The Life Plan (60 page)

Foggy thinking, memory lapses

Increased cardiovascular issues

Loss of strength

Poor skin tone and saggy, wrinkled skin

Reduced lean muscle, higher body fat

Weak bones, osteopenia, osteoporosis

This loss of testosterone and other related hormones in men is referred to as andropause, or male menopause. If you haven’t heard of andropause, don’t beat yourself up: Most physicians aren’t comfortable with the term either. In fact, andropause is not universally recognized as a disease state. As a result, men are at a real disadvantage as they begin to struggle with symptoms similar to those menopausal women face: decreased libido, decreased bone density, fatigue, weight gain, loss of muscle mass and strength, and often depression.

One of the telltale questions I ask patients is regarding early morning erections. If you can’t recall the last time you had one or you don’t have them very often, then read on carefully. Those early morning erections have nothing to do with the bladder, but everything to do with testosterone levels. With lowered testosterone, not only do early morning erections disappear, but so do erectile performance, libido, and sexual thoughts throughout the day. Ninety-five percent of the men who come to see me in their 40s through their upper 70s do not have erections when they wake up in the morning.

When your LDL and triglyceride levels are high and HDL level is low, it’s incumbent on your doctor to treat these conditions and get your levels back to healthy ranges so these abnormalities don’t result in heart disease. In fact, if your doctor didn’t respond to those lab values, he or she would be held accountable. And yet, when it comes to diminished hormone levels, conventional medicine doesn’t accept the science. These doctors see declining hormone levels as a natural part of aging and strongly believe that you should “just live with” the symptoms and conditions associated with them. But if you don’t have to “live with” heart disease or a broken wrist, why should you have to “live with” poor health, or a lower sex drive? The answer is simple: You don’t.

Saying andropause doesn’t exist is like saying cigarette smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer. Just how many studies over how many decades will it take before our national institutes, medical societies, and academicians change their position? My position is clear: No man needs to confront aging and its related debilitating symptoms if it is possible to reverse them, or avoid them entirely.

An important and often overlooked cause of decreased testosterone levels is emotional stress. Hundreds of thousands of years ago the “fight or flight” alarm reaction system possessed by our ancestors served as a major survival mechanism for very short-lived life-or-death situations. This system releases stress hormones with high catabolic activity, enabling our predecessors to rapidly break down body stores of fat and muscle for immediate energy that was essential for their survival.

We have all inherited this same genetic code, but today our stresses are rarely short-lived. Rather, most stress we encounter is prolonged and frequently perceived only in our minds: Few of us are fighting off a woolly mammoth. This chronic state of stress results in the continued release of stress hormones, which severely inhibits testosterone synthesis and may be the greatest cause of aging and the development of degenerative diseases such as heart disease and arthritis. That’s why it is very important not only to keep testosterone levels within a healthy range, but also to do your best to minimize stress by learning stress management strategies and practicing the relaxation techniques that I discussed in Chapter 9.

Testosterone is an anabolic, or tissue-building, hormone. A drop in this hormone is particularly serious because it is an early indicator of a disease state that should be addressed and treated. A man with low testosterone could face greater risk for heart disease, Alzheimer’s, prostate cancer, frailty, and sarcopenia. The first signs of declines in testosterone are generally slightly vague: diminished subjective energy levels, increase in irritability, decline in mood, decline in cognitive performance, loss of early morning erections. While decreased libido and erectile quality are the findings most frequently associated with falling testosterone levels, they are actually some of the latest symptoms, with other findings present much sooner.

Penile hardness tests show men having the best performance when they are:

In excellent health

Don’t smoke or drink

Eat clean

Get plenty of rest