Male Menopause – fact or fiction?
The reasons that the ‘male menopause’, otherwise known as the ‘andropause’, is still neither recognised nor treated by the majority of general practitioners, urologists or even andrologists can be grouped together as historical, medical and image problems.
Historical Factors Early treatments resulted in the dubious “monkey-gland” image of testosterone treatment which persists to this day, and the oral form methyl testosterone, which unfortunately is toxic to the liver and heart, and has adversely coloured the thinking of physicians.
Medical Factors Total testosterone, which is all that is usually measured in men complaining of Andropausal symptoms, is only low in relation to the standard laboratory “normal range” in 13% of cases. However, more detailed blood analyses show that the bio-available Testosterone as represented by the the Free Androgen Index (FAI) is decreased in 74% of cases.
Image Factors The name of the condition, even if dignified with the medical title of Andropause, appears an unacceptable threat to masculinity, and the condition is often incorrectly confused with the psychological traumas of the “Male Mid-life Crisis”.