Menopause for Men? A (Hormonal) Battle of the Sexes
Decreased libido, loss of bone mass, weight gain and hot flashes: all signs of menopause, even for men. You read right, that change in energy and even change in breast tissue isn’t entirely unique to aging women. Men also experience “the big change,” but in a less dramatic, less sudden kind of way.
It turns out that as we age, estrogen isn’t the only hormone that tapers off along the way. Testosterone, estrogen’s male counterpart, can be just as transient and just as tricky to understand.
As men age, the testosterone, (or just ‘T’) produced by their gonads begins to decrease and with that comes a decrease in muscle strength, sexual function and mood. Like menopause, these changes (sometimes referred to as andropause) can also create the sensation of hot flashes and even spur changes in breast tissue. Unlike menopause however, male breasts tend to swell, while female breasts lose volume and elasticity (an odd reversal of sorts).
Perhaps the main difference between menopause and the more medically termed, androgen decline in the aging male (ADAM), is the timing of whole process. In women, menopause occurs suddenly, being defined as the physiological changes that occur only 12 months after a woman’s last period.
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