"Treat the disease, you win some, you lose some. Treat the patient, you always win."
~Patch Adams~



Saturday, August 9, 2014

Manopause.....

I've been very busy with out of town company for the last few days, so I am several days behind in reading my newsfeeds.  Catching up this morning, I came across this article in The Huffington Post.  It appears Time Magazine has a cover story this week about male menopause, which they refer to as manopause.  The correct and true term is andropause, the time in a middle aged man's life w hen he loses his sex hormones, testosterone and progesterone.

The article appears to tout the theory that men should just embrace their declining hormones as part of the "normal" process of aging.  He should accept his loss of testosterone, accept his estrogen dominance (and the health problems that go along with it, particularly the weight gain) and live the second half of his life with loss of libido, loss of muscle mass, loss of bone and all the other issues associated with hormone imbalance.

I don't get it, and I never have. As Dr. Carr has told me innumerable times, "normal" and "optimal" are two different things. It's "normal" for a man to lose his libido, become tired, develop a myriad of health issues that require a handful of medications to manage.  It's "normal" for women to lose their hormones, and experience hot flashes, weight gain, sleeplessness, bone thinning, and loss of sex drive. It's not optimal for either sex, and doesn't it make more sense to simply replace (bioidentically) the hormones that are in the younger, healthier body that we lose as we age.  Mainstream medicine doesn't think so-----they yell and scream about the efficacy and safety of hormone replacement (often citing a 12 year old Women's Health Initiative Study that used Premarin and other fake hormones).  The mainstream medical community would rather you take a handful of drugs (and great expense and who knows what level of toxicity) than be hormonally balanced in the second half of life.  Take a look at the levels of decline in hormone levels cited in the article-----between 70 and 100 percent) and is there any wonder we start having health issues as we reach our mid -40's and beyond?

Quick story:  about 4 years ago I had to go for an MRI on my lower back.  The technicians were very nice, two women close to my age.  After I finished the test, for some reason we got chatting and they asked for my email address for the hospital records. When I gave it to them, they laughed at the "holyhormones" part of the email. I explained that I take bioidenticals, how much they had helped me, and that the hormonal balance had helped me get off 7 medications.  They looked at each other, and one said to me: "we noticed you don't take much medication (they ask you for a list of all medications when you go to the radiology center)....almost every woman your age who comes in here is taking some sort of an antidepressant."  Wow. That's scary.  We have hormone deficiencies, not antidepressant deficiencies.

Second weekend in a row it's rainy and gloomy here in NC.  Below average temperatures too, but I'm not complaining about that (except it makes it hard to get my water workouts in----yesterday I went in the morning because we were expecting heavy rain in the afternoon/evening).  My company is gone, although I am picking one of the ladies up today and we are meeting up with her husband at a midway point for her to go home..........today is a good day to catch up on little stuff around the house.  Hope everyone is having a good August so far!