Sexual Health – Hypogonadism

Transcript

We recognize in women, at they turn roughly age 51, that menopause occurs. Menopause is defined as the end of the synthetic capabilities of the organ called the ovary to make estrogen. Men don’t have a similar menopause where their testicle stops synthesizing testosterone. But if you take men over a population and look at the values of testosterone, as one ages, one can see a definite slope that decreases over time. So as you have a term called menopause, I guess the equivalent term would be manopause, where a consistent dropping of testosterone reaches the value where it just simply isn’t adequate for a man to have the ability for energy and muscle building and cognition and bone health, and sexual interest and drive and erectile function. So that condition we call hypogonadism is when the testosterone value is low in men. There are many, many FDA approved products for hypogonadism, where we take the medication and change the blood level of testosterone to a more appropriate value. Typically it’s below 300 when we have hypogonadism, and typically we raise it to the mid to upper third of the normal range in that we really have nice results. Men increase their sexual interest. They increase their energy level. They increase their muscle function. They increase their ability to do sports and to think, and to have memory, have increased bone health, they lose weight, they lower their cholesterol. You can actually lower your blood sugar with a better testosterone. There’s many, many advantages to having a normal testosterone in men.