Menopause for both Men and Women

Menopause for Males and Females

A very funny yet quite profound comedian named Elayne Boosler once observed that, 'When women are depressed, they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.'" Within that single line from her comedy routine Elayne succinctly captures the behavioral differences that are exhibited by men and women when they encounter menopause.

Of course, it is at the heart of comedy to oversimplify situations and to exaggerate differences, but she is able, nonetheless, to grasp in just a few words a cultural truth. Men and women both experience, to some degree, a hormonal change in their lives that reaches into all facets of their beings. For one gender the transformation is relatively short but is very intense, while for the other it is much more gradual.

We are far more familiar with the accumulated data concerning the menopause that a woman experiences because the condition has been medically recognized and observed (and therefore treated) far longer than male menopause. Since a woman has a monthly period, she is often alerted to oncoming menopause by a change in the frequency and duration of her monthly cycle.

Most often she has been told since her youth that when she reaches an age where child-bearing is no longer a possibility, she will notice that her periods are gradually diminishing. There will be other changes taking place in her body that are related to her estrogen level, and she may experience some depressions during this time. Her vaginal lubricant excretions may begin to diminish, and she may notice other physical changes.

Generally these changes will take place over a few years.On several levels, men share some of the symptoms of menopause with women. There are men who experience the sometimes deep depression and loss of self-esteem that women go through during this time.

They can find themselves dealing with the anxiety that can affect a woman, and they will often become short-tempered, moody, and irritable.However, there are also some very distinct differences. When we consider that a woman has a finite supply of eggs, we can conclude that many of her symptoms are triggered by the lack of eggs which helps to “turn down” the level of estrogen produced by her body.

But with a man we’re dealing with a different hormone, testosterone, and it does not get turned down in the same way as estrogen in a woman. Instead, around the time a male reaches his thirtieth birthday his testosterone level begins to gradually drop, roughly around one percent per year.

Consequently, when he’s in his mid-fifties he has reached a point where his testosterone production has dropped by twenty five percent. So, while a woman will experience her changes to approximately coincide with the depletion of her eggs, a man will (probably unbeknownst to him) actually begin the early stages of his male menopause while he is in his early thirties and not notice a huge difference until several years have gone by.

Then at that point, according to Elayne Boosler, he’ll invade a country while his wife goes shopping.

Is There Such a Thing as Male Menopause?

Is There Such a Thing as Male Menopause?

Women may notice it first in their male sexual partners. The decline in virility around the time middle age hits their man. Ever heard of the phrase, "male mid-life crisis?" The crisis may not be all psychological. It may be influenced by male hormone imbalance according to Dr. Karpas, who first published his research regarding male menopause in 1977. His theory includes symptoms, causes and the effects it has on the male body and his lifestyle.

He states that the symptoms start as early as age 40 and can be experienced through age 60. The symptoms are recorded as being: depression, increased irritability, lethargy to some degree, mood swings but the physical symptom most noticed is that he will have difficulty in both attaining and sustaining erections.

These symptoms hit hard especially as they cut the male ego to the quick. These symptoms are compounded if the male does not have an understanding partner/spouse. The statistic for how many males stay sexually active beyond age 70 is 40%. This statistic tells us that it is not normal to experience this particular symptom; and cannot be caused by the aging of the male in of itself.

Male menopause has no known cause as of yet, though it is being researched. There are some known factors that have come from the current researching and those are:

* Alcohol consumption of above average levels
* Getting less than ideal levels of exercise
* Hypertension
* Hormonal deficiencies
* Poor circulation
* Psychological problems
* Smoking
* Some interactions with both prescribed and non-prescription medications

Testosterone:
The hormone testosterone according to many endocrinologists and scientists is a male hormone. It is present in the male infant at birth and is responsible for bone and muscle growth in adult males as well as for the sexual drive they experience during puberty and beyond until it decreases to pre-puberty levels at age 80.

This hormone is responsible for the male libido or sexual drive. Men who experience lower than normal levels of testosterone experience difficulty with being able to concentrate, depression, fatigue, and also a decrease in endurance and muscle strength. It is expected that when males have low testosterone levels they will experience difficulty with sustaining or even achieving erections.

Some of the nay Sayers to this theory state that there are other conditions that can also exhibit the same symptoms. Conditions such as: being obese, having been diagnosed as having hypertension or high cholesterol. Men who also suffer from heart disease have poor blood circulation and as erection is dependent on good blood flow, heart disease can have the direct impact of erectile dysfunction for men with heart disease.

There are also known drug side effects from a variety of different medications that include symptoms of impotence. There have been studies that have shown that long term alcoholism of at least 10 to 15 years show that there can be significant and irreversible nerve damage to the penis which would impair the ability of have an erection.

Is male menopause for real, or is it just another label for symptoms of other conditions? You decide!