ship Street Gardens
Brighton BN1 1AJ
UK

+44 (0) 7961 338 045
www.brightonbodycasting.com

“”Why am I doing it and what’s it all about?” I hear you ask. Well, vulvas and labia are as different as a faces and many people, particularly women, don’t seem to know that. Men tend to have seen more than women, who have often only seen their own, and many have never looked that closely. Hence the exposure of so many, showing the variety of shapes is endlessly fascinating, empowering and comforting. For many women their genitals are a source of shame rather than pride and this piece seeks to redress the balance, showing that everyone is different and everyone is normal.

The sculpture comments on the trend for surgery to create the ‘perfect’ vagina. This modern day equivalent of female genital mutilation is a bizarre practice which suggests that one is better than another. Taste in nothing is universal and any desire for ‘homogyny’ could be very misguided. 360 casts arranged in this manner is in no way pornographic, as it might have been if photographs had been used. One is able to stare without shame but in wonder and amazement at this exposé of human variety. For the first time for many women they will be able to see their own genitals in relation to other women’s. In doing so they may dispel many misconceptions they may have been carrying about what women look like ‘down there’. The sculpture is serene and intricate and it works on many levels.”

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