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Male Menopause
- fact or fiction?
Testosterone
Questionnaire - click
here
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".
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