Can You Tell Me About Male Menopause In Detail?"Tell me about male menopause", "I want to know more about male menopause". These questions are being increasingly heard and asked these days. Before I tell you about male menopause, let me first explain what hormones are. Hormones are chemical substances secreted by endocrine glands. Soon after their secretion, they are released in the circulatory system from which they move to target tissues or organs of the body to perform vital physical and physiological functions. Some of the hormones are not secreted or may remain in inactive stage in infant and juvenile stage. After attaining maturity or puberty, these hormones are either secreted or get biochemically activated. Male hormone testosterone is such a hormone and it accounts for sexual development and maturity in male. Not that you have defined hormones and male hormones, can you tell me about male menopause in detail? Of course I will. Testosterone is important for the sex drive, erection as well as potency. When a man attains his mid life i.e. around forty years, the testosterone level tends to decrease and sometimes even up to a level of pre-puberty. This causes male impotency, lack of sexual drive and erectile problems. This particular state in a man's life is called male menopause or Andropause. Apart from testosterone level decline, there are other reasons to this problem, like aging, sedentary life styles, lack of exercise, side effects from medicines, high blood pressure, excessive smoking and drinking of alcohol etc. and poor diet. Male menopause is a biological phenomenon, rather than a clinical one. With age and due to the many reasons cited above the reproductive system as a whole becomes weak; however the functioning of the system does not get halted as in females. Only in case of severe hormonal and physical anomaly does it results in total impotency. A large number of people above 40 - 45 years in America are affected by male menopause. The effected person feels fatigue, depression, and 'feeling low' syndrome, lack of concentration, increases irritability and anger, muscle strains and lack of muscle endurance etc. and sexual frustration. These symptoms tend to deteriorate the personality and behavior pattern of the effected person. In the absence of an understanding and caring partner or the lack of communication with the partner or physician tend to worsen the situation. Psychologically male menopause can be very retrogressive for the person. The mental blues that the person comes across makes the man feel low in confidence and self esteem. As such he becomes reluctant in socializing with people. Often the person gets addicted to drugs and narcotics. Even worse, sometimes he resorts to infidelity. Now that your question "tell me about male menopause" has been answered, let me tell you about how to diagnose male menopause. Well! The diagnosis of male menopause or male impotency can be cone by hormonal tests. Nocturnal Penile Tumescence test can be done to determine whether this problem is due to physical or psychological reasons. If this test shows positive for physical reasons then another test can be done which indicates whether this problem has any circulatory roots. Lastly after telling me about male menopause and its diagnosis tell me about some of the treatments of male menopause before concluding this article. Yes, I am about to come to this point. Effective treatment of male menopause is possible only with the support of the patient, because male menopause is not a disease. It is just a physiological malfunction and that too often normal and natural to the body. As such the treatment is more of psychological nature. The hormone replacement therapy is said to be very effective in combating male menopause. Apart from it, family, partner support as well as treatment for depression and stress are very effective. |